Innehållsförteckning för January/February 2015 från Recoil

1 JACKET MAKE: Kitanica MODEL: Mark IV MSRP: $597 URL: www.kitanica.net 2 PANTS MAKE: Kitanica MODEL: Backcountry Pants (Kryptek Typhon) MSRP: $129 URL: www.kitanica.net 3 GLOVES MAKE: Outdoor Research MODEL: Piledriver Gloves MSRP: $70 URL: military.outdoorresearch.com 4 WEAPON SYSTEM MAKE: Tracking Point MODEL: Precision-Guided Semi-Auto 7.62 MSRP: $14,995 URL: www.tracking-point.com OFF THE COVER 5 BELT MAKE: Griffon Industries MODEL: Ghost EDC Belt MSRP: $100 URL: www.griffonindustries.com 6 EAR PROTECTION MAKE: 3M Peltor MODEL: WS 100 MSRP: $499 URL: www.shop3m.com 7 EYE PROTECTION MAKE: ESS MODEL: Credence MSRP: $90 URL: www.esseyepro.com 8 KNIFE MAKE: Pro-Tech Knives MODEL: TR-3 X1 MSRP: $250 URL: www.protechknives.com 9 FOOTWEAR MAKE: BLACKHAWK! MODEL: Ultra Light Side Zip Boot MSRP: $175 URL: www.blackhawk.com 10 FLASHLIGHT MAKE: Olight MODEL: S15 Baton MSRP: $50 URL: www.olightworld.com 11 SMARTPHONE MAKE:…

London’s Imperial War Museum (IWM) was founded in 1917 and currently occupies the site of a former insane asylum. Its mission was to document the then-ongoing Great War, so it was perhaps inevitable and appropriate that at the centenary of the commencement of hostilities the museum would dedicate a huge amount of time and money to commemorate the sacrifces of both the armed forces and civilian population who were involved. Following a six-month-long renovation, the museum reopened its doors on July 16, 2014, and has seen record attendance ever since. Although the WWI exhibit has received the most coverage, the IWM’s four levels cover conficts from the early 20th century through to the present-day wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the visitor approaches the museum’s entrance, he or she is…

DISCLAIMER: The concepts and techniques shown here are for illustrative purposes only. When handling frearms, always observe all frearm safety rules. Seek professional instruction before attempting any techniques discussed or shown in this story. It’s a lazy Saturday morning, and you’re proud of yourself for getting out of bed early and beating the crowds to the local mall. After grabbing the perfect birthday gift for your wife, you exit the mall and briefy pause to scan the quickly crowding parking lot, trying to remember exactly where you parked. Locating the spot, your thoughts drift back to that perfect gift as you start walking across the parking lot. She’s going to love this, you think to yourself. Suddenly, a surprising pop of a frecracker startles you back into reality. Then, four…

A real-deal 5.56mm HK rife is regarded as a jewel in any collection, and for that reason you don’t see too many of them actually getting used at the range. For a very long time, Heckler & Koch dominated the semi-auto rife market and for several decades were widely regarded as the choice of professionals. During the 10-year-long “assault weapons” ban starting in 1994, our nation had to endure import restrictions that few shooters seem to remember these days. Although domestic manufacturers quickly found ways to work around these draconian laws, HK’s failure to adapt their longguns meant that they slipped into a perception of being simply pistol makers in the U.S. market. In its absence, the AR-15 enjoyed a rebirth that continues unabated to this day. The C93 is…

Not wearing safety gear to the range is like forgoing protection during a one night stand: the consequences are life changing and possibly permanent. The saddest part is that, with some common sense, they’re 100-percent preventable. No self-respecting shooter in his or her right mind would hit the range without the appropriate kit, eye protection, and ear protection. Having delved into eyewear in RECOIL Issue 8, we’re going to focus here on the latter piece of safety equipment. Hearing protection will do just that: protect your hearing. And hearing is essential to awareness, but it’s something we take for granted, says Grant Reynolds, a tactical frearms instructor with Solutions Group International. “There are things the eyes won’t pick up due to light restrictions, distance, and deflade. The ears work all…

