Gear Reviews

There’s nothing worse than having the zero on your rifle shift or change. I’ve had it happen on several occasions and it can be a frustrating experience. Below are three things that I’ve started doing that have helped prevent loss of zero on my rifles.

While it’s not a perfect, crisp as a Pringle 1911 trigger, it’s close. Very close. For a striker-fired pistol, it’s extraordinarily good. The flat face took me a few rounds to get used to, but when I allowed my finger to rest naturally on the trigger, migrating toward the lower end of the shoe as intended with the resulting increase in leverage, I grew to like it. For the final analysis, I applied the Lyman trigger gauge once more.

As optics companies strive for ever better and cheaper scopes, a clear winner has emerged. The consumer. We live in the golden age of optics and weapons, as evidenced by this weeks test of the Leupold Mark 5. At a combined cost of under $4000 for optics and rifle, using .60 cent per round ammo, I was able to test a sub half MOA weapons system. Even 15 years ago, you would be lucky to match that at any price outside of a benchrest rig.

The pack is riddled with nice features. Inside, the back panel is set up for either Velcro- or MOLLE-compatible pouches. The side and rear panels have a foam insert to help it keeps its shape and protect your gear.

At any rate, I like the 19X so much that I bought the one that came in for review. And this week, I finally got around to the add-ons and mods I prefer.
First rattle out of the box, the sights that come as the only option on the 19X are weak sauce.

Biometric safes make me nervous. Using a fingerprint to open my iPhone is one thing. Relying on that technology to save my life is a whole different ball game. Batteries fail, circuits break, and biometric locks have a less-than-stellar track record in the firearms community. But here’s the catch…

One of the biggest problems with these bubble levels mounted on the scopes or rifles was that you had to take your eyes off of the reticle to actually refocus on the bubble to see what the level indicated. The Send iT electronic level from Long Range Arms corrects that problem by using lighted LEDs to indicate when the gun is level.

I have plenty of experience with Altama, they made the best jungle boots around during my military career. As a retiree though, I wouldn’t be caught dead in a set. So it was rather surprising to find something as sexy looking as the Maritime Assault Boot in their catalog.

The Mag Pump magazine loader is a pretty impressive engineering feat. To use it, push a magazine in, dump a box or handful of ammo in the hopper, and start pumping the handle. It’s literally that simple. The ammo doesn’t need to be oriented or sorted, the loader figures it out and puts it into your magazine in the correct orientation.