Gun Reviews

Now that the year 2011 has passed and we are handily into 2012, enough has been said about the 100 year anniversary of the 1911 pistol. We should all be able to just return to shooting these classic and ergonomically near perfect firearms for the next hundred years. The question remains, however, can you buy a bargain priced 1911 and have a good reliable firearm. The folks selling guns under the Iver Johnson name these days would answer that question with a resounding “yes.”

Not too many guns have been copied to the extent of the ubiquitous 1911. There is nary a gun nut without at least one in the safe, but these days they are expensive to shoot. A box of .45 ACP on a good day in bulk quantity is still over 30 cents a round, even with throw away steel cases. If you want to shoot a 1911 for just fun plinking, or to train gun handling for competition, you really need to get one of the .22 rimfire versions of the 1911 that have come out in the last few years. The first ones came from Italy and had some problems, but they have worked out the bugs with those, and this new German version is nearly perfect. It is called the GSG 1911, from German Sport Guns, imported by American Tactical Imports (ATI), and the MSRP is $399, with a street price a little less.

Back before SHOT Show this year we got a chance to take a look at the Springfield Armory XD(M) .45 Compact 3.8, but we never got to do a real test for a range report. So as we eagerly await the coming of the single stack XDS, before you decide that you must have it, let’s take a look at the Compact XDM .45 alongside the XDS first.

If any gun is quintessentially Ruger, it’s their .22 caliber pistol. Originally designed by Bill Ruger in his garage, it was the very first gun Sturm, Ruger and Company sold, and has been in production continuously for nearly 63 years. It was a huge success from the get go and has continued to get better as new materials, new manufacturing methods, and other refinements have been made in response to consumer demand.

The 22/45 Model variation was introduced in 1992 to provide a training gun for the venerable 1911 Government Model .45. It has the same grip angle and control locations giving 1911 owners a less expensive alternative for perfecting their pistolcraft. In fact, it’s so faithful to the 1911 that you can use 1911 grips on it. All you have to do to make them work is to relieve the upper front corner of the left grip panel to accommodate the slide stop button. So if you have a set of the new Crimson Trace laser grips on your 1911, you can put them on your Ruger for training.

It has been just over a year since we first posted an article about the bump stock from SlideFire Solutions called the SSAR-15. At the time, nobody knew if this cool new toy would still be legal a year later, but here we are. Not only is the SlideFire still legal, it has gone from an obscure product we had to stumble across to nearly a household word for those of us who think of gunshops as our second homes.

The Ruger 10/22 generally needs no introduction. There is no more recognizable and ubiquitous .22 rifle on the planet. Today Ruger released a new 10/22-TD, MSRP $389, which stands for “Takedown,” and it is a completely new design for the gun. It even comes with its own backpack. You probably already have questions formulating. Takedown designs can sometimes have issues with accuracy, returning to zero and long term reliability, but Ruger seems to have addressed all of these going into the design of this new gun. From what I can see so far, the 10/22-TD should be a great long term success and a reliable gun for those fortunate enough to get one. You may have heard already that Ruger has stopped taking new orders temporarily from distributors because of record sales, but there should be plenty of them available at least for a couple weeks.

The folks at Gibbs Rifle Co. have a history of taking surplus military rifles of arguably minimal collector interest and turning them into sport specialty rifles that have a serious “fun gun” factor and “tough as nails” demeanor. Perhaps the best known of them are the Summit and Quest chambered in .45-70 and .308, respectively. Those were built on surplus Enfield actions and were not attempts to reproduce any sort of historical military gun at all. Instead, they were practical, utilitarian rifles that made good use of surplus military and some new parts. “Commercial sporterizing,” probably best describes it, and as Gibbs puts it, they “…take the best features of historic military arms and translate them to meet modern sporting needs.”

If you are already a deer hunter but have never taken advantage of your state’s muzzleloader season, this spring might be a good time to get comfortable with a modern day muzzleloader from Traditions Firearms. Every state except Montana has a special extra season for muzzleloaders, and Pennsylvania even has two of them, one reserved just for flintlocks. Muzzleloader season is a quieter time in the woods, with fewer hunters, and though I was unable to find any kind of total for deer taken nationally with muzzleloaders, suffice to say that the muzzleloading market wouldn’t be so expansive and competitive if that extra week or so of hunting didn’t give you a competitive advantage.

