Gun Reviews

The RXM takes advantage of the Glock Gen 3’s patents expiring.

The Chiappa Rhino 60 DS 10mm looks like a sci-fi prop, fires from the bottom chamber, and somehow makes full-power 10mm Auto feel far more civilized than it should. I ran it with defensive, hunting, and range ammo to see if the weird design is real engineering or just revolver theater.

The FN Reflex combines a surprisingly good trigger, .85-inch best-group accuracy, and flawless reliability in a palm-sized carry gun. This little 9mm ran clean, dirty, and gritty without giving us the first problem.

Five shots, one old-school cylinder, and 30+ years of carry experience make the CCW revolver harder to dismiss than the high-capacity crowd wants to admit. The J-Frame is not for everyone, but in the right role, this little wheel gun still has teeth.

The best cap and ball revolvers put you behind the same smoke and thunder that settled the frontier and fought the Civil War. They are loaded one chamber at a time with loose powder, a lead ball or conical, and a percussion cap, and every shot rolls out a cloud of white smoke. Under federal [...]

As an outdoorsman, I enjoy being afield in all sorts of capacities. While hunting is one of my favorite pastimes, fishing and hiking are a wonderful means of spending time with friends and family and living in close proximity to both the Catskill and Adirondack mountains, there is ample opportunity for both of those activities. I am also, by trade, a Professional Land Surveyor, so my work hours are often spent in the remote wilderness areas.

The best FN pistols come from a company that has armed militaries for more than a century, and it shows in how hard these guns run. FN America builds the 509 striker-fired family, the hammer-fired Reflex micro-compact, the Five-seveN, and big .45s like the 545 and FNX-45 Tactical. Our writers have put a lot of [...]

The Browning X-Bolt 2 Special Max LR SPR blends hunting-rifle practicality with enough long-range muscle to make steel ring past 600 yards. With a suppressor-ready 18-inch barrel, adjustable MAX stock, crisp DLX trigger, and consistent one-MOA performance, this 6.5 Creedmoor makes a strong case for the do-it-all rifle slot.

The revived S&W 396 Night Guard in .44 Special promises the perfect middle ground between snubnose carry and full-size shootability. It starts strong, shoots well, and then delivers the kind of reliability failure that turns nostalgia into frustration fast.

When we look at the world of firearms, the bolt action genre is often ruled by full-powered rifle cartridges. That’s a real shame because there is some serious charm to the intermediate caliber bolt guns.

The best Kimber pistols built the company’s name on factory 1911s, and today the lineup reaches from pocket .380s to double-stack 2011s and a striker-fired micro-compact. Kimber is known for fit and finish, crisp single action triggers, and prices that sit above the budget brands. Our writers have carried and tested them hard. One carried [...]

These new guns, in tandem, have the capacity to shape the future. It has been impressive enough to make me re-evaluate the 5.7, and I hope it does you too. I have a feeling the little cartridge that could is just getting started.

The Mossberg 590 Bliksem is not just a camo-coated conversation piece. It is a compact, optic-ready 12-gauge firearm with real defensive utility, slick factory upgrades, and enough personality to make a plain black shotgun feel downright boring.

The S&W 617 Mountain Gun looks like the .22 LR K-frame woods revolver a lot of shooters have been waiting for. It shoots well, carries the right Mountain Gun attitude, and then trips over the kind of quality-control problem that makes a man shake his head twice.

The Taurus RPC brings roller-delayed 9mm softness, full ambi controls, suppressor-ready hardware, and PDW-style swagger to a price point that should make MP5 fans uncomfortable. We ran 300 rounds through it to see what this little blaster is, what it is not, and whether you should grab one before they vanish.

The Cimarron U.S.V. Artillery brings the Colt SAA Artillery legend back with .45 Long Colt punch, Rough Riders history, and old-school sixgun swagger. It is part history lesson, part range toy, and part reminder that sometimes the old ways still hit hardest.

Today, we will dissect both terms and compare and contrast DA and SA revolvers.

The best Winchester rifles carry more history than almost any other American brand. The Model 70 was called the rifleman’s rifle, the Model 94 has probably taken more deer than any other lever gun, and the 1886 was the first lever action strong enough for big black powder cartridges. Today Winchester also sells budget XPR [...]

The best HK pistols are built to a standard most makers do not try to meet. Heckler & Koch designs its handguns for police and military contracts and NATO durability testing, and it shows in their reliability and price. Today’s lineup includes the striker-fired VP9 family, the U.S.-designed CC9, and the hammer-fired P30, while classics [...]

The Stealth Arms Platypus already brings 2011-style performance with Glock magazine practicality, but this custom build takes the platform into dream-gun territory. With Impact Machine Flatty Platy porting, Rising Creek Customs Cerakote, a Vortex Defender-ST Enclosed, and the exact options I wanted, this pistol turned into the flat-shooting, hard-running custom handgun I had been chasing.

The active pursuit of dangerous game is far and away my favorite style of hunting. The gear required for hunting dangerous game — specifically the rifle — must be rock solid, as with failure comes the potential for loss of life.

The Smith and Wesson M&P 2.0 10mm brings serious thumper energy without feeling cartoonishly huge. With optics-ready capability, stout woods-load performance, and M&P ergonomics, this 10mm makes a strong case as a backcountry pistol that still behaves like a modern fighting gun.

A .22 LR handgun is easy to dismiss until you carry one all day, shoot it well, and watch it punch deeper than expected. For hunters, trappers, and everyday carriers in the woods, the humble rimfire sidearm still has teeth.

The Winchester Model 70 Featherweight brings wood, blued steel, controlled round feed, and old-school hunting rifle swagger into a world obsessed with carbon fiber and plastic. We tested this 6.5 Creedmoor classic to see if the Rifleman’s Rifle still deserves a spot in the deer stand.

The plain SIG P365 still earns its place as a daily carry pistol because it balances concealability, capacity, shootability, and trust better than almost anything in the micro-compact 9mm world.

Geissele’s King Hunter is a heavy, expensive, superbly accurate bolt gun built around Federal’s hot new 7mm Backcountry cartridge. It is not trying to be a featherweight mountain rifle, but from the bench and the field rest, this thing shoots like it knows it wears a crown.

The Tokarev TT 12 Pro is an AR-style 12-gauge shotgun that showed up cheap, ran clean, and refused to choke on low-velocity shells, buckshot, or slugs. For about $365, this box-magazine-fed semi-auto came to fight.

The best Ruger 10/22 upgrades turn America’s favorite rimfire into whatever you want it to be: a tack driving target rifle, a compact bullpup, a quiet suppressed plinker, or a packable survival gun. Ruger has sold millions of 10/22s, and the aftermarket for them is so deep that you can replace every part of the [...]

The best Mossberg shotguns have armed soldiers, cops, turkey hunters, and homeowners for decades. Mossberg makes the 500 and 590 pumps, the budget Maverick 88, the magazine-fed 590M, the non-NFA Shockwave, and the 940 autoloaders, plus field guns and over-unders. There is a Mossberg for almost every job and budget. Our writers have run them [...]