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The .410 gauge single-shot shotgun has a long history of dispatching snakes and other small pests. Over the years, several companies have offered small and light-weight .410 shotguns with names like Snake Charmer and Snake Tamer so there would be no mistake about their intended use. The Heizer PS1 miniaturizes the single-shot .410 shotgun to a pistol that rides as easily in your pocket as it would in your tackle box.

It is easy to get lost in our world of technology and abundance. Every time I turn on the water tap in my home, water comes out. Every time I go to the grocery store, the shelves are full of food. The store clerk accepts either a plastic card from me in exchange for my food, or provide some combination of paper (actually cloth) currency. The lights in my home turn on when I flip the switch, and I can turn on the TV or use my computer to find out what is going on in the world anytime I want. And though I carry a gun every day (living in Miami I would be a fool not to), I don’t expect to ever have to use it to protect my family and belongings. I also have fuel to cook my food and if I get hurt I can go to the hospital and get fixed up right quick. All of this I fully expect to go on indefinitely, and probably to get even easier as time moves endlessly forward. I have been conditioned to believe that I will never have to live life without these “entitlements” (for lack of a better word), and if I question this assumption, I’m a paranoid nut.

We asked our writers to select the best holiday gifts for shooters, based on their extensive experience. There are gifts for less than $25, gifts priced between $25 and $50, and special gifts priced above $50. They range from accessories and apparel to scopes and guns — and even one really big gift!

The finer things in life are sometimes just those things that technology can’t capture. If a gun is a classic, like the 1911, modern updates are great to carry an effective design forward. But there is a magic to the old guns that Cerakote and Picatinny rails can’t match for some. Doug Turnbull has been restoring classic 1911s, cowboy guns and classic shotguns for decades, with the correct bluing, case coloring and even the original roll engravings. If you missed our first article on Turnbull restorations, you really should read it. The problem with the old guns, though, is that there are only so many of them that are good candidates for restoration. And for 1911s, the further we get from the year 1911, the more any 100% original gun will be worth, regardless of condition. That is why Doug decided to bring the 1911 into his family of newly manufactured firearms, a list that includes the Winchester 1886, Colt Peacemaker style revolvers, and we recently reviewed the Turnbull steel version of the AR-15. If you have always wanted a 1911 that looked, felt and worked like a gun new in the box circa pre-1920, the Turnbull 1911 is the most accurate gun you could possibly own. We got to shoot Doug’s version of this modern classic, and sure enough, the safety is even stiff. These guns are available directly from Turnbull Restorations for $1,950.

The Walther P 38, caliber 9mm, was one of the most important handguns of World War II and became among the most influential pistols of the twentieth century. It earned a reputation for accuracy superior to most service pistols, and the P 38’s takedown lever made field maintenance and cleaning simple compared to any other service pistol. The 9mm cartridge does not have the smash of our own .45 ACP cartridge, but the 9mm shoots flat over a distance and penetrates web gear in a superior fashion. The P 38 is reliable, a great shooter and a good recreational handgun. The postwar P 38 and the slightly modified P 1 use an aluminum frame. These handguns are well made with good material, lighter than the steel frame P 38, and reliable. Parts from the original generally interchange with the P 1.

One of the bi-products of the artificial gun shortage we just experienced is that a lot of guns that otherwise wouldn’t have made it to dealer shelves not only made it, but sold out. One of those was a new line of shotguns from an old brand called Webley & Scott. Don’t be fooled. This is a purchased name that is being put on guns that are made by modern manufacturers in Turkey and Italy. The old Webley & Scott, originally from Birmingham, England, is long dead and buried, and with them went their production of some of the finest shotguns and rifles in history. Still, these new guns coming out under the W&S name are very interesting. We haven’t gotten a look at the Italian SxS and O/U guns, but in the home defense realm, they have a new “slingshot action” that is somewhat unique. It isn’t a true pump and it isn’t a true autoloader, but rather something in between. We bought one, just to see if it works, and to see if this type of action could be the next revolution in home defense shotguns. The street price is around $300 for our tested model, and for the most part it worked great. The slingshot action is something that you would have to get used to, but for a new fangled gimmick, at least it mostly works. The only problem is that new shooters might see the Webley & Scott moniker and buy this gun thinking that it is tried and true design from a trusted name. It isn’t, and they aren’t. The original Webley & Scott engineers are most likely wretching in their graves knowing that someone is pawning off Turkish junk under the auspices of their good names, but the guns do work, and they are inexpensive.