2013 DODGE 3500 6.7L CUMMINS DIESEL SIX-SPEED AUTOMATIC Having a vehicle to promote your business is never a bad idea. However, it seems that most promotional cars or trucks are all show and no business. Typically they’re nothing more than some blinged-out, lifted pickup with wild graphics and tinted windows that the owner uses to drive to nightclubs so he can get out and high-five his “yes” crowd. In other words, they proudly represent their company by driving something that looks like Pimp My Ride threw up on it. For those of you familiar with Spike’s Tactical and its products, you’ll know the company is a no-nonsense brand with a fighting spirit and Second Amendment verbiage pumping through its veins. So when Spike himself was going to invest in a…

If you happen to live in a state like New York, California, or Connecticut (where most of the stuff in this publication is illegal for you to purchase), you still have a few options left. Assuming moving to a free state isn’t one of them, there are nonetheless semi-automatic 5.56mm rifles available to you. And Ares Defense has recently added one more. Historically, the Ruger Mini-14 has always been available to the entire United States. But, with its proprietary, expensive, and difficult-to-find magazines, questionable accuracy, limited aftermarket support, and less than-ideal optic mounting, it hasn’t been an optimal choice. The Kel-Tec SU-16 series rifles at least accept STANAG magazines and feature Picatinny rails for mounting optics, but the shape of the stock requires them to be mounted lower than an…

Until someone markets the fabled “phased plasma rife in the 40-watt range,” today’s frearms are about as refned as they’re going to get. While this may seem like heresy coming from a gun rag, since Borchardt developed an effective self-loading mechanism in the 1890s, we’ve not really seen much in the way of paradigm-shifting technology since then. Sure, there have been advances in materials technology, but nothing has really fundamentally changed the way we either look at, or employ, guns. Line up the sights, press the trigger, rinse and repeat. The adaptation of consumer electronics to the gun industry has been painfully slow. Almost everything else we use on a daily basis has a user interface — our cars, our TVs, hell, even our washing machines talk to us —…

Some things naturally go great together — sushi and sake, Jack Daniels and Coke, Kate Upton and a two-piece — so much so that it’s hard to imagine one without the other (well, except for that last pair). Now, there’s a new winning combination out there: Magpul and Mossberg. Magpul has long been a leader in the industry with its economical, effective, and ubiquitous magazines, buttstocks, and accessories for the AR-15 platform. The company then turned its sights toward the tactical shotgun market and has been producing stocks, fore-ends, and sling swivels for some of the more popular shotgun designs, such as the venerable Remington 870 and the Mossberg 500 and 590 series Through the hard work of ?rearms distributor RSR and one of its buyers (Caleb Siedlecki), six of…

Way back in Issue 7, we took a prototype piston upper for the AR-15 out for a spin. While we noted a few areas that could be improved, we reckoned it showed enough promise to pronounce it a winner. Never ones to pass up a test piece, we decided to hold onto the sample and beat the snot out of it, using it for optics and ammo evaluations, shooting from helicopters, and abusing it as a truck gun, where it was usually encrusted with a ¼ inch of fne Arizona desert dust. After dropping in the .300 BLK barrel, the upper enjoyed a couple of hog hunting trips wearing all manner of IR kit — and apart from a couple of chewed-up Picatinny rails, it’s shrugged off all the abuse…

The evolution of the sport utility vehicle (SUV) reads like the decline of the Roman Empire. Once agile, capable, and aggressive — now faccid, pampered, and fat. Let’s face it, while we’d all love a dedicated bug-out vehicle, for most of us that ain’t going to happen. Life gets in the way, and compromises must be reached to accommodate the needs of signifcant others, offspring, and employers. So how do we get maximum utility from our daily driver? Will a competent, low-profle everyday vehicle also serve as a viable means to transport our nearest and dearest out of harm’s way, should everything go sideways? As with most of life’s pressing questions, the answer is a defnite, “Yes, but...” THE SUV EVOLVES On the way to market ascendency during the middle…

