Feature Articles

As many of my regular readers know by now, this column is about actually surviving a complete collapse of our infrastructure. Headlines titled “Bug Out Bags” and “Which Gun is Best for SHTF” get a lot of clicks, but compared to food, water, shelter, and keeping warm in the winter, they are virtually immaterial. Those who survive are going to be those who sat tight and waited for everyone else to kill each other. If you live in the northern climes, it is coming to be that time of year again where you’ll have to consider keeping warm in the winter, without city gas, or an oil or propane delivery. I have covered a simple and cheap woodstove, a military heater that burns home heating oil and gasoline without a pump, and even a cookstove that would also heat your home. If you live where firewood is plentiful and you don’t have worry about people shooting you for taking wood off their land, a woodstove can be a long term solution, but if not, you probably should think about the sun.

The Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife is a British blade with a deep history. The blade came with a manual that included bleed-out times for specific wound points. It is an iconic blade, and a design that is almost absent from our current line-up of fighting designs.

The GLOCK 43 is a gun with a lot of potential. And now that XCaliber Firearms has threaded barrels available for the 43, it has become even more fun to shoot. We’ve got a big can on the little gun, and like what we hear.

Ever wonder exactly what happens when you move from a full-sized 1911 to government or commander sized pistol? Will bullets expand? Will you lose significant velocity? Will there be more recoil from the shorter barrels? We know because we’ve tested it. Read more…

Monday Gun-Day giveaway time is here again, and this time Springfield Armory is giving away an M1A. Looking for a new single-action that offers the best mix of nostalgia and .308 stopping power? This just might be your lucky day.

We got a sneak peak of the Taurus Curve last year, but didn’t get to give it the full attention it deserves. This isn’t a gun that shines on the range. It has to be carried in order to be appreciated. We’ve had The Curve in rotation some this summer, and are here with a follow-up on our initial review.

We here at GunsAmerica have a deep respect for the MP5. Today we’re test driving an MP5K from Zenith Firearms. Before you make assumptions about the quality of the imported H&K clones, you should check out this review. Zenith’s Z-5P is a contender.

Do you carry a man-purse? Or an actual purse? Do you have a gun tucked away in some sort of off-body carry bag? You should read this. We were asked to test the concept, and it didn’t go as well as we thought it would.

How important are survival communications? From a prepping budget perspective, I’ve asked that question a lot. And unfortunately, as with many subjects I’ve covered, there is a ton of misinformation out there about the subject. When you buy a “survival radio,” like the ones with the little solar panel and hand crank, you are buying a multi-band receiver, and you’ll pay more depending on how many bands you want. A basic radio, some even under $20, will be AM/FM, and most of them also have the NOAA weather channel, which is 162.4 mhz. Pay a little more and you may get some of the Ham radio bands, but you will seldom hear any traffic on those bands, because the included whip antenna is not made for those frequencies. Police, fire, airplane, and a hots of other frequencies that would be nice to monitor in a survival situation are not in those radios. Getting all of those frequencies, until now, has been very expensive. This article is about a newer type of radio called “Software Defined Radio,” or SDR-RTL, and it changes everything.