Feature Articles

One of the hottest firearms introductions of 2017, announced at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas, was undoubtedly Mossberg’s 590 Shockwave, which was originally chambered in 12 gauge. Right on its heels came Remington with the 870 Tac-14, another wildly popular defense shotgun, and yet another confirmation of the worth of a compact shotgun that can be had without climbing a Mount Everest of bureaucratic red tape.

Today, we finally get to talk about the new XD-S Mod 2. This is a difficult gun for me to review, for a number of reasons. First, I have said about all there is to say about the Gen 1 XD-S. I have carried the 3.3 model since 2013, and I reviewed the 4-inch model.

As defensive weapons, rifles rock. They’re easy to shoot accurately unless you’re into torching off .577 Nitro Express cigar cartridges. With box magazine designs like the those of the AR-whatever families, capacity is great, and reloading is easy. In fact, the only real downside of a rifle as compared to a pistol is maneuverability and portability.

Last month, I was handed the new SIG Sauer Virtus rifle for review, my first test item in the MCX family. Though initially, I was skeptical, the Virtus turned out to be very impressive weapon system. It uses a unique operating system, an entirely new piston driven action developed in-house by SIG Sauer.

Unconstrained by conventional handgun design, the Bond Arms BullPup9 squeezes the longest possible barrel into the shortest possible pistol.  We take a detailed look at this unique bullpup-style pocket pistol.

This calls for a celebration. NightForce may have just unveiled the holy grail of Illuminated Low Power Variable (ILPV) optics with its new 1-8X ATACR. The military and 3-Gun competitors have been searching for the perfect low power illuminated scope for the last 20 years.

In our continuing coverage of SIG Sauer Suppressors, this week we busted out the big bore. The , for that most American of cartridges, the .45 ACP. Most people assume that .45 is the perfect suppressed round since most of its loadings are already subsonic. That briefs well, but so far has not been my [...]

Like many other successful cartridges, the .224 Valkyrie was conjured up in a shooting enthusiast’s mind. A “Wildcat” in concept, this new offering from Federal Premium was designed as a ballistic solution to solve an academic problem: how to take “America’s Rifle” to 1,000 yards and beyond. 

You may ask, Why did it take so long? It has a lot more to do with engineering than marketing.