Innehållsförteckning för July/August 2025 #79 från Recoil

Back before the NRA was going through a bunch of internal turmoil caused by its leadership treating members’ funds as a personal piggy bank, we decided to withdraw our support, as we had heard from trusted insiders that something bad was going down. Instead, we promoted the work of a lot of grassroots 2A activists, who wound up carrying the torch for gun rights while the NRA attempted to unf@ck itself. We’ll be attending the NRA Annual Meetings for the first time since COVID, and we’ll be looking for evidence of progress they’ve made. In the same vein, we’re featuring two short barreled rifles and at least four suppressors in this issue, in order to promote the benefits of both and attempt to further normalize their use. We’ve never shied…

At one time it was easy for the more tactically minded to blow off a lever-action rifle. The arguments were there: It’s outdated technologically, reach rarely extends beyond 200 yards, the capacity is just too low, the calibers too old, in most cases it’s hard to improve the sights — and on top of all that you had to clean them from the muzzle to the breach. But recent years have proven many of these arguments are outdated themselves. For one reason or another, the 21st century has made many shooters reconsider the lever action as a worthy rifle. There’s always the nostalgia bug, where some of us think of ourselves as cowboys when the most utilitarian rifle you could have had was a trusty Marlin or Winchester. The longing…

EDITOR’S NOTE In this column, we rifle through our back catalog to find articles that still resonate today. RECOIL was the first media outlet to review the then-new Canik line of handguns, and we were enthusiastic about its value proposition. We still are, especially as the company listened to consumer feedback and corrected all of the complaints we had originally. The lineup has expanded greatly, but you can still find a new, improved TP9 for less than 400 bucks if you look carefully, making this one of the best handgun bargains currently on the market, a decade after we first got hands on with it. Here at RECOIL, we’re often accused of only reviewing expensive kit. Not true. We try to review good kit — and in most cases, there’s…

When Gunsite announced the availability of a new Gunsite Glock Service Pistol (GGSP) at the famed Academy’s Pro Shop, there were some unconfirmed rumors that Jeff Cooper turned over in his grave. I suspect these rumors were started by folks who had not paid proper attention to the Colonel’s teachings over the years. Colonel Cooper was a man who based his opinions on observations of actual events, not speculations about what might happen in the future. During the Leather Slap Contests at Big Bear during the 1960s (the predecessor of today’s action shooting games and the inspiration for Cooper founding the original American Pistol Institute in 1976), the John Browning-designed 1911 pistol dominated the winners’ circle. Paying careful attention to the techniques used in achieving success with the handguns available,…

Three distinct things Eugene Stoner and Randy Luth have in common: initial careers as precision machinists, zeal for the AR platform, and the knowledge and experience to advance the rifle’s technology. Yet while Stoner designed the AR-15 and the AR-10, Luth — for nearly 40 years — has served as a driving force for not only improving upon Stoner’s blueprints but redefining public perception surrounding the rifle itself. Amid negative sentiments surrounding the rifle following the Vietnam War, the Assault Weapons Ban, and, within the hunting community, having the platform designated a “terrorist” rifle, Luth stood steadfast, eyes fixed on the summit of the uphill climb he had in front of him. Fueled by not only a deep appreciation for the rifle, but almost a personal love for the platform,…

I love nearly everything about the MP5. The soft recoil impulse, the die-hard reliability (geddit?), and, of course, the superb aesthetics. But there are two things about the gun that count against dedicating it to the role of bugout gun — terminal ballistics and effective range. For all its greatness, the MP5 is still just a 9mm firearm. If it lacks a selector switch, it’s just an overly glorified handgun. Ten years ago, I started looking at all the roller-delayed carbines on the market. I considered the mid-sized .308 G3K with its 12.4-inch barrel and even the super short HK51, but the combination of excessive weight and restrictive capacity made the guns impractical. It wasn’t until I learned of the 5.56 HK53 that I knew the perfect gun existed. But…

Double-stack 1911-style pistols (more colloquially known as 2011s) have generated pretty strong reactions — positive and negative — among the firearms community over the years, but it’s safe to say that they’ve now cemented their position as high-performance pistols. We don’t need to tell you about the 1911, the most American of American pistols, chiseled out of pure badassery by Saint John Moses Browning himself. As a pistol chambered in the portly .45ACP cartridge with a single-stack magazine, it doesn’t provide you with a whole lot of rounds before needing a reload. Despite macho protestations about not needing more than a handful of rounds to take care of business, more is better. So companies such as Para Ordnance began making doublestack magazines and frames as early as 1989. A few…

EDITOR’S NOTE: While we may talk about PTSD and veteran suicide a lot in the shooting community, it seems like we rarely take the time to understand the accounts of those it directly affects. Here’s one of those stories. If you or a loved one are suffering the effects of deployments, loss, or separation from the life that we knew, there is help available via the VA. Or pick up your phone and call a friend. As an organization where more than half of our editorial staff are vets, we’ve been there. It’s a year ago to the day that I left for South Africa. It was a trip that I had long wanted to take; however, I could never have predicted the circumstances that would bring it about —…

Suppressing pistols has always been a tricky business. To begin with, many semi-automatic pistols have narrower operating windows than you might think, depending on factors such as the type of ammunition, mass of the parts and attachments, springs, and the shooter. On top of this, the Browning tilting-barrel design is ubiquitous in modern pistols. With these types of pistols, the barrel tilts when the breech unlocks and allows the slide to cycle, kick out the spent case, and feed the next round — hanging a heavy weight on the end of the muzzle can cause cycling malfunctions. Muzzle boosters, