Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2020 i Gun Digest

Passion fuels division. And gun guys … well, gun owners are a very passionate lot. Glock guys nag on the “anti-Glockers,” lead bullet die-hards shun the copper trends, and the list goes on. And, if I were a wagering man, I’d bet that you’ve occupied a chair at more than one bonfire where good friends got hotter than the flames as they argued about which cartridge is “better” for this task or that. While I disapprove of quarreling among ourselves, I do understand the premise of taking an unwavering stand on something and defending it to the grave. Hell, I’ve started more than a few passion-fueled, gun-related conversations myself! Outside the eternal struggle to label the .30-06 as either the absolute best or absolute worst cartridge of all time, ARs…

Everything in precision rifles is changing so quickly that it’s often hard to keep up. I frequently tell my students that precision rifles from the turn of the 20th century to just after 9/11 moved at a snail’s pace. Lumbering in from the cold, carrying a varmint-style hunting rifle, tactical bolt-action was happy to do the same thing it did the year before, with little reason to adjust. After 9/11, money started to flow around the military use of sniping and, not far behind that, competitions ramped up tenfold. If we follow the Marine Corps from sniping in Vietnam to today, we have a comprehensive record of changes. We can follow the M40 from the first generation to the current M40A6. Luckily for us, when it comes to upgrading its…

01 The Gun Make: Rock River Arms Model: RRAge AR-15 in 5.56 NATO MSRP: $760 Time: N/A Notes: N/A When ARs first entered the consumer market, ground-level guns were quickly replaced by the manufacturers with, “Let’s see what unique features we can slap on this gun to make our black gun different from the rest.” With that came a substantial jump in pricing, and that movement essentially created a forest of niche-based ARs with price tags that alienated many potential new-to-platform shooters. Today, “budget-friendly” is a market phrase that’s re-infiltrated the lineups from most manufacturers. Finding a sub-$500 AR is very possible: There are some diamonds in the rough, but a cheap car isn’t really “cheap” if you have to replace the transmission within a few thousand miles. Get…

I have a safe full of rifles. I probably have too many rifles. No, wait! My wife sometimes reads my stuff, so let me rephrase: I have all the rifles I need and some for hunting buddies. From .22 LR to .470 NE, I’ve got a rifle for just about any occasion. They all have a sling, mounts and optics (well, most of them) and, after a while, they start to take up a considerable amount of room. Not that I’m getting rid of any of them ... . While I was at the Dallas Safari Club convention, I wandered past the Blaser booth and paused to consider the benefits of owning a rifle capable of covering all—or at least nearly all—the bases. After chatting with the Blaser folks, I…

It’s not a stretch to say that the AR-15 is the most popular centerfire rifle in America right now. However, this popularity has come with a variety of misconceptions and falsehoods. One of the things most commonly misunderstood—and often overhyped—is the accuracy potential inherent to the design. AR ACCURACY: A RECENT DEVELOPMENT Today’s AR wears many hats—from target shooter to home defender. The view of the rifle changed dramatically after the sunset of the assault weapons ban (AWB) in the early 2000s. Until then, the market surrounding the rifle was heavily based on military and law enforcement products, and there wasn’t much of an understanding of the qualities of the rifle as a result. It was just one design among many, and it wasn’t considered as being close to the…

HISTORICAL NOTES The .450 Bushmaster’s parent cartridge is the .45 Professional, a rifle/ cartridge conversion developed by Tim LeGendre of LeMag Firearms LLC and licensed to Bushmaster Firearms International for production and distribution. LeGendre still retains ownership. The .450 Bushmaster is designed to be used in the standard M-16/AR-15 platform using five-round magazines. Bushmaster asked Hornady to produce the .45 Professional ammunition for this project, and it agreed. Hornady wanted the .45 Professional shortened to accommodate its 250-grain, pointed SST bullet. Hornady asked Bushmaster for the change (from 1.771 inches to the now-standard 1.7 inches), and Bushmaster asked LeGendre to sign off on that change, which he did. Bushmaster eventually wanted a name change, and LeGendre also agreed to that. Thus, the popular .450 Bushmaster. Based on a concept by…

01 Real Avid Master Armorer’s Mat Whether for workbench or kitchen table gunsmithing, this is a must! Combining a massive protective work mat with ample organizational storage, Real Avid’s Master Armorer’s Mat keeps your AR projects in order. Oil resistant and non-slip, this 48x20-inch mat protects surfaces from permanent stains while keeping all your gun’s parts in one place. Tools and components are kept in order at the side and within reach through a multi-bin system, so you’ll never lose a pin or ring. The mat features an exploded drawing of an AR-15, with each and every part numbered and labeled for fast reference. MSRP: $44.99 02 Faxon Firearms Bantam Luckily for shooters, Ohio-based Faxon Firearms has leapt from components to complete builds with the feature-rich Bantam. Honestly,…

