Tom McHale

Can you crack open a 5.56 when you accidentally chamber a 300 Blackout? Yes. Yes you can. With a basic understanding of the cartridge and its personality issues, 300 Blackout is the bomb. For those who are careless, 300 Blackout can be a bomb. What else should look out for? In our ongoing coverage of the 300 Blackout, I offer this in-depth look at some of the personality quirks of the platform.

Smith & Wesson’s M&P line keeps getting bigger. Only this time, the M&P itself is getting smaller. The M&P22 Compact is a well balanced rimfire that is looking to put the fun back in the fun gun. It is brand new, and we have a full review.

There aren’t many 300 AAC Blackout specific optics on the market and I can guess why. Imagine trying to design a reticle that can accommodate the incredible variety of ballistic performance of that round. With 300 Blackout ammunition and reloading, there is no “standard” ballistic performance profile. What can you do?

What attracted me to this gun for testing and evaluation is its compact size, light weight and super quick handling. You can think of it as a shotgun carbine. The Beretta 1301 is compact, fast, and agile.

Last time we got into an ammunition geek-fest and talked about the variety of commercial ammo available for the 300 AAC Blackout and the endless tinkering you can do as a reloader for that caliber. Perhaps even more fun than creating endless varieties of ammunition for the 300 AAC Blackout is shooting it with silencers. [...]

Love it or hate it, the 300 AAC Blackout is an interesting and incredibly diverse cartridge. Imagine trying to design a ballistic compensation scope for a cartridge that can use 110 grain projectiles traveling at 2,400 feet per second AND 245 grain projectiles traveling at 950 feet per second. Reloading is just as challenging.

For some reason, virtually any gunny discussion about the 300 AAC Blackout cartridge quickly devolves into a typing wind sprint where the winner itemizes more reasons why the 300 Blackout is not as good as (fill in your favorite cartridge here.) Due to the unique performance characteristics and its wide range of velocity and projectile weight combinations, it gets poked in the eye from both ends of the ballistic spectrum. As with most debates, there are a lot of elements of truth in all of these statements. But I don’t really care. That’s because, for me, whether the 300 Blackout is interesting or not isn’t a binary question. It doesn’t have to be better than (fill in the blank.) I like the fact that it’s a different option with unique capabilities. In fairness, I might be more biased in favor because I’m a reloading enthusiast, and the 300 Blackout is a reloaders dream.