At SHOT Show 2012 a little while back we got a brief look at the Gen 4 version of the Glock 21. Fortunately for me, I had just purchased a new Gen 4 G21 just a few days prior to the show, and we can now get a change to look at it from a more “hands on” point of view.

There are circumstances, often financial sometimes environmental, when having an expensive gun isn’t possible, or may not be the best choice. For those instances, Hi Point offers a value-priced—no, a low-priced–line of American-made handguns that prove time and again that—almost no matter what–they can be counted on to work when you need them. That’s exactly what the company’s owners set out to do—provide a safe, reliable handgun that practically anyone can afford. So what can you expect for about $150 bucks?

Smith & Wesson re-launched their “E” Series of 1911s this year and they have been very well received in the market. With an MSRP in the $1300 range and street price much less, you get a lot of advanced features in this new 1911 that you would have to pay a gunsmith for with most other guns. These are 100% “nextgen” 1911s, and besides the modern looking fish scale serrations and the accessory rail that many of the guns have, the intereals of the gun appear to have the best of the good of the classic 1911 design, without including some of the bad ideas that have crept into the gun over the years. The Series 80 firing pin safety has been replaced with a titanium firing pin, so rather than block the pin with a problematic safety device, they just made the firing pin too light to set off a primer when the gun is dropped. They have also cleaned up the trigger housing and each of these guns has a hand fit trigger. Is it truly the quality of a $1,000 1911 with $2,000 worth of work as is claimed in the video? Could be, but we hope to see one of these come in the door for some real-world testing. They look to be a really great buy in a 1911, and hey, they say Smith & Wesson on them, so they will retain their value and eventually become collectible. That’s a lot of selling points on a gun that has so many variants and options out there. Check out the video, and please don’t harp on George in the comments. He’s a big, tough, sensitive guy!

You couldn’t miss Caracal at SHOT Show 2012. They had a big booth at Media Day, and all of the buses to and from the hotels from the show were wrapped in Caracal artwork. Their booth was downstairs with us, but it was very impressive, and this could be a gun that makes it to the US market this year. At $500, however, it will most likely be a non-starter.

We already saw the new Ambush hunting line from Daniel Defense and these are their new tactial guns. The .300 AAC Blackout round is getting widespread attention accross all of the shooting disciplines because it can be shot as a subsonic, meant for work with suppressors, and a supersonic for .30 caliber ballistics from a small package round. There is also a new Daniel Defense in 6.8 SPC, and some lighter options on their existing popular models. This is an end of the day interview and a little subdued, but you can see that it’ll be a strong year for Daniel Defense.

Finally nobody has to believe GunsAmerica that the Teludyne StraightJacket is nothing short of a miracle for rifle accuracy over sustained fire. If you read our original article, Ultimate Accuracy Makeover, but didn’t send your gun to Teludyne, you may want to beat the crowds now because they have enlisted the H.P. White testing organization to certify the results, and you can download the PDF of the report.

A first look a the new Rock River 1911 with a polymer frame and machined slide. It feels a little different than a standard steel 1911, but this was just a first look on a prototype gun. At the projected price point of about $800, this new 1911 will be a formidable competitor in the market at that price point, and higher price points. Rock River doesn’t mess around with anything they do and this gun is truly impressive.

Awesomeness is not a word you would think could make it through spell check, but it is actually a word. If there was one product at Media Day at the Range, SHOT Show 2012, that excelled at awesomeness, it was the modular rifle chassis system from Ashbury Precision Ordnance, or APO. It is called the Saber-FORRST, for Folding Rifle Stock System Tactical. They all don’t seem to fold, going by the catalog, so it is a little confusing. But they sure excel at awesomeness.

This Escort line of shotguns from Legacy Sports International is made in Turkey by Hatsan. It seems to be modelled after the Remington 1100 and since the brand has been in the market for several years, this appears to be an extremely mature product. The guy in the video is in one of those Sportsman’s Channel shows that those of us with Comcast, Direct TV, and most other cable/satelite systems don’t get, but he seems to have used the guns in the field quite a lot and believes in the quality of them. Googling around I found no bad reviews of them, and in general all the Turkish guns have been reliable and extremely well received. Hopefully we’ll get a review gun over the coming year and test these guns with a variety of hunting loads. They seem to be worth checking out if you are in the market for an auto-shotgun, and they do make tactical as well as hunting models.

