Feature Articles

If you are a competitive shooter and have not checked out the SASS, or Cowboy Action, matches you owe it to yourself to do so. Think of it as 3 gun with revolvers, lever actions and double barreled shotguns. I have shot a number of “friendly” cowboy matches and will attest to how much fun can be had while testing your skills. All of the shooters in this sport I have met have been friendly and more than willing to share knowledge and tips to improve your shooting. But you will need a revolver. Here are 5 that will do the trick.

Within the wide wide world of 1911s, Para has a reputation for excellent performance and affordable pricing. These aren’t prissy single-actions, either. Yet Remington has announced that they’re taking the Para pistols in house, and mothballing the Para name. How will this change the Paras we know and love? Read our review of the Black-Ops.

The GLOCK 43 is a reality. A single stack 9mm that proves the rumors to be true. And GunsAmerica has an inside look at the gun. So how does it stack up to the other GLOCKs? Read on to find out more.

Now that the harsh weather is behind us, concealed carry becomes more complex. I’ve got to put away the full-sized pistols and break out the anemic single-stacks. Though I hate sacrificing the extra rounds, I refuse to sacrifce on design. Here are my top five choices for lightweight single-stack 9mms.

If you’ve been following the pistol stabilizing brace drama, hang on to your hats. We’ve got a new chapter. Shockwave has just released their version–The Blade–and it works incredibly well. If you ever thought the old SB15 was a bit clunky, you should check out The Blade.

The MVP Patrol is a 7 ½ pound rifle. As the name implies, it is short, light and handy enough to tote around in a car or pack. The 16 ¼ inch barrel is capped by a standard birdcage flash hider, which means that threading for suppressor attachment is already there. The composite stock is thick and sturdy. The Patrol in .308 is a hard use rifle, not a svelte and trim hunting gun, although there’s no reason it wouldn’t serve as a great field rifle. Read our review….

There are some guns that you just have to shoot to understand. The Coonan is one of them. This is a semiautomatic. How does the hopped up revolver round function in a classic single-action pistol platform? Fantastic. And if you want a hard hitting concealed carry gun, this compact would be a kickass option.

Can you believe it has been over a year since I started this column? If you are a new subscriber, you may have missed some of the seminal early stuff, so I would go into the archives and read some if you have the time. There is more information here than you’d find in years of subscriptions to print mags, and hundreds of hours of surfing survival blogs, which are both mostly full of fluff geared towards advertisers. From the start this column has taken a hard look at actual survival without the benefit of modern society, but we began with the question, why should we do this?

The final design of the 1911 really came about from a series of trials that the US Government put it and other pistols through. These tests let Colt and John Browning see how the pistol held up. There were also requirements that the design had to meet. A lot of the credit for how the 1911 came out can be attributed to the trials and specifications required for the new pistol.