Authors

Very few guns have everything. These days there are so many polymer, striker fired pistols on the market, it is very hard to tell one from another sometimes. But if you look for a gun that truly has everything, you have to look at the FNS from FNH-USA. It is made in America by Americans, has a street price under $650, and one by one, you can count the features that are unique to this gun. It is completely ambidextrous. The magazine release, slide stop and safety lever appear on both sides of the frame. The drop safety itself is a revelation of sorts and should make a lot of people jump up and down screaming “YES, FINALLY.” Few companies have dared put a manual safety on their striker pistols and this is the first in a gun that can compete with the big boys. And with a rail on the front, double useful slide serrations, an external extractor, stock night sights, and downright good looks, there is little you could want in a full sized duty pistol that the FNS doesn’t already have, right out of the box.

AR-15s are everywhere. With a couple mods, we even have them in the civilian market in California. There are all kinds of things I can do with this 50-year old platform, from different barrels, mounts, or stocks I can find with the click of a mouse. I can make it look like a Christmas tree with all the gizmos and gadgets I’ve found. But really, the trick is to pick the things you really need on your AR. For me the most import thing is an optic. I can make do with iron sights fine, but as I get older, an optic makes it much easier to actually see my sight picture and hit my target. My problem is that scopes are just plain pricey these days. If you want a name brand, many of which are battle tested by our military, you’re looking at the $600+ range new, which is almost like buying another rifle. Going into SHOT Show this year, I was curious about the optics that are under $200, and that seem to be reliable for the AR-15 platform.

If you could make a list of all the things wrong with the AK-47 platform, what would it be? First off you probably would say the stock is too short. The trigger is lousy, and you never know if you bought a gun made of old, worn out parts. There are also little annoying things, like getting the dust cover back once you take it off, and it is a pain to shoot an AK at the range because the bolt doesn’t stay open. The AK is also known of course for not being accurate. “It’s a spray and pray gun.” All of these things are true to some degree, and all of them have been fixed in a new Zastava PAP build of the AK-47 currently being imported by Century Arms. It is still an AK-47 of course, but we found this gun to be the absolute best of the AK bunch, and it held up to legendary AK reliability when we threw it in the pond and covered it with muck. The $700-800 street price Zastava PAP from Century is a brand new gun made from brand new parts, and is about as much gun as you are going to get in a true AK-47. In the wake of the floods of Isaac, if you are going to strap one rifle to your back, for who knows what’s next, the Zastava PAP is a good option.

This article came about as an opportunity from Rock Island Auction. They are auctioning over 1000 Colts, including over 150 first generation Colt Single Actions, this coming weekend. We took this as an opportunity to gather a basic overview of collecting Colt Single Actions, with specific examples from the auction included here, to give the project an immediately tangible benefit. It is amazing what some of these guns go for at auction, and even as a spectator, interested in only the antiquity of old Colts, just seeing them come through the auction is a once in a lifetime birdseye opportunity to learn about the individual history of these specific guns. Most of these Colts are from the famous Gateway Collection and contain pictures of the documents proving their provinance right on the RIA website.

Many of these guns have no comparison anywhere in the market, and several will sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, including factory engraved Colts taken from the dead bodies of the Dalton Gang. Next week all of these classic Colts will be on their way again to the next private collection, and some of them will never to be seen again in the collector market. This is a unique opportunity to see into one of the greatest collection of Colt Single Actions, while learning a little about collecting the most classic of all classic firearms. This is by no means a comprehensive instruction, but if you are new to collecting old Colts, it should at least get you on your way, and guard you from getting ripped off.

The quest for the ultimate .22 has found an unexpected home in Minnesota at Magnum Research, Inc., creators of the most popular movie gun of all time, the Desert Eagle. You wouldn’t expect Magnum Research to be the new leader in cutting edge .22LR, .22WMR and at some point even .17HMR firearms. But these days Magnum Research is home to not only their famous handguns, but also a patented graphite barrel technology called Magnum Lite® . What makes these barrels unique is that the graphite fibers are unidirectional, parallel to the bore axis. The result are barrels that are six times more rigid than steel of the same weight and that dissipate heat 43% faster than steel. Magnum Research is taking the custom rimfire market to a whole new level by producing a whole line of these guns in various calibers, and they have carried the technology to full sized centerfire calibers as well.

