Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i Firearms News

The Aimpoint ACRO was the first enclosed pistol sight meant to ride on the slide of a pistol, and to many people it has become the standard in pistol optics. The story of the development and evolution of the ACRO is very interesting. The story of the Aimpoint ACRO starts with the Aimpoint Micro. Brügger & Thomet bought the rights for the Steyr MP9, and renamed/relaunched it as the TP9, a small 9mm personal defense weapon (PDW). B&T wanted fellow Swedish company Aimpoint to design an OEM optic for the TP9, something smaller than the Comp series, and the hugely successful Micro was the result. B&T then designed their USW (Universal Service Weapon), which was even smaller than the TP9, basically just a 9mm pistol with a stock—the FLUX Raider…

In 1868, the Italian army instituted trials to find a new rifle and the Swiss firm of Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft (SIG) submitted a sample of the Swiss army’s new rifle, the Vetterli-designed Repetier-Gewehr M.1869. Friedreich Vetterli (1822–1882) was a Swiss gunsmith who designed a weapon that combined a bolt action receiver with a twelve round tubular magazine. While the Italians found Vetterli suitable to their needs, they disliked the rifle’s tubular magazine and its unimpressive rimfire cartridge and so SIG set about rectifying them. The magazine was discarded and a centerfire cartridge was developed. After further trials the modified Vetterli was adopted in 1870 as the Fucile di Fanteria Modello 1870.1 The two-piece, non-rotating bolt had dual locking lugs on the bolt handle collar which locked into mortises in the receiver.…

Straight-wall rifle cartridges for hunting are hot. AR-15s are hot. So, why not combine the two? Well, for a long time that meant really hard thumpers like the 450 Bushmaster, and that’s no fun (if you don’t like recoil). The 350 Legend makes the experience more fun. LWRCI now offers their DI (direct impingement) series with their IC (Individual Carbine) upper, and the full package is handy, reliable, accurate, and meets the regs for the DNR in locales where straight-wall cartridges are needed to hunt more restricted game, like deer. The upper is their IC Monoforge upper, which is a forged upper receiver, but one with a forward extension on it, one that allows LWRCI to bolt on their free-float handguard. The handguard fits over the extension of the upper…

An illegal alien, having been deported multiple times for violating U.S. immigration law, decided once again that the rules did not apply to him when he made a U-turn and came right back, this time in possession of a loaded Taurus PT-58 handgun. Federal prosecutors charged Jose Paz Medina-Cantu with illegal re-entry and unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition after his arrest in 2022. Border Patrol agents discovered Medina-Cantu during an ambulance inspection at a South Texas checkpoint. 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(5)(A) prohibits illegal aliens from owning or possessing firearms. In district court, Medina-Cantu requested charges be dismissed on grounds that Section §922(g)(5) violates the Second Amendment, a protection he claims entitlement to, unlike the laws that he did not believe applied to him in the first place. Isn’t it…

I received my first centerfire rifle when I was 11 years old. It was an old sporterized Lithgow No. 1 Mk III* Lee Enfield in .303 British. I loved that old $47 rifle dearly. Growing up in rural Maine, I hunted deer with it in the fall and learned to handload for it when I was 12, and so began a love affair with this cartridge which remains to this day. Originally adopted by the British Crown in 1888, it began its service life as a black powder round. Like most military cartridges, the .303 British went through an evolutionary process. The propellant was switched from black powder to smokeless Cordite in the Mark II loading. The original 215-grain round nose FMJ also quickly evolved through various designs. The Mk…

So, How Did We Get Here? It was the mid- to late-1970s, and I jumped headfirst into the gun enthusiast pool. Besides a few guns I had received from my maternal grandfather, by 1978/79 I got some “fun guns” in the form of a Colt SP1 AR-15 and an Iver Johnson Paratrooper M1 Carbine. I loved any firearm that was a semi-auto version of an assault rifle or submachine gun. And of course, I loved machine guns, but those were out of reach for a kid just shy of his teen years. It was in 1979 that I got my hands on a then-brand-new book entitled The Complete Machine-Gun: 1885 to the Present by Ian V. Hogg. A fantastic hard-backed book about my favorite firearms, and that is when I…

The last years of World War II saw the Italian firearms industry (or what was left of it, destroyed by Allied bombings and under the direct control of German occupation forces) scramble to find solutions that would ensure a steady supply of armaments to the troops despite the desperate situation in terms of available finances, materials, and technology. One of the more pressing points, by far, was to find a replacement, or at least an effective complement, to the MAB Model 38A, 38/42 and 38/44 submachine guns in service at the time. Designed by engineer Tullio Marengoni, the Moschetto Automatico Beretta (“Beretta machine-carbine”) was by all intents and purposes probably the best sub-machine gun of its generation, but it was also a complicated and expensive firearm to manufacture with lots…

The Gemtech GM-9 was made to be light. Constructed mostly of aluminum, it uses steel in the threads, booster, and spring. From the outside it looks like any other 9mm suppressor, but it can be used with .300 Blackout in subsonic loads. It is not full-auto rated. Not that many of us have that option, and not going full-auto-rated is a small price for the light weight. On the back end is the booster assembly. To remove the booster as a unit from the GM-9, grab (or use a strap wrench) the section with the round-ended grooves machined into the outer wall of the assembly. If you want to take the booster apart (say, to put in a fixed spaced for use on a PCC) then you need to unscrew…

Let me run down the specifics of this new model, and Smith & Wesson’s entirely new Performance Center Carry Comp® line. Then, I want to take some time going over the history of “carry comps,” which date back at least to the 1980s (and there’s an interesting backstory to that “®” in the Carry Comp name), and explain how this pistol, neat as it is, despite the name, probably, technically, doesn’t even qualify as a carry comp. Smith & Wesson has just introduced their Carry Comp line of pistols, which currently includes three models: a full-size metal-framed M&P, a compact M&P, and a Shield Plus model, which is what I got in for testing. These pistols are put out by Smith & Wesson’s Performance Center, which produces “factory custom” pistols…