Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2025 i Firearms News

Federal Judge Carlton Reeves, a 2010 Obama appointee to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, has begrudgingly ruled in favor of a motion to dismiss charges of illegal machine gun possession in the case of United States of America v. Justin Bryce Brown. It is important to distinguish that Reeves did not rule on the Constitutionality of the post-1986 machine gun ban enacted by the Hughes Amendment, a provision of the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act (FOPA) that updated the Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968. Instead, he recognized that the government’s case did not satisfy the standard set by the landmark 2022 United States Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. “The age-old problem of judging is how…

Perhaps the greatest virtue of the AR-15 today is how many options are available for it. At the same time, the staggering amount of choices can easily bewilder many. Sometimes, all these possibilities can be a bit overwhelming. This is true for something as seemingly mundane as selecting a mount for a red dot sight. When you go to buy one you are suddenly faced with the question, what height mount do you want? Do you want it to co-witness? A lower 1/3rd mount? Maybe you want a higher 1.93- or a 2.25-inch height mount? Or perhaps you’d like to go taller still? It can be a bit confusing. Let’s start with what task a mount for a red dot sight performs. Obviously, it interfaces the optical sight with the…

America has a love affair with the single-action revolver. As the sidearm of cowboys, lawmen, bandits and pioneers, any thoughts of the frontier invariably include the single-action revolver. I did a whole lot of learning about shooting with a single-action revolver. To some, the laborious loading and unloading process forces you to slow down, think about what you’re doing, and focus on good shooting. You can’t just blast off 15+ rounds in a few seconds, you have to apply yourself. Taurus has joined roundup with their new Deputy revolver. The offerings for right now are basic and obvious. You get your choice of any finish as long as it is blued. Blued or blue and color cased-hardened were popular choices back when the single action was the premier sidearm of…

“A federal district court judge held machine guns are protected arms under 2A but this is a trap set by anti-gunners,” Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney, author, host of the Four Boxes Diner YouTube channel, and 2025 Gundies Award winner for “Top Voices of the 2A,” notes in a February 12 video entitled, 2A Machine Gun Trap: Do Not Take the Anti-Gunner’s Bait. He’s referring to a January 29 order out of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi Northern Division by United States District Judge Carlton W. Reeves, a Barack Obama appointee, in the case of United States of America v. Justin Bryce Brown. Long story short, even though making it obvious he disagrees, Judge Reeves ruled that the federal machine gun ban is inconsistent…

There was a time when you could ask any question about suppressors, well almost any, and the answer would be “Doc Dater.” Or “Ask Doc Dater.” Well, the chance to ask has passed, as Philip Dater passed away while we were all hiking the aisles of the SHOT show. He studied engineering, but that apparently wasn’t difficult enough, so he switched to medicine and became an M.D. He then enlisted in the Air Force as a pre-emptive step against his impending draft notice. This led to a two-decade career as a radiologist. So, he was already high-tech before he started working on silencers. Like so many of the early firearms inventors, he started making silencers because he wasn’t happy with what he could get. He used the machine shop in…

Just as we’ve seen with just about every sub- and micro-compact pistol on the market (the SIG 365, Springfield Hellcat, Taurus GX4, the list goes on and on), FN has introduced an upsized version of their 9mm Reflex micro-compact, introduced in 2023. The Reflex XL increases capacity of a flush magazine from 11 to 15 rounds and stretches the barrel from 3.3 to 3.8 inches. As for why this growth phenomenon is happening, I will dive into that after I cover the details of this particular pistol. FN pistols didn’t get a lot of traction in the market, for a while, because of two things. First, sure, they were modern in that they had polymer frames with replaceable backstraps and corrosion resistant coatings and good sights, but they were DA/SA…

Of course, if you are going to shoot a single action, you need a single-action holster. Mernickle makes traditional/authentic holsters, cowboy action and mounted cowboy action as well as a line of movie and video game holsters. The movie ones I got, but the video game ones had to be explained to me. (Hey, I’m a crusty old shooter, live with it.) I went authentic and had Cliff Mernickle send me The Sheriff with belt. This is a hi-ride scabbard or pouch holster, and you can have yours in one of five colors, right or left-handed, lined or unlined, and the belt comes with belt loops for extra cartridges. You have to specify the option, because there is no “standard’ model. I found the cartridge loops choices to be astounding,…

It should come as no surprise that conservatives have been on the edge of their seats waiting for action on the Second Amendment since President Trump was inaugurated on January 20. After all, we have freedom to restore and promises to keep. Being among those conservatives, I have sat in waning patience as gun rights have taken a back seat to executive orders the likes of Withdrawing from The World Health Organization, Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports, and Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture. The President has even promised an order to bring plastic back, ending the tyranny of paper straws. In all fairness, an opening day order, Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship, addressing the First Amendment, may have had me thinking our next liberty in the…

The .338 Lapua Magnum cartridge was developed to fill the gap between traditional 7.62x51mm sniper rifles and heavy .50 Browning Machine Gun anti-materiel rifles (AMR). For those of you unfamiliar with it, the origins of the .338 Lapua Magnum date back to the early 1980s when the US was having to deal with Russian aggression against a neighbor, in this case the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The CIA, which was waging a covert war against the Russian occupiers, saw the need for a new long range sniper cartridge due to the vast distances involved. They concluded that a cartridge with 1,500-yard capable exterior ballistics was desirable. However, it needed to have enough retained energy to still penetrate a Soviet flak jacket at this distance. The key component was the platform…

In April of 1966, a functionary in the U.S. Navy Department in Washington, DC, reached out to a sales representative for Smith & Wesson and floated the idea of designing and producing a 9mm submachine gun (SMG). SEALs, as well as other special units, were using the Swedish Carl Gustav m/45 during the Vietnam War. Troops in the field called this superb 9mm SMG the “Swedish K.” Sweden prided itself on its political neutrality and was none too pleased to be seeing its weapons used in combat in Vietnam. Realizing that the supply of new Swedish K’s and spare parts could dry up overnight, the Navy wanted a domestic replacement. That sales rep called back to the S&W headquarters and planted a seed. There was a formal list of technical…

World War I is known for its stalemated trench warfare and slaughter of a reported 23 million soldiers. Artillery and the machine gun accounted for a large portion of the death and casualties. Though trench raiding took place frequently during World War I, the weight of most machine guns in use during the war precluded their use in such raids. For example, the US M1917 Browning weighed 103 pounds with the water jacket filled, tripod, and ammunition load. The British Vickers Gun was lighter at 51 pounds with water filled jacket, while the Hotchkiss M1914 weighed 52 pounds. The German MG08 topped them all at 152 pounds with water in the jacket. All of those weapons were designed to be emplaced and their field of fire established, but not for…