Have you ever wondered about the legalities surrounding, or the best techniques for shooting, one of those hybrid pistols/AR pistols that look like a rifle with its buttstock and barrel chopped off? If so, maybe this will help. THE CONFUSION Ruger’s new PC Charger is, by definition, a pistol. The “PC” stands for “pistol caliber,” which is a bit confusing: There’s really no such thing as “pistol caliber.” “Caliber” refers to the diameter of a bullet; what PC should stand for is “pistol cartridge.” But then, why would a pistol be referenced as being “pistol caliber” or “pistol cartridge?” Well, this comes from rifles that fire pistol cartridges, which are often referred tto as “pistol-caliber carbines.” Ruger offers the PC Carbine, a rifle that fires cartridges commonly chambered in pistols.…

The Mosin-Nagant is a Russian-made, five-shot, bolt-action rifle developed in the late 1880s. It was used by the Russian and Soviet Union armed forces until 1991, and more than 37 million have been made. At times, decommissioned military versions were sold in the United States for as little as $50 apiece. Although ruggedly constructed and suitable for big-game hunting, these rifles are utilitarian at best. To the shock of almost everyone, in 2010, Timney Triggers began offering a drop-in trigger for the Mosin-Nagant. Why would the world’s leading trigger manufacturer offer a trigger costing as much—or more than—the rifle it was designed for? It’s simple: because that’s what its customers asked for. THE TIMNEY COMMITMENT A lot of manufacturers in the firearms industry claim to be customer-responsive, but none has…

The coronavirus event of 2020 has had many different effects on our lives. We, in the shooting world, have found that ammo shelves are (once again) empty. Whereas at the beginning of the year an excess of ammunition existed—to the point at which ammunition companies were laying off employees and cutting production—the sheer scope of the global pandemic caused the public to grab nearly anything and everything they could get their hands on. Just when I’d thought that reloading had become a specialty pastime that was relegated to the precision shooters and to the dangerous-game hunters looking to make their ammunition more affordable, this “little episode” comes along, putting shooters into a panic and turning eyes toward reloading again in order to feed the common guns. While I’m in no…

Have you ever seen a NASCAR driver roll up his sleeves and dive, elbow-deep, under the hood of his machine? Yeah, me neither. Now, I’m confident that every driver has an intricate understanding of what goes on under all those logos while he’s chewing up asphalt at 200 mph, but when parts need swapping and tweaks need tweaking, there’s a guy on the team for that. The driver drives, and the mechanics wrench. For the most part, gun owners work like this too. The majority of riflemen I know—and I’m referring to people who have multiple gun safes to house all their firearms—do little more to their firearms than pull the bolt to clean the gun. The thought of checking the torque on the action’s screws or pulling the trigger…

The sniper rifle, engineered expressly for long-range shooting, singularly captures the American imagination. It’s little wonder why. Aside from their incredible ballistic feats, the men who wielded these specialized tools exemplified the best traits of oour soldiers. Be it the U.S. Marine Corps’ Carlos Hathcock, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle or any of the other countless long-range warriors, the American sniper proves diligent, courageous, skilled—and, above all, deadly. That last point is especially true. Whereas infantry takes hundreds of thousands of rounds to record a kill, the sniper’s requirements have remained consistently low: an effi cient 1.3 rounds at last count. That’s a testament to their training and tools. Neither one is a recent occurrence. THE DEERSLAYER GOES TO WAR Perhaps no single muzzleloader stirs the American imagination more than the…

When I was learning guns and gunsmithing, Smith & Wesson was the handgun provider to law enforcement. Oh, it offered long guns from time to time, but not ones it actually made. The 21st century has brought us a lot of changes. S&W now makes revolvers, pistols and rifles. No shotguns, but this company would be crazy to try that ... and S&W is not crazy. Also, the .300 Blackout and its predecessor, the .300 Whisper, were once thought of as solely super-quiet, used-with-suppressors thumpers. Hurling 200-plus-grain bullets just under the speed of sound, they were essentially .45 ACP+P carbines that could be made the epitome of quiet. Well, that also changed. You see, the .300 BLK has just the right-sized case to get a 110- to 125-grain hunting-type bullet…