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Scope alignment is something that most of us take for granted. If you don’t plan to shoot a rifle at more than 100 yards or so, it’s not such a big deal, but at long distances it can make a big difference to make sure that your scope reticle is perfectly aligned with gravity. Gravity pulls straight down for the most part (Coriolis effect is far outside our purview of this article), and your drop calculations are only going to work straight down from the bore axis if your scope reticle is perfectly straight up and down and perpendicular to your bore axis. At 300 plus yards, if your reticle isn’t perfectly aligned, your shots are going to hook somewhat, like a golfball, from where you think they are going to go. That is the purpose of this “Professional Reticle Leveling System” from Wheeler Engineering. It gives you two levels that reference each other to your bore axis and gravity, so you can make sure that your scope is aligned to the exact same shooting plane as your bore. If you have invested a lot into an extremely precision made and accurate rifle, this MSRP $54.99 kit is a cheap insurance policy to make sure that your scope is lined up properly for long range and extreme long range shooting.

Case trimming isn’t as complicated as most people make it out to be. The problem is that simple, beginner trimmers are difficult to use, and they give trimming a bad name. If you reload necked rifle cases or plan to reload necked rifle cases, the Hornady Lock-N-Load Case Prep Center, MSRP $531, street price considerably less, makes trimming your cases a lot easier. The Case Prep Center addresses all of the issues that you find when trying to produce ammo in bulk while using a bench mounted, hand crank trimmer. It also includes everything you really need for case prep all in one motorized package, in addition to the actual trimmer. If you aren’t yet a handloader/reloader, check out our introduction to handloading by Scott Meyer. It explains the basics of handloading/reloading, including the dynamics of why you have to trim your cases. If you load only straight wall pistol cases you don’t have to worry about trimming, but if you load, or plan to load, necked rifle cases, trimming is almost always required at some point.

You may remember from our SHOT Show 2012 coverage that a new copy of the famous World War II “assault rifle” the Stg-44 was supposed to come out this summer. It is out, and it is called the GSG Schmeisser STG-44, available in .22LR. Made in modern day Germany, the gun is imported into the US exclusively by American Tactical Imports (ATI) with an MSRP of $599.95. Like the other German Sports Guns (GSG) replicas we have seen, the similarity to the original is uncanny, and the gun is nice and solid and feels “right.” Even though this rimfire version of the Stg-44 carries a collector premium price tag, this is the one gun that most World War II buffs assume they can never own. Original Stg-44s are prohibitively expensive, and this gun looks great, feels right, and shoots well enough for plinking. What do you get the old fart for Christmas who has everything and loves World War II junk? I’ll give you a hint. It is about the same weight as a big coffee table book, but it would look a lot better on your coffee table when guests come over than any tired old coffee table book I have ever seen. You guessed it. It’s a .22LR version of the infamous Stg-44!

If you have ever tried to film your hunts, it can really give you fits. The cameras never behave, and you can’t ever get the right angle. You can of course try to take along another person, but they generally want to get paid. And even if you have an extra pair of hands, there is no guarantee that the camera guy is going to be at the right angle when the game shows up. The answer is a weapon mounted camera, and our friends at Daniel Defense sent us a new camera called a Contour that is meant to be just that. We have tried Flip cams, hand cams, and even full sized HD tape cams, to the tune of over ten thousand bucks, but nothing has worked as well as these little cameras from Contour. We got two of the Contour ROAM cameras, and we have only begun to figure out all the cool stuff you can do with them. Check out the videos here in the article to see some of our exploits so far. We have shot a few hogs and a couple gators so far with the Contour, and one of the gators was even with a muzzleloader. Contour has a dedicated weapon mount that mounts right to your Picatinny rail, and we have also had great success with rubber bands around the cameras on a regular old Remington 870 slug gun. These are extremely versatile and waterproof cameras that should bring a whole new generation of hunting and shooting videos to Youtube and Facebook. If you are making your list for Santa already this year, make sure you have got a Contour camera on there.

All other things being equal, the AK-47 nearly always wins on price. Therefore most of us end up with at least one AK in our gun accumulation. The problem is, all things are not equal with the AK. They are known for reliability that exceeds ridiculous, but they are also known to be horribly inaccurate. If you follow our exploits here at GunsAmerica, you probably read our recent underwater, in the mud test of a high end AK from Century Arms called the PAP, but most of us out here have the inexpensive, garden variety Romanian AK-47 that generally retails for well under $500. These guns are the poster children for no matter what reliability, but they also are known as “spray and pray” guns, though the parameters of spray and pray would vary depending upon who you ask. We have tried to scope the AK-47 with one of many not ready for primetime scope mounting systems over the years, and they are always a disaster. But times have changed. You aren’t going to get anything like good accuracy out of an AK-4, but with the right mount and the right scope you can get accuracy good enough for just about any self defense situation, and even 3-Gun and other tactical rifle competitions, provided the targets aren’t too far away. For this article we review the highly rated rail/scope mounting system from Texas Weapons Systems, $139.99, and the Hi-Lux CMR scope with a new AK762 reticle, $436, which is special made for the ballistics of the 7.62×39 AK-47 cartridge. This combination delivered acceptable accuracy for an AK-47, and is a platform that is as hardcore as the AK-47 itself.

Election day clearly spelled out that America has become an “us vs. them” society. The “them,” meaning those who are receiving government entitlements, now outnumber the “us” who do not, and they outvoted us. The election had almost nothing to do with guns, and our core voters apparently didn’t show up at the polls. Mitt Romney got two million less votes than McCain did in 2008. We lost the election before it started, because Mitt, as Rush Limbaugh recently pointed out, ran on a platform of hard work, what many of us here in the choir thing is the only thing that will bring America back from the precipice of destruction on which we now stand.

Obama ran as Santa Clause again. This time Santa even had free birth control pills, and that’s like sixty bucks a month. How do you beat that? Thomas Jeffereson once said, “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those willing to work and give to those who would not.” If you saw the polls at 11am in Miami-Dade county, when “those who work” were mostly at work, it is easy to see how our democracy ceased to exist on Tuesday. The election was bought and paid for by Santa Clause, with our own money, but everyone should understand that nobody in those long lines cared about taking away our guns, or pretty much anything besides not losing their government checks. America will not change. The powers that be will continue to demonize American capitalism and sell our future to China. And at some point our empty service based economy will most likely collapse, but that’s a story for another day, and it has little to do with guns for now.

Disney just bought the Star Wars franchise for the exact same reason that Savage has finally re-created the Model 24 combination gun, CONSUMER DEMAND. Even though the generations may change dramatically, a great idea never stops being a great idea, and the idea of a rifle/shotgun combination was always a great idea. The new Savage is called the Model 42 and for now it comes in either .22LR or.22WMR over .410 shotgun. Comparing the engineers at Savage, circa 1939, to George Lucas, isn’t a big stretch surprisingly enough. The American public bought over a million Model 24s between its introduction in ’39 and sunset in the 1980s, and over the last several years the Model 24 has become extremely collectible. Everyone seems to want one, hence, the birth of the Model 42, which has an MSRP of $480, and street price substantially less. The original Model 24 was what many considered the ultimate “utility gun” back in the day. This Model 42 is still kind of the same gun, retaining the utility value, while taking advantage of modern materials and firearm design. We found the gun to be accurate, versatile, and downright attractive for a low priced utility gun. If you have been “watching” all the Model 24s that have come on to GunsAmerica, wishing you had bought them before they became collectible, the Model 42 is every bit as much gun as the Model 24, and it won’t kill you to throw it behind the seat of your truck.

When it comes to handguns, I’ve encountered some folks who have all but declared revolvers extinct. They’re wrong, but their attitude is completely understandable considering the many autopistol introductions there have been in the past few years for defense or concealed carry and all the hype that always surrounds them. But there’s more to the handgun market than protecting yourself, and revolvers aren’t giving up much, if any, ground when it comes to other pastimes such as hunting and plinking.

One of the more recent introductions in the hunting and plinking category is Ruger’s new 9-shot single-action revolver chambered in .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire (22 WMR). It is stainless steel, carries and MSRP of $629, and is called the Single-Nine. The gun follows on last year’s introduction of the similar 10-shot single-action revolver chambered in .22 Long Rifle (22 LR) called the Single-Ten. The .22WMR cartridge has more pressure, so the walls of the cylinder need to be a little thicker, yielding one less round per loading. You may already be asking, “can you get it with interchangeable cylinders?”, and the answer is no, but we’ll get to that.

This is an official heads up from us and SureFire to all the readers of GunsAmerica Magazine & Blog. We had planned to get this review out next Monday but because of the impending election tomorrow, it is prudent that it goes out today. No matter who you are voting for and who is elected, there may be a run on high capacity magazines. There are plenty of 30 round AR-15 magazines around, but if you have been considering one of the new 60 round SureFire mags, they will most likely dry up pretty quick if there is a nationwide run on them. There is no magazine like the SureFire for the AR-15, and it comes in both 60 and 100 round varieties, but the 100 round has been sold out and backordered for months. As of today there are plenty of 60 round mags available, and though they are pricey, $129 each, compared to a 100 round Beta-C mag they are competitively affordable. After the nightmare of Hurricane Sandy, which is still going on in New York and New Jersey, every American should understand that they are not exempt from disaster and having to defend life and property. Sixty rounds of .223/5.56 with no mag change is a heck of a defense. If you can afford one and have been putting it off, now would be a good time to order the 60 round SureFire mag.