The Truth About Guns

Like most things made in Germany, the Merkel RX Helix is an engineering marvel. The Merkel is the newest straight pull bolt action rifle on the market. What sets it apart from the crowd is the fact that the action uses cams to reduce the length of travel.  As an example, for a .300 Win Mag you only need to pull the hangle back 2.5 inches to get the bolt to move 4.5 inches.   I was really impressed how smooth and effortless it was to chamber and extract a round from the rifle. This is undoubtedly the fastest bolt action rifle I have ever handled, and second place finisher is not really close . . .

Another great feature of the Merkel is that you change barrels, calibers etc. without tools i

Featuring OSS Silencer’s new cans, the MR556SD and MR762SD will be shipping from the factory suprpessed and ready to go. Except you can’t buy one, because they’re LEO/MIL only. I suppose you could buy the relevant “civilian” versions of the guns and the cans and make one yourself… but why?

“A federal judge Tuesday granted the city the six months Mayor Rahm Emanuel said it needs to figure out where to allow gun shops in Chicago,” suntimes.com reports. “U.S. District Court Judge Edmond Chang said his decision balances the needs of the city to craft regulations with the public’s Second Amendment rights.” ‘Cause it’s really, really hard to figure out how to regulate private business selling legal products to legal buyers, legally. “After Tuesday’s brief hearing, [City attorney Andrew] Worseck told reporters he’s confident six months will be sufficient for the city to come up with rules regulating the sale of guns within Chicago.” What was that about a r

You can’t just select winners of something like TTAG’s first Readers Choice Awards and not, you know, give the winners something to commemorate the occasion. As we told you earlier, Springfield took the title of best new handgun for 2013 with their diminutive, concealable XDs-9 and I had the honor of presenting Chad Dyer, their marketing honcho with a little something for his office wall . . .

While I was there, I had a chance to fondle the new XDs-9 4.0, the winner’s newer, slightly bigger brother.

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The Calguns Foundation today won a handgun carry lawsuit against the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Lee Baca, indicating that the LASD must “consider the applications of all persons seeking a CCW permit in the first instance without requiring any applicant to first seek a CCW permit with his/her local police chief or city.” As indicated in that statement, the standard practice of the LASD was to require applicants to first obtain a carry permit from their local jurisdiction before the LASD would even consider their application. The plaintiffs claimed that this resulted in an effective ban on handgun carry permits in Los Angeles County. Unfortunately . . .

this decision doesn’t just mean it’s open season on permits, only that it forces LASD to begin accepting and processing applications. The requirements for the carry permit are still subjective, requiring that the applicant show “good cause for the issuance of the license” and be of good mo

Grief is a process: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. The Chicago Tribune, for example, is slowly coming to terms with the fact that Illinois residents will soon be able to exercise their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. They are at the beginning of their journey, moving out of denial. Permit to carry gun no license to shoot, the headline proclaims. “This spring, law-abiding residents of Illinois will be able to walk the streets with a loaded gun,” the lead announces with bated breath. “But those who decide to carry concealed weapons wi

If you’re like me, you can never remember how many rounds you have left in your magazines. I know that I should know, but I don’t. For those similarly afflicted, Radetec has started shipping a round counting grip system that will check your ammo levels every time you fire a shot and let you know how many trigger pulls are left until the gun runs dry. There are three versions: one with a single light that lets you know when there are three rounds left, a two digit display (above) that shows the total round count, and an AR-15 version for standard magazines. Prices are $160, $170 and $195 respectively. They’ve given us one to try so we’ll let you know how it works… as soon as I get some free time.

The H&K competition shooting team has been using MR556 rifles all year long, but more of a hodge-podge configuration using aftermarket supplies than anything “factory fresh.” Now H&K is releasing a competition version of their MR556A1 rifle with all the bells and whistles you want… for $2,947. It’s right up there with FN’s SCAR rifle in terms of price, for comparison’s sake. There are a couple minor changes which make it “new,” mainly the muzzle brake from OSS, the keymod forend and the Magpul stock. And my pet peeve about “new” guns continues.

The P320 has been kept under wraps for a long time, but I finally got my hands on SIG/Sauer’s new striker-fired pistol today. We’ll never know for sure until we get to shoot one, but I’m thinking SIG/Sauer has a winner on their hands here. Why? . . .

It keeps the three-caliber modularity and excellent grip ergonomics of the P250, but it replaces the unloved DAO fire control system with a modern striker-fired action.

Here’s the rear view. It looks just like a P250, but where’s the hammer? Gone. The striker mechanism has a smooth (yes, smooth) and short trigger pull, with a very short and very tactile reset point. For most shooters this will translate into quicker

AAC has been making .300 BLK rifles for quite a while now, but apparently the demand for an AAC branded 5.56 rifle is so great that they’ve gone into full production on those as well. The rifles will be available n the same configuration as the existing .300 BLK guns, but with a different barrel. Also “new” this year . . .

Originally developed for the military, this 5.56 silencer is designed to be mass produced and dirt cheap while still having the durability and effectiveness that we’ve seen in AAC’s other cans. The silencer will

We found it. Can somebody tell the New York Times?

