All Outdoor

There are few things more fun than shooting a suppressed pistol. When I was contacted by my editor and asked to review the new Springfield Armory XD(M) threaded barrel, model I quickly answered the email with a “Hell yes!” Now before I go any further I want to establish that I am not the biggest fan of the XD line of pistols. I have owned a couple of the classic XD pistols over the years and seem to sell them pretty quickly. I wasn’t too hopeful about the Croatian wonder pistol. I was wrong.

I found this image on Reddit and thought to give it a try here. What four items would you choose?

Source: Imgur http://i.imgur.com/9TAFJWk.jpg

While camping in the North Carolina Mountains, an Ohio father fought off a black bear by punching and kicking it in the face while it was attacking his son. Luckily the father’s tactics worked, but they still had to walk five miles to find help. The son is now recovering in a local hospital.

Stories like this are very scary but we can all learn from their experience. So glad the boy made it out alive.

Sometimes in life you have to learn lessons the hard way. For years and years I cleaned all of my hunting rifles, shotguns, rimfire plinking rifles, and survival prepping/varmint ARs with two or even three piece jointed cleaning rods. I bet you have too, and learned just like I did the problems with using these sectioned rods for gun barrel cleaning.

There is a lot of hype in the gun media news and gun advertising about “striker” fired pistols. As a general shooting consumer, you might be led to think this system is something completely new and revolutionary. Many pistol shooters think they have to run out to get the latest and greatest in handgun designs in order to stay on the cutting edge of the state-of-the-art firearm engineering. In fact, striker fired pistols have been around for quite a while.

Fort Worth, TX – Don’t mess with Texas. Or Texas grandmothers.

On Wednesday Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) introduced the’Lawful Purpose and Self Defense Act,’ H.R. 2710, which is probably the biggest piece of pro-gun legislation introduced in the past 30 years. It replaces the National Firearms Act’s “sporting purposes” language with “lawful purpose”, a move that will remove the ATF’s ability to arbitrarily reclassify rifle rounds as “armor piercing” and will ensure that shotguns and large caliber rifles aren’t labeled “explosive devices”.

Folks are talking a lot about this, but few if any are telling us what we can do about it.

Blade Show 2015, the knife industry’s biggest event, is over and there are a few gems that came to light for the first time. It used to be that this is where ALL of the new knives debuted, but that has changed, as SHOT has taken center stage and Spyderco has opted to show off new stuff at IWA. That said, there were a few announcements that caught my eye.  Blade HQ, as always, did a good job covering the show on video.  Go check out their YouTube channel.

When teaching new shooters, it is traditional to start them off with iron sights. That works, but I found a compelling argument for using optics for at least a part of the first range day. Consider how many tasks the learner has to master at once: safe handling, steady hold, trigger control, sight alignment. The last task is complicated if the learner is cross eye dominant or has generally poor eye sight.

This unbelievable 40W laser shotgun is made up of 8 parallel 5W laser beams and manipulated with lenses. Watch as YouTuber styropyro puts it to the test!

Cedar Springs farm has taken in a rare white-faced fawn named Dragon. The fawn was disowned by its mother shortly after birth because it would be very difficult for him to survive in the wild and hide from predators.

We’re huge fans of Fallkniven here at AllOutdoor, but the knives do have one downside: in some rare instances, brand new blades can get very small, micro chips on the edge. This is commonly attributed to the factory edge being too hard, because after you sharpen the knife a few times you don’t see this anymore.

Yeti Coolers have taken the outdoors world by storm, and for good reason: it’s a fantastic product. But as great as Yeti is, the coolers are expensive. Enter Siberian Coolers, a brand new company that’s producing a Yeti clone, but the pitch is that it’s cheaper. From the press release:

Small compact concealed carry pistols are all the vogue these days. It has also been reported that carry permits for concealed carry weapons (CCW) are on the rise in every state that requires such a permit. The ever-changing socio-economic and political landscapes across the country has citizens worried about their personal and family protection more than ever.

**This article is sponsored by Springfield Armory and originally posted on their blog.**

Richmond, VA – Now here’s something neat. A couple guys from Virginia are making 12 volt chargers from 12 gauge shotgun shells. As Jack Easterly of Easterly & Company says in the video at their Kickstarter page, “A twelve gauge shell fits perfectly into a 12 volt receptacle, and we here at Team Twelve Gauge don’t believe it was just a coincidence. We feel like it was meant to be.”

I like toys. I always have – especially when they coincide with another passion of mine: guns. I also like making things. This video wraps all of those into one nifty little project guaranteed to singe your fingertips with hot glue while you make a nifty paper popper that flings paper projos.

There’s not much else to say, really… the video below says it all. And interestingly, it does so without words. Enjoy!

Houston, TX – An employee of a store called Ruiz Cash & Carry Co is shaken after he was reportedly forced to kill an would-be thief in order to defend his own life.

The good guy, who was licensed to carry a concealed handgun and was doing so, was approached from behind as he tried to enter the store. The bad guy put a gun to his head and demanded a bag which the employee was carrying under his arm.

Perhaps he thought the bag was full of money, but police later described it as a toiletry bag containing the employee’s medicine.

At any rate, the victim was able to draw his own gun, turn, and fire on the crook. He fired a total of four rounds, with two or three rounds hitting his chest.

A vehicle containing a possible second suspect then drove away from the scene.

The store employee was not injured, thanks to his gun and his ability to use it. The thief was transported to the hospital, but died.

Thank goodness for good guys with guns.

In a world growing ever more hostile towards liberty and the tools thereof, United Parcel Service (UPS) has taken a rare, though small, step away from the ridiculous, by reversing a decision regarding shipping of firearm sound suppressors, a.k.a. silencers.