Innehållsförteckning för July 2016 från Gun Digest

Many manufacturers of AR-style rifles for the commercial market say their product is built to military specifications, or Mil-Spec. But if they are intended for the commercial market, they are not truly Mil-Spec. They can’t be because Mil-Spec ARs are by definition select-fire guns that fire in either the semiautomatic or automatic mode. Some select fire models have a mechanism to limit the number of rounds fired with one pull of the trigger, and others are limited by only the number of rounds left in the magazine. Nevertheless, a commercial AR must be semi-automatic only. But there is more to Mil-Spec than the fire control system, and even though many manufacturers recognize this fact and promote their guns as Mil-Spec, they may not be. For example, the Mil-Spec sets forth…

The AR-15/M16 has been around since the mid-1960s, with various improvements added to make it more reliable. But most people would be hard pressed to find an AR with more design changes than those made by Patriot Ordnance Factory (POF). Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the company’s first entry that found widespread acceptance in the AR market was a gas-piston design. For many years, POF’s ARs were all piston guns, but recently it began producing a direct gas impingement (DGI) AR, the Renegade, which has now been followed by the Renegade +. At first glance, it looks like an AR, a sleek and handsome one. But closer examination reveals a number of design changes, most carryovers from the company’s traditional piston guns. Features At the front, the 16.5-inch barrel ends with…

Gun makers are always changing their product lines to make improvements and, sometimes, to offer something cool that will generate new interest. New colors and new options make the product appeal to a wider range of buyers. Some changes are aesthetic, some are practical, but any excuse for a new gun is a good excuse! One option becoming more popular in recent years is ported barrels to reduce felt recoil and muzzle rise, and they are offered on some models by several manufacturers, including Smith and Wesson, Springfield Armory, Glock and Taurus. Ports are practical because they take the bite out of recoil, but they have a coolness factor as well. They look exotic, and that is part of their appeal. There’s nothing wrong with that. Ports are not new.…

SIG Sauer recently introduced its own line of premium ammunition, named Elite Performance. The line includes FMJ and JHP bullets for most common handgun calibers, and a Match load for 300 BLK (300 AAC Blackout) rifles. The hollow point handgun bullets are named V-Crown, and are offered in most common calibers: .380 Auto,.38 Special, 9mm Luger, .357 SIG,.357 Magnum, .38 Super +P, .40 S&W, 10mm Auto, .44 Special, .44 Magnum,.45 Auto and .45 Colt. Some calibers offer several bullet weights: The 9mm Luger has 115-, 124- and 147-grain bullets; the .40 S&W has 165- and 180-grain bullets; and the .45 Auto has 185-, 200- and 230-grain bullets. V-Crown ammunition is described thus: “The ultimate defense round delivers exceptional on-target energy, maximum weight retention, and optimal expansion at all effective distances.”…

Over the past few years, SIG Sauer’s Electro-Optics line has grown tremendously, with the manufacturer gradually expanding into more and more categories and adding to existing lines. The company now offers a wide assortment of products covering many types of optics. One of the manufacturer’s most impressive introductions was last year’s KILO 2000 rangefinder. Now SIG has built on that success by adding two more rangefinders to the KILO line. One of these is the KILO 1250, an advanced 6x20mm monocular that ranges targets quickly and effectively using an incredibly fast digital signal-processing engine. Like the revolutionary KILO 2000, the 1250 features the same LightWave DSP (Digital Signal-Processing) core for rapid scanning and comes with SpectraCoat anti-reflection coatings for excellent light transmission and clarity. It’s also equipped with the same…

I have always been a Beretta fan. It started when I was a teenager growing up in the ‘80s, long before I even got my hands on one. I was hooked on an action-adventure series of novels where the main protagonist carried a Beretta AR-70. Therefore, I liked the Beretta AR-70. I grew up and forgot about those books, but I never forgot about that Beretta. My appreciation for Beretta only grew during my 11 years in the U.S. Marine Corps; my M9 never failed me, and the fit and finish is superior to just about anything else I’ve fired. When given the opportunity to test the ARX 100, I jumped. The ARX 100 is the civilian-legal, semi-automatic brother to the select-fire ARX 160, which is only available to military…