Walther is getting closer to releasing the 5-inch barrelled version of the PPQ M2. I’ve been holding out on buying a PPQ to get this model. There’s something about a 7.2 inch sight radius that makes me happy, happy, happy. But what really made me happy was to find out that Walther is also releasing a .22LR that has the exact same dimensions and almost the same weight (22.4 oz. empty vs. 26.5 oz. for the 9mm version). The .22LR (top, above) even features a threaded barrel. Take my money, Please!

Ravin Perry (not pictured) is a great guy, and an amazing shooter. His teammates ain’t no slouches either. So when Ravin started hinting that Bushmaster was coming out with a custom built 3-gun rifle, I knew something good was coming. And I wasn’t disappointed. New for 2014, Bushmaster has released their 3-Gun Enhanced Rifle, and it might literally be the perfect 3-gun rifle.

The gun comes with a 16″ barrel, a Rolling Thunder muzzle brake, Timney trigger, extended magazine release, nickel boron coated bolt carrier, free floating carbon fiber handguard&#8

Honey, I Shrunk The GLOCK!  It may look like GLOCK left a G19 in the dryer too long, but this little gun is absolutely adorable. If it weren’t for the .380 chambering, I’d want one desperately . . .

The semi-staggered magazine might be called a ‘one and a quarter stack,’ but it still only holds six rounds of diminutive 9×17.  Glock’s factory guy told me that no extended pinkie-rest magazines or baseplates are planned (by GLOCK, anyway) because that would defeat the CCW purpose of Gaston’s Littlest Grandchild.

It’s got an MSRP of $399, but the street price will probably be closer to the law enforcement price of $319. So here’s the question: is the little GLOCKling gunning for the .380 Ruger LCP, or is it the engineering proof of concept for a future G44 in

The concept is solid and well established on Ruger 10/22 magazines: couple a whole bunch of them together at the floorplate and rotate the contraption when the mag runs dry. But FAB Defense took things a step further, gluing five 10-round magazines to a central spoke to create a New York-legal 50-round arrangement. Well, as near as we can tell NY legal. I suppose you could do this with 30-round magazines as well, creating a 150-round hub and spoke contraption that would put Surefire’s MAG-100′s to shame. But that might be a little…less than ergonomic. Either way, God bless America and the ingenious bastards who live here.

I’ll admit it: I’m a die-hard Blaser fan boy, and a fan of straight pull bolt action rifles in general. I own the Blaser LRS-2 police sniper rifle, which is one of the most accurate rifles I’ve ever owned. But you don’t see high-end rifles like this sitting around on the shelf of most LGSs. So I was pleased to see that Blaser was making an appearance at range day with the R8 hunting rifle . . .

This year, Blaser is introducing a new stock design with a Prince of Wales grip, for superior pointability, Rigby style cheek piece for a proper cheek weld, inlayed sling swivels and a custom pistol grip cap. Of course, it comes with all the features found in all R8 rifles, such as the manual cocking bolt, interchangeable caliber system, trigger magazine housing combination and feathery 1.

“Everybody in South Africa has a gun,” actress Charlize Theron told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer back in the day. ”And [when] those things are handy; terrible things happen. You shouldn’t have those things around because when people get irrational and emotional and drunk, terrible things can happen.” When Ms. Theron was 17 her mother shot and killed her father – who had just fired a shotgun blast through Charlize’s bedroom door. “I know that if my daughter was in the same situation, I would do the same thing,” Charlize said. Only she can’t now because A) she only has a son, and B) she’s livi

Needless to say, we’re all a bit miffed that

Remington would hold a coming out party for their new R51 handgun and not invite us. But despite the setbacks, I’ve now put my hands on their R51 carry gun. And while there are some things I’m really liking, there are some things I’m not.

The gun uses an aluminum frame, which I’m really digging. Ruger et al are using polymer frames for their mouseguns, but I prefer the feel of actual metal. I get the feeling that the operating mechanism of the gun also requires a stronger frame to handle the recoil. The gun also looks great and feels really good in the hand, which gets high marks in my book.

The wheels start to come off the bus when you pull the trigger. The gun has a very long and heavy trigger, but the break is actually pretty crisp. The issue is that there’s no real tactile reset — no click to tell you when the trigger is ready to fire again. S&W had the same issue with thei

It’s a brave new world out there. Things are changing, and new manufacturing process are turning things that we would normally scoff at into reality. One of those new products is polymer cased ammunition, replacing the expensive brass cases with cheap plastic and saving not only a ton of weight but also rare(ish) metals. PCP Ammunition is the first to market with a prototype polymer ammunition, running at the moment in .308 Winchester only. We were handed a box to test out, and so I headed to the range with chronograph in tow to find out if the ammo is any good.

Here’s a quick reminder of what’s going on: we run 20 rounds of each brand through a chronograph and look at the IQR or InterQuartile Range to get an idea of how tight the group is going to be downrange. There are plenty of other factors in accuracy, but velocity is the only one that’s “clean” enough to calculate and compare (as