Innehållsförteckning för May 2020 från Guns & Ammo

HIGH STANDARD INFO Mr. Garry James: In the January issue of Guns & Ammo, you had a request for information regarding the High Standard Victor in your “Gun Room” column. An excellent reference is a book titled “High Standard: A Collector’s Guide to the Hampden & Hartford Target Pistols” (1991), by Tom Dance ($30, amazon.com). The serial numbers, production dates and numbers are listed extensively along with schematics for each model. Many contributions are provided by Bob Shea, a primary hand-builder of the 10X model. I’ve been a High Standard guy for more than 40 years. There are many well-made firearms, but High Standard had no equal! Rory Barros Venice, Florida BALL DROPPED I think it was great that Ed Brown commemorated the memory of Col. Jeff Cooper again in…

AS MUCH AS I ENJOY testing and evaluating premium products, I am fully aware that the reason I get to play with a lot of those things is because I can borrow them from the manufacturer. Shooting, especially rifle shooting, can become prohibitively expensive if a guy isn’t careful. With that thought in mind, this article is written for the younger me, when there wasn’t a lot of discretionary cash available for my favorite pastime. The Omnia line has been out for a while now with the Omnia 4 featuring 1-4X magnification ($270) and Omnia 6, a 1-6X ($356), but the new Omnia 8 1-8X model is here for 2020. Retail for the Omnia 8 1-8X and the mount it comes in is $448. I’d expect to find it in…

BOTH BRANDS SAID they were unaware the other was working on new products for the 5.7x28mm cartridge. It was just happenstance then that the Ruger 57 and Federal’s expansion of its commercial line of 5.7x28 ammunition were introduced at SHOT Show 2020. Both are now trending. The 5.7x28 cartridge was patented in 1989 and the trademarked “Five-seveN” pistol was patented in 1993. Ruger discovered this after working on the idea of a 5.7 pistol and then looked into patents. They had prototypes ready for the expiration of FN’s patent in 2018. In March 2019, I was allowed to fire one of those prototypes. I once owned an FN Five-seveN pistol in FDE (serial number XX0000018) around 2004 and FN’s semiautomatic PS90. Around that time, I came into possessing a 1,000-round…

“Pale Rider” Remington New Model Army .44 Time is money in Hollywood, so it is not uncommon to find many arms that would otherwise be percussion converted to cartridge, making them more reliable and more easily reloaded. As well as being done by studio armorers, this was also a common practice when the guns were first produced. Shown here is a good example of an original Remington New Model Army .44 caliber percussion revolver that was altered to fire centerfire cartridges for the movies. This one was carried by Clint Eastwood as “Preacher” in the popular oater “Pale Rider” (1985), courtesy of Hollywood Props and Guns and The National Firearms Museum.…

DURING A RECENT EXCHANGE OF TEXTS with a friend who is a force-on-force problem solver, Sensei James Williams, I responded to his news about running his first martial arts class in a dojo with “Good luck, James.” His reply was more pointed: “You guys didn’t depend on luck. However, thank you.” Williams teaches ancient wisdom for the modern world. I definitely don’t disagree with him when he made that statement to me about luck. But it made me start to think, Do we become luckier as we become better trained? To some, luck is arbitrary. Rolling the dice, fairly dealt cards, rock-paper-scissors, flipping a quarter, etc. In reality, I believe we can make our luck increase with better training. This is especially true if you happen to carry a gun…

Type: Over/under Gauge: 12, 3-in. chambers Barrel Length: 30 in. Overall Length: 47¾ in. Weight: 8 lbs. Trigger Pull: 3 lbs. (both barrels tested) Length of Pull: 14¾ in. Drop at Heel: 2 1/ 8 in. Drop at Comb: 1½ in. Accessories: Eight drop and cast shims; four balance weights; hex key; Torx key; trigger removal tool; Full (.685 in.), Improved Modified (.695 in.), Modified (.703 in.), Improved Cylinder (.713 in.), Cylinder (.726 in.) choke tubes; carrying case; accessories case MSRP: $4,399 Manufacturer: Benelli Armi SpA, Urbino, Italy Importer: Benelli USA, 301-283-2185, benelliusa.com…

Guns & Ammo is indebted to Maj. Land for his time and contribution to this article. He was a pioneer of modern sniping practice, training and rifle design, starting the USMC Scout-Sniper School at Quantico, Virginia. He also served as secretary of the NRA for 21 years. He has made enormous contributions to military sniping and the shooting sports. He is a patriot in every sense of the word. G&A would also like to thank Lonnie Meyer of Run-N-Iron Gunsmithing (runniron.com), Bertrand, Nebraska, for loaning the rifles used in this article.…

IN 2012, and in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre made the statement, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” His words were met with ridicule by the mainstream press who scoffed at the idea of armed citizens intervening in the stress of an emergency and saving lives. Those critics were silenced, at least temporarily, when a man named Jack Wilson fired a single round into the head of a deranged gunman at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas. It was only a few days after Christmas when on the morning of Sunday, December 29, 2019, a suspicious-looking man walked into the sanctuary where dozens of parishioners…

“The whole piece has a decidedly suspicious look about it. I would place it in the ‘highly questionable’ category.” SPUR-TRIGGER S&W TOP-BREAK Q: Is this Smith & Wesson spur-trigger revolver a .32 or a .38? And what is it worth? It was bought in 1878 and I inherited it from my wife’s brother-in-law who lived in Midland, Texas. I’m unable to see the serial number due to rust on barrel. G.C. Ozark, Arkansas A: Actually, your photos show the gun to be in quite good shape. From what I can see, it appears you have a Smith & Wesson .38 Single Action Second Model revolver. Some 180,255 of these five-shooters were manufactured from 1877 to 1891. The most common finishes were blue and nickel-plate. Barrel lengths were 3¼, 4, 5,…

OFF THE BEATEN PATH in central Georgia, far behind a shop most famous for its coveted, revolving gun and valuable safes, lies a shooter’s field of dreams. Steel targets scattered on a range in variations and sizes to challenge any shooter’s ability. Whether it be for rimfire or heavy hunting magnums, Revolution Targets stand waiting. Revolution Targets by Pendleton are Bruce Pendleton’s solution for shooters who despise trips down range to reset. Pendleton, the man behind the innovative Pendleton safes (pendletonsafes.com), is also the man behind Revolution Targets (revolutiontargets.com). His intention was to lessen the usual time wasted in resetting to allow more time for shooting, which is safer and more productive. There’s also more enjoyment. Shooting steel, especially reactive steel, is just plain fun. With multiple products designed around…

THE WINCHESTER MODEL 71 and its .348 Winchester cartridge are an inseparable pair, and also an anomaly. In military rifles it’s common for a long-running service rifle to be chambered for just one cartridge. A few examples are the M1903 Springfield and .30-’06; the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield (SMLE) and .303 British; the AK47 and 7.62x39. It is unusual for a sporting firearm to be chambered to just one cartridge, and equally uncommon, for a cartridge to be chambered in just one firearm. When either occur, it’s unusual for the firearm or cartridge to survive long enough to be considered successful. The .348 Winchester and Winchester Model 71 were introduced together in 1936. No other factory rifle was ever chambered to the .348 and the .348 was never chambered in another…