1 Brainchild of Pete Palma (RECOIL contributor, former U.S. Marine scout sniper, and all-around wild man), MS Clean is a magazineshaped cleaning kit that provides a robust way to carry steel cleaning rods and lube without bending or breaking them. Although the kit is too big to ft into a rife’s magwell, we recommend stashing it away from your readyuse mags, just to be on the safe side. According to its website, “If you do manage to fnd yourself frantically inserting an MS Clean into your rife, you may want to consider that we purposely engineered a level of natural selection into our product.” MAKE: MS Clean MODEL: MS Clean Kit MSRP: $40 URL: www.mscleankits.com 2 The nastiest part of rolling your own ammo is cleaning fred cases. Conventional vibratory…

The difference between carrying a frearm and knowing how to use it is about as stark as the classiness level between Frank Sinatra and Justin Bieber. The same can be said about a knife. Just because you carry a blade every day doesn’t mean you’ll be able to use it effectively — let alone disarm a bad guy with a shank. Enter the training knife. A blunt blade lets you practice drawing sparring, and self-defense drills with relative safety, but at realistic, high speeds. The amount of times your gut, neck, and arms get tagged with such a training tool will leave you more enlightened and your underwear a little bit moist. (Just as you would at the range, don’t forget to wear eye protection while training.) But, keep in…

Intellectual clarity is effcient thought — and effciency is the hallmark of everything we do in combat pistol marksmanship. The modern craft has been refned and clarifed to such a degree that, as I often tell students, “It’s like a math problem.” If we clearly defne the task, we can maximize the learning curve of proper technique and save time, as well as speed up execution of the task. In a combative environment, lost time is bad and can be deadly. For that reason, speed is crucial — but effcient speed, not frantic failureprone speed. Effcient movements often look deceivingly slow, yet the timer will reveal how effcient they really were. Economy of motion is effciency, and effciency is the guiding principle of all athletic endeavors…combative shooting is no different.…

TRACKINGPOINT PRECISION-GUIDED 5.56 SEMI-AUTO CALIBER: 5.56mm BARREL LENGTH: 16 inches MAGAZINE CAPACITY: 30 rounds WEIGHT (UNLOADED): 12 pounds MSRP: $7,495 TRACKINGPOINT PRECISION-GUIDED 7.62 SEMI-AUTO CALIBER: 7.62mm BARREL LENGTH: 18 inches MAGAZINE CAPACITY: 20 rounds WEIGHT (UNLOADED): 14.6 pounds MSRP: $14,995 TRACKINGPOINT PRECISION-GUIDED 300 WM SEMI-AUTO CALIBER: .300 Win Mag BARREL LENGTH: 22 inches MAGAZINE CAPACITY: 14 rounds WEIGHT (UNLOADED): 15.6 pounds MSRP: $18,995 URL: www.tracking-point.com In October, TrackingPoint introduced three models of semi-auto rifes, based on the AR platform. The entry-level gun is a Daniel Defense-based AR-15 with a price tag of $6,000. Despite an MSRP of less than half its brethren’s, the optics and electronics suite is exactly the same. Jumping up the ladder, the 7.62mm NATO version is based on the well-respected LMT product, which in TrackingPoint guise…

Throughout history, the term “Spartan” has been synonymous with the concept of the ideal warrior. The fghting spirit ethos derived from this ancient Greek people has long been admired — so much so that the word has transitioned from noun to adjective within the modern lexicon. In contemporary military context, few deserve that adjective more than Jim Smith and his brethren. As a former U.S. Army Delta operator, he’s served his nation admirably around the globe and been highly decorated for his courage and tenacity. Much like the children of Sparta, Smith had an affnity for overcoming tough challenges at an early age. As a kid who preferred Field & Stream over Mad magazine and backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas over trading baseball cards, a young Jim Smith was far…