Blowing the shot can be caused by a lot of things. You may not have zeroed your rifle properly. You may not have been able to get a steady rest in time, or more often than not, you may have figured out the wrong holdover. Even the best shooter, given the pressure of a shot that needs to be shot right now, can blow a big shot, without even having to do quick math and calculate a holdover. Anyone can blow a shot, all factors considered, so any advantage you can pick up from your gear, the better.

We have covered several “rangefinding” scopes in the past. Some require math and some don’t, but by far the most advanced range estimating scope out there is the Burris Eliminator Laserscope. It has a built in rangefinder, and after you set it up for the ballistics of your rifle and cartridge, it gives you a .33 MOA dot for exact holdover. Sounds too good to be true right? At a pricetag of $949 MSRP, this is not an inexpensive toy mind you, but it does work. We got a chance to put the Burris Eliminator through its paces, and it works pretty good actually

Deer season is right around the corner, and for those of us who are fortunate to be able to hunt with a rifle, the Browning X-Bolt should be in the top of the list if you are in the market for a new bolt gun. It is an exquisite example of everything a high quality traditional deer rifle should be, and it performs flawlessly. We thought it would be interesting to test a left-handed model for a change, even though we don’t have a left-handed shooter here. Lefty guns are an important part of the firearms market that are often ignored. You can’t get all guns in a left-handed configuration, so for the 10% of us out there who are lefties, it helps to know when a gun is really good and also comes in left hand. Our Browning X-Bolt test gun is the X-Bolt Hunter type, in .30-06 with a 22″ barrel and low gloss, drop dead gorgeous walnut stock. The MSRP is $919 and street price slightly less. It weighs 6 3/4 lbs. empty, and the left hand model is available in 16 calibers from .223 to .338 Win. Mag.

Carlos Hathcock is probably the most famous sniper of all time. He had 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam, and until recently held the world record for a sniper shot at over 2500 yards, using a Browning M2 .50 cal. machinegun. During his entire career as a sniper, Carlos Hathcock used a U. S. Marines version of a Unertl precision riflescope. This was standard issue on his Winchester Model 70 sniper rifle, and he even used the same scope on the .50 cal. for his record shot. It is an odd scope by today’s standards. There are no internal adjustments to zero these old style Unertls. The scopes adjusts with turrets integral to the rear scope mount, and the tube of the scope floats inside adjustment pins. To buy an original of this USMC scope today would cost you thousands, but Hi-Lux/Leatherwood this past year released an exact replica, called the 8X Malcolm USMC, and the scope really great, but hard to mount. It has an MSRP of $549 and the internet and street price is slightly below that. Hi-Lux sent us one, with the mounting hardware, and we were able to have it mounted for a full range test. Our friends at the American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) agreed to help us and you by making an instruction video on the difficult mounting process, included here, in the style of their monthly magazine and DVD subscription called GunTech that is available to their Gun Club of America gunsmith student members. If you have any interest in mounting this scope, the video will save you or your gunsmith a lot of headaches.

While most of the nation is beginning to dream about hunting whitetails in the fall, in sunny Florida where the leaves don’t turn and whitetail season already started, everyone is talking about GATORS! Dwayne Powell, our resident guide at Kissimee River Hunt & Fish, took us out for a learning expedition this week for the season opener, and even took this eight foot monster on a private tag to show us how it’s done. Alligator hunting in Florida is a lot of fun, but the devil is in the details, and even if you manage to pull a tag in the public lottery, the chances of actually bringing home a gator are slim, unless you know how to prepare. On private land the rules are different, and easier, but you will need to pay a guide to burn a private tag for you. If you have never bagged a gator, one way or the other, there is no game animal that compares to these mighty giant lizards. Get yourself a tag and get out gator hunting!