GunsAmerica Blog Product Reviews – Accessories and Gun Related items

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Stag’s Executive Survival Kit, or ESK, has many basic items needed for short-term survival.

Ready to Roll ESK From STAG

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Stag Arms had two new products at SHOT that are going to take a lot of the guesswork out of self-defense and 3-Gun competition for shooters who want “turn-key” solutions. The 2012 Executive Survivor’s Kit (ESK) is a special project done in partnership with Stag distributor LAN World and specifically marketed toward affluent people who have themselves, their family, and assets to protect during a “survival” situation. The kit is not set up for surviving a zombie apocalypse or an end of the world scenario, but instead for the more plausible scenario of being displaced for a few days by some disaster. I’ll be the first to admit that the whole “Katrina” thing has been done to death, but there never fails to be some new natural or domestic threat to make you realize that you need a gun. With social movements such as “occupiers” who think they’re somehow entitled to “their fair share” of what YOU own, I don’t blame people for being concerned about their safety.

The 3 pound 10x12 inch trauma plate is level 3 armor and design for multiple hits. Check out the website these are amazing products.

Armored Mobility Inc. Trauma Plates, Shield, Police Clipboard

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Ballistic armor has become a subculture in the tactical community that most of us know nothing about. But it is one of those things that once you get used to the protection it affords, you don’t want to be without it. For this reason, innovations in ballistic armor have been making it lighter and lighter, and I was very surprised to discover that one of the latest innovations is ballistic armor made of not ceramic, not titanium, and not even kevlar, but, drum roll please, compressed poly, otherwise known as, FANCY PLASTIC, made by Armored Mobility Inc., or AMI

Leupold Improves VX-I and II to VX-1 and 2

Leupold Improves VX-I and II to VX-1 and 2

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One of the most common questions I get is “What’s a good value-priced riflescope?” Well, that depends on your budget. If your budget is a few hundred dollars, then I don’t see anything wrong with one of Leupold’s VX-I scopes. Add a couple hundred bucks more to your budget, and the VX-II line is a step up without breaking the bank. This year though, Leupold is replacing those lines with improved VX-1 and VX-2 lines, respectively. Typically a manufacturer uses a change like this to implement a price increase, but Leupold’s Pat Mundy says the company was able to “hold the line on price,” and that’s good news for the consumer.

Trijicon Adds Smaller Red Dot Sight and Serious Tactical Scope

Trijicon Adds Smaller Red Dot Sight and Serious Tactical Scope

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My first experience with any sort of red dot or reflex sight was many SHOT Shows ago when C-More sight owner, Ira Kay, explained how to use one properly. He demonstrated how keeping both eyes open when using the “heads up” screen on the C-More eliminated the perception of looking through a tube, which is exactly what you got with some of the cylindrical sights of that time. He also showed how with both eyes open, you could get the lens front covered with mud, blood or even broken, and still see the dot to aim. I was very impressed, and have owned several dot sights since. For close- to medium-range shooting where hitting the target quickly is the goal, you simply can’t beat a dot.

Nosler’s Varmageddon Varmint Bullets

Nosler’s Varmageddon Varmint Bullets

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For 2012, Nosler added a new line of lower priced bullets and ammunition for high-volume varmint shooters called “Varmageddon.” They’re available as component bullets in .172″, .204″, .224″ and .243″ diameters, and loaded in .17 Rem., .204 Ruger, .221 Fireball, .222 Rem., .223 Rem., .22-250 and .243 Win. ammunition. The new bullets are quite a step up in quality from cheap bulk and rather different from Ballistic Tip Varmint bullets. For one thing, a quick scan through Internet suppliers shows that Varmageddon bullets cost about 65 percent that of Ballistic Tips for the same count, diameter and weight. I’ve been fortunate enough to get into some prairie dog and ground squirrel towns where the number of shots I took was only limited by how much ammunition I brought. In towns like those, the cost of ammunition can really add up. It’s tempting to try and shoot a town like that with cheap bulk bullets or “seconds,” but in my experience, doing so simply results in more misses and thus firing more shots, so it’s really a false economy. It’s a good thing that a manufacturer known for excellent bullets to begin with, can also make excellent affordable bullets.

Gunpowder That Cleans Your Bore?  Hodgdon CFE223 Smokeless Powder

Gunpowder That Cleans Your Bore? Hodgdon CFE223 Smokeless Powder

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I called Chris Hodgdon a couple of weeks before SHOT Show to get information on any new powders his company had for handloaders. I had recently seen a press release about Hodgdon’s new Copper Fouling Eraser (CFE223) and jokingly said to Chris, “So I hear you have a new powder that’s going to clean my gun for me.” Chris is not one to embellish or exaggerate, so his reply emphasizing how much this powder really does cut down copper fouling got my attention.

Zeiss Conquest Duralyt 30mm Riflescopes

Zeiss Conquest Duralyt 30mm Riflescopes

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A new 30mm tube riflescope from Zeiss with a retail street price around $1,000-$1,300 for illuminated and non-illuminated versions. Before you buy another rilfescope, make sure you check out the Zeiss.