Smith & Wesson’s 2012 arrival to the micro-sized 9 mm-pistol market was fashionably late, about a year after just about every pistol company in the gun industry put out a pocketable 9mm. But while most of the competitors pared down their 9mm pocket gun, Smith & Wesson managed to keep most of the features of the full sized M&P, and this proved to be an instant hit with the army of M&P enthusiasts out there. It made perfect sense to retain as much of the M&P design as a micro-sized pistol would permit, but that took more time, and it was a tough judgement call for Smith & Wesson to debut the Shield at SHOT Show 2012 instead of 2011 when so many pocket 9mm pistols were released. A year later, just coming out of SHOT Show 2013, it seems to have paid off for Smith & Wesson. The Shield has been for the most part sold out since its introduction a year ago, and now with some serious range time on the guns, the Shield has shown to be very accurate and reliable. It is one of the few striker pistols on the market with a manual thumb safety, which almost puts the gun in a category by itself.

The American gun owning public is being duped again, just like we were duped the two weeks before the election when we were convinced that Romney was ahead by several percentage points. The media, including our “friends” at Fox, Drudge, and other “conservative” outlets, are attempting to sell us the concept that the “assault weapon ban” legislation can’t pass, and this is a lie. We are told that Bill Clinton sternly warned his party that they will be punished in the mid-terms, and that the NRA is “too powerful” for any real legislation to make it through congress. This is also a lie. Behind our backs, the political machine is crafting public opinion in what have become the majority voting blocks to convince national and state legislators that they are safe for the next election… and they are safe. American gun owners didn’t show up in force for the last election, and we are not feared as a voting block any longer. Don’t be a fool and believe it when they tell us we can’t lose. We are going to get beaten again if we don’t act. And this time it isn’t a slippery slope. This time they are going to outlaw an entire class of guns with no loopholes.

If you are on the GunsAmerica email list, or you are clicking in from the website, you are probably a gun owner of some type (or you are desperately trying to buy your first gun before they ban them), and you may feel that we are “preaching to the choir.” But there is also a 90% chance that YOU HAVE NOT CONTACTED YOUR LEGISLATORS to let them know that you are strongly against any kind of weapon ban, or any increase in our national or state gun laws whatsoever.

Maturing your gun tastes doesn’t necessarily mean that you go more expensive and more advanced. Cool guns date back to the 1700s, and though you may think that the AR-15 is the ultimate in firepower, in 1836 the five shot Colt Patterson was all the rage. The history of guns is the history of America itself, and thanks to several firearm manufacturers in Italy, we can all visit what it meant to fire a gun from the American Revolution through the Wild West just the way they did, with full power combat loads.

F. LLI Pietta is celebrating your 50th Anniversary making mostly percussion guns from the Civil War era. A few years back they started making cartridge guns as well, in the pattern of the 1873 Colt Peacemaker, and they are heavily involved in Cowboy Action Shooting in Italy as well as here in the US. Several of the guns in our article “A Handgun When you Can’t Buy a Handgun” were made by Pietta (including the engraved Pattersons), and in all the years that those guns have been shot, in and out of SASS competition, not one of them has failed. The finishes have never flaked and the engraving is as sharp and crisp as they day they were made.

This year Pietta has introduced a new enameling in their popular Lemat revolver, which they have made since 1985. If you have never seen a Lemat, it is quite a dandy. Nine .36 caliber barrels surround a roughly 16 gauge shotgun barrel, and the entire thing is the size of a hand cannon. Invented in New Orleans in 1856, the Lemat was carried by several famous Civil War generals, and it has been featured in several movies. Watch the videos we have posted here to see how the artists at Pietta are actually making these works of art.

Also appearing in the Pietta catalog this year is one of their ’73 cartridge guns set up on a “Bridgeport Rig.” This is a belt clip system made for gunslingers in the old west that both secured the firearm and held it ready for quick firing from the belt, no holster required. Don’t know if these are legal for SASS so you’ll have to contact the powers that be first if you intend to use them.