Feature Articles

I have come to realize that some products are worth figuring out. That was the case on my newest trunk gun project, adding an Adaptive Tactical Sidewinder Venom kit to one of my Mossberg 500 shotguns. The kit did not go on easy, which I’ll explain, and I even had to send my gun into the company. But it turned out that the issue was my misunderstanding of the directions, and a miscue of information on the phone. If you have considered buying a KSG, or some other high cap shotgun, yet you have an otherwise unused Mossberg 500 in the safe, I would seriously consider this kit, which starts at $199 and goes to fully decked out at $399. My review is of the base model with a standard forend, but as you’ll see on the company website, there is now a version with an optics rail forend, as well as some current camo pattern options. The Adaptive Tactical Venom Sidewinder is a detachable magazine kit for the Mossberg 500/Maverick 88 shotguns, with the 6 round mag tube. And after some unnecessary trepidation on my part, it works marvelously.

The word shotgun covers a lot of ground. You can pay six-figures for an engraved Italian masterpiece, or you can buy an old single shot break-action in decent working order for less than the cost of a date night (with dinner and a movie). We’ll be looking at the most practical and reliable shotguns–and there are unlimited options under the $300 mark.

What would you do if survival arrived on your doorstep? Would you become part of the rescue effort? Or would you just hunker down and wait to see if the next wave is coming to wipe out the people who did rush in to rescue the survivors of…whatever? I recently got a sample of a really cool product from our friends at BriteStrike, and their multi-colored APALS personal light system made me think about the subject of triage. Back in August I wrote an extremely substantive article on “Survival Medicine,” in which I copied the title of a book you absolutely have to get. My approach is meant to be a compliment to the book, because I go through where you can actually buy stuff. Good intentions and knowledge are great, but you need the tools to do the job. And like everything for this column, I try to find useful stuff on the cheap. These APALS lights are not cheap, $50 for 10 of them (retailers discount them some), but even if you can only afford the much less expensive alternatives, this is a good chance to talk about triaging the wounded. It is hard to admit to yourself that someday you may have to label someone as “Expectant,” because that means expected to die, but that is the reality we all face.

Let’s assume you have some rimfire rounds on hand–and I know some of you do–what should you do with them? For those of you with an M9, I’d suggest this conversion kit. If you have the ammo, it makes training with the Beretta practical and economical.

Since the centennial of the 1911, the market has been flooded with new twists on the classic Browning design. But not all 1911s are created equal. But there are some that depart from the old traditions and still manage to feel completely purposeful in their design. The Springfield Armory TRP is one of those guns, and it can hold its own against a lot of custom single actions. Looking for a 1911 to carry everyday? Here it is.

Can You Shoot 1,000 Yards with a .308 AR-15 style rifle? Well, can you? Conventional wisdom says no. After all, AR’s are semi-automatic designs, with hot burning gas of doom smothering all the important parts like gravy over Cracker Barrel’s Chicken Fried Chicken. Heck, the upper and lower receivers are stuck together with simple push pins. AR-type rifles can’t be all that accurate, can they?

We are all living in a potential radiation hotzone of the future. Radiation is silent, invisible, has no smell, and there is a good chance that we all will have to deal with radiation in our lifetimes. It could be, as NWO kingpin George Soros says, an all out nuclear war with China and Russia. It could just be that a few nukes pop a couple hundred miles in the air, using our nationwide electrical grid as a giant antenna to wipe out our power stations (an EMP). That would lead to a meltdown of our nuke plants plants all over the country, which need a power grid to cool themselves. If you think you are “prepping,” but you aren’t prepared to measure both high and low levels of radiation (two distinct issues), it might be time to take a look at your options.

Some 9mm ARs feel a bit half baked, like the gun can’t decide if it wants to be a carbine or an AR pistol. Others cobble together parts to make the mags fit. Not this one. Stag’s new 9T is a full on rifle. There’s nothing about this gun that’s a compromise, and it may change the way you think about the pistol caliber concept.

Shhh! At the request of Springfield Armory, we’re going to keep quiet for a little while. I picked up a package yesterday from the folks in Geneseo, and in the box were too shiny new pistols. I mean really new, like not even on the shelves yet. And they’ve made some really big changes.