You wouldn’t think that a gun would be made specifically to bang around behind the seat of your truck, to get banged and bumped on who knows what, and to get dripping wet, dirty, and still work, but that is exactly what Savage has done with the new Hog Hunter line of rifles. They aren’t pretty guns, but they aren’t for pretty game either.

The TC Arms Venture is one of the best value in American made bolt action rifles, and this year TC answered the call to make a youth sized version. It has an 11.5 length of pull out of the box and it will be available in .223, .243, 7mm-08 and .308 for now. The barrel is only 20 inches for good balance in a small gun, and it comes with a 1 inch spacer for the stock, so the gun can grow with your child. All of the Venture rifles come with an MOA gaurantee, and we proved this out easily with a rifle they sent us for testing. There is also a new winter camo Venture as well. TC makes a lot of “gotta have it” guns and this looks to be another.

The AR-10 finally is available with a non-proprietary magazine, it takes Magpul P-Mags now. Also some new uppers from Armalite as they charge ahead with a 7.62×39 and 6.8SPC upper for their iconic rifles.

Take a look at this video on how the new Mossberg FLEX system actually works. Now you can buy one shotgun and have it perform various functions for home defense, hunting, and tactical work.

If you carry a .40S&W duty pistol and would like to be able to use all those extra rounds in your backup revolver, Charter Arms has finally come to market with their affordable line of revolvers for rimless cartridges. The guns are currently available in gunshops and from what we saw at SHOT Show this year, they work great, even in the blowing sand of the desert with dirty cheap surplus ammo.

Sig Sauer brings a lot of new products this year, and they all have the common theme that they are based on guns we already know and love, and probably even own, from Sig. The P224 pistol is the same doublestack 9mm, .40S&W or .357Sig. as your P226, but in a compact for concealed carry. The SIG716 is a 7.62NATO rifle based on the successful SIG516 platform, the M400 is finally a standard AR from Sig for you police armorers & Sig enthusiasts out there, and the 551-A1 is just like the Swiss 550 on which the 556 is based. Also SBRs!

Daniel Defense has a novel concept in the “modern sporting rifle” (otherwise known as ARs made for hunting). They have decided that rather than just paint some camo on one of their existing rifles, it would be much better to actually build an actual hunting rifle from the ground up. Ambush Firearms is a separate effort from DD to do just that. Watch the video for the details. They even have a forend for the guns that feel like a shotgun forend. It is a great approach that is refreshing for those of us who hope the AR-15 platform hunting rifle becomes a big part of the hunting market. And yes, they make a .300 Blackout!

A real StG 44 is out of reach for most WWII enthusiasts, but this .22LR replica, made in Germany and imported by ATI could give you that fix of history you are looking for. At full weight and $599 it will fly off the shelves, so get one while you can.

Everyone loves the hammer fired guns from FNH and now they have a striker pistol in pre-production that looks to be yet another great gun, and a serious competitor in the striker fired pistol market. FNH guns are known to be extremely reliable and a great value, and the FNS looks to be yet another one.

Franchi, the mid-level priced shotguns of the Benelli/Franchi/Stoeger family, is completely rebranding itself for 2012 with an emphasis on “Franchi Feels Right.” If you are looking for a truly classy Old World Shotgun that fits you and helps you shoot better, the Franchi guns are known to be a great value in a sporting shotgun.

The MR762A1 from H&K is a 7.62×51 (.308 Winchester) descendent of the HK416/417 series, a semi-automatic rifle for civilian users. This system uses a solid “pusher” rod instead of the gas tube on a standard AR, and this makes the system very clean, because gas never gets into the receiver. It takes HK417 mags, and as you can see from the video, there are a number of features built into this rifle that make it more sure and stable than a standard “legacy rifle” AR-platform configuration.

You may already know about these two groundbreaking bullpups. The big thing for a long time on both the KSG and the RFB is getting one. Everyone wants one and they are extremely hard to get. Kel-Tec has added a whole new wing to their plant this year and are ramping up production on these in-demand guns. We hope to get one of each soon.