Free Bullets for Life – Bullet Casting 101 Part 1

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If you love to shoot it can get expensive. Factory ammo is not at its peak that it was during 2009 into 2010, but even cheap 9mm is still upwards of 30 cents per round. If you reload, you save the cost of the brass, and the savings are huge over factory loads, but you still have to buy the bullets. And while bullets have improved drastically over the last ten years in consistency and quality control, with these improvements have come higher prices. Spot metals on the commodity market have spiked as well, sending prices even higher. Bullets aren’t cheap anymore. You may pay almost as much for the box of bullets as you used to pay for the box of loaded ammo.

I started bullet casting about 15 years ago, and initially I treated it like some sort of black art, that only the gurus could get right. Back then you could get lead for next to nothing. Pipes were still being torn out of old houses that were made of lead, and every junkyard and tire shop had a good supply of used wheel weights, the kind with the steel clip. I tried my best to make perfect bullets with no lines in them, that all weighed the same, and I had some moderate success. But I can’t say I ever mastered that, and if I ever get back into being able to shoot BPCR (black powder cartridge rifle), maybe I’ll try again.

Recently it occurred to me that I don’t hear as much about bullet casting as I should these days. Did everyone forget about it? Jacketed bullets are too darned expensive to shoot all the time, but I like to shoot all the time, and I’m not alone. Once you start asking around, stopping in at tire places and developing a hawk eye for lead at the junkyard and flea market, you can usually get lead for free or extremely cheap. Once you buy the tools, you have them for life and they last. If you learn the basic skills of bullet casting, it could amount to a lifetime of free bullets.

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Learn Gunsmithing at Home With AGI

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Gunsmithing is not something you can just sit down and teach yourself through trial and error. Guns are a high ticket item, and a little too much sanding here or a little too much pressure in a vice there and your treasured and expensive firearm could be destroyed. The destruction of the American family has produced a difficult byproduct in our generation. Skills that should have been handed down from father to son weren’t, and as the last generation passes on, the next generation doesn’t know how to do stuff that the previous generation did. Now, at 30 and 40 plus years old, a lot of us wish we could do some of that stuff, yet sadly we have nobody to teach us. Everything from electronics, to woodworking, to leatherwork, even sewing, are falling away as things that hobbyists know how to do. In gunsmithing, for someone who has never been taught, even taking apart the guts of a 1911 slide can be mind boggling.

The American Gunsmithing Institute, or AGI, has tried to fill this generational gap by producing a series of extremely good videos on the disassembly and reassembly of most popular firearms, gunsmithing basics, and even advanced gunsmithing courses. Some of them are so advanced that you would expect to have the mechanics of a gunsmithing degree in place before ever having access to such advanced skills. Believe it or not, there are still physical gunsmithing schools in the US (very few), but for those of us who don’t have the time or freedom to go to school, with AGI you can get a real gunsmithing education in your own home, right on the screen, as you have time or it. Depth is optional. Just an armorer’s course at $39.95 might be all you need.

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Glow Ammo Cold Tracers Ready for Prime Time

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The hardest thing in the world is to be the only one out there with a new product that people don’t understand. That is the challenge that Brian Hallam of Glow Ammo faces with his cold tracer, trajectory marking technology that is unlike anything else on the market.

“Most people don’t understand Glow Ammo,” explains Brian. “They think you can only see it at night like standard hot military tracers, but you can see our tracers under normal range lights, and outside at dawn and dusk, not just at dark. Our cold technology is also much less dangerous than hot tracers and ranges that won’t allow hot tracers allow Glow Ammo. ”

“We call Glow Ammo trajectory markers, not tracers, because it opens up a whole new aspect to shooters. You get to see your bullet leave the barrel and hit the target. In the video game generation this is a whole new dimension that people really enjoy. It is like a laser beam in a video game.”

“It also has a lot of practical and defensive applications as well. Only you can see the trajectory marker as the shooter. When you get more than about 15 degrees off of the bore axis you can’t see the flash of the Glow Ammo marker, and from the front, downrange, it is not visible at all. This means that your enemy can’t see your shots but you can. Whether your eyes are on your sights or not, you can see where your shots are hitting, and there is no disadvantages like you see with lasers and standard hot tracers.”

Police and Military Applications
Brian’s vision for Glow Ammo is more far reaching than a range novelty or even simple self defense, and if you think about his points, he’s kinda right. He has a long way to go before people understand and accept what he has to say, but hopefully this article will start opening people’s minds. He explains the police and military potential like this:

“Think about a classic police shootout. The first officer on scene is forced to engage in a gunfight and calls for backup. With Glow Ammo, as soon as the backup arrives on scene, they immediately see where the shots of their fellow officer are going, and the bad guy on the receiving end can’t see them. The dangers we all know that exist with lasers for the shooter, that the bad guy can see where the laser is coming from, doesn’t exist with trajectory identification technology. It is a different way to think about gunfight dynamics. ”

“It is the same thing with the military. Right now there is only red colored Glow Ammo, but soon we will have other colors. This way a team leader can carry one color marker and the team members a different color, so that in a firefight, the team sees where the team leader is directing fire, and they know it is him because of the different color. The potential is limitless for trajectory identification, and because it is a cold technology, there are no adverse side effects or potential collateral damage. It just works. ”

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