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Most people who spend more than two decades climbing mountains eventually decide to stop climbing. Tom Taylor tried. It did not take.

The revived S&W 396 Night Guard in .44 Special promises the perfect middle ground between snubnose carry and full-size shootability. It starts strong, shoots well, and then delivers the kind of reliability failure that turns nostalgia into frustration fast.

The Tracer Tactical Burro is not just another rifle scabbard pretending to be tactical. It is a hard-sided, muzzle-up, MOLLE-covered rifle carry system that protects suppressed rifles, thermals, optics, and expensive field gear without turning deployment into a zipper-fumbling circus.

The Taurus RPC brings roller-delayed 9mm softness, full ambi controls, suppressor-ready hardware, and PDW-style swagger to a price point that should make MP5 fans uncomfortable. We ran 300 rounds through it to see what this little blaster is, what it is not, and whether you should grab one before they vanish.

The Stealth Arms Platypus already brings 2011-style performance with Glock magazine practicality, but this custom build takes the platform into dream-gun territory. With Impact Machine Flatty Platy porting, Rising Creek Customs Cerakote, a Vortex Defender-ST Enclosed, and the exact options I wanted, this pistol turned into the flat-shooting, hard-running custom handgun I had been chasing.

Federal’s 6.5 Creedmoor +Peak is not another new cartridge begging you to buy another rifle. It is a high-pressure Peak Alloy load that pushed a 130-grain bullet past 3,100 fps and made the 6.5 PRC look over its shoulder.

The plain SIG P365 still earns its place as a daily carry pistol because it balances concealability, capacity, shootability, and trust better than almost anything in the micro-compact 9mm world.

A Houston police pursuit in 2022 could’ve ended with officers trapped inside a burning patrol car.

The new compact 9mm packs a 4-inch barrel, 15+1 capacity, optics-ready slide, and a $599 MSRP, putting it squarely into the increasingly crowded “do-everything carry gun” category.