As if your life wasn’t filled with enough choices already, along come a dozen new sights built just for AR-platform rifles. They are as complex or as simple as you want and range in price from a few hundred dollars to around $1,000, or more. They include standard reflex-type sights to scopes and even high-definition night-vision optics. No matter the size of your budget or the type of shooting you prefer, one thing’s for sure: Any of these optic options will make a great addition to your gun safe. So what’s a dedicated shooter to do? Buy two or three, of course, and then buy a new rifle to attach them to. See? It wasn’t such a dilemma, after all, was it? 1 ATN X-SIGHT HD 5-20X Controlling two- or…

There are times when certain cartridge cases are just unavailable, if not simply unaffordable. I ran into just this situation while I was looking for ammunition for a new rifle I’m having built. I’ve had a desire to own and hunt with a .318 Westley Richards since I first began to read the classic African stories of W.D.M. ‘Karamoja’ Bell and John ‘Pondoro’ Taylor (there’s something cool about earning an African nickname, eh?) as they recounted their tales and experiences with the classic cartridges. In all honesty, there’s really nothing revolutionary about the classic .318 Westley Richards; it shoots a.330-inch diameter bullet, with the choices being between 180-, 200-and 250-grains, depending on the manufacturer, the classic load being a 250-grain round nose at 2,400 fps muzzle velocity. The .318 WR…

Our world is bursting with vibrant color, that is, until you walk into your local gun store. Sure, you’ll find the occasional snub nose with pink grips or maybe a gold-plated Desert Eagle, but as gun buyers we’ve become mostly pigeonholed into an uninspired color palette modeled closely after the first hour of The Wizard of Oz. After all, what’s not to love about warm wood grain or that deep, rich gloss of a blued revolver? Maybe you prefer bold stainless steel, or even one of those scary black anodized aluminum semi-auto rifles? Don’t get me wrong, there’s a special place in my heart for basically every gun in the gun store, and I own most of the traditional firearms previously alluded to. However, I’ve always wished I could just…

For some time now, Franklin Armory has been producing quality AR-style rifles, SBRs, pistols and parts, with a special emphasis on crafting legal firearms for citizens of states with restrictive gun laws. These laws, enacted under the guise of improving safety, essentially strip away many of the modern sporting rifle’s most appealing features. While some debate whether gun makers should even build firearms to fit these laws, the California-based Franklin Armory has resolved to make lemonade with lemons. Over the years, the company has become quite adept at working within the confines of restrictive laws while also skirting the edges on its designs. Although it also manufactures full feature firearms for free states, some of its most intriguing products are those that seek to liberate shooters stuck behind enemy lines.…

Many readers have heard of the Skorpion vz.61. A small, easily carried machine pistol with a wire buttstock and chambered in 7.65mm Browning (.32 ACP), the gun has a mystique about it that fascinates many. After development was completed in 1961, the gun was first adopted by the Czechoslovak State Police and then the Army. The original blowback action Skorpion was fed from a detachable box magazine that was located in front of the trigger, and the gun fired from a closed bolt, permitting more accurate single-round fire. After the fall of the iron curtain, production of the Skorpion continued off and on by Ceska Zbrojovka (CZ) until the last unit was produced in 1994. Early on in the life of the Skorpion, it was recognized that a major flaw…

The firearms industry has, at times in its history, been accused of being hidebound, stuck in the past and resistant to innovation, but there’s plenty of evidence that is no longer true. As a case in point, consider the Spanish manufacturer Bergara, which found success over the past 10 years producing aftermarket replacement barrels and OEM barrels for rifle makers. Bergara’s approach was to wed an old technology—button rifling—to state-of-the-art machinery, robotics and exacting processes to mass-produce affordable, custom-quality barrels from the finest Spanish stainless steel. Bergara succeeded, in part, thanks to guidance from the late Ed Shilen, a legendary precision barrel-maker. Building on that success, Bergara’s parent company, BPI Outdoors, launched a line of U.S.-built Bergara custom rifles in 2012, and the guns quickly established a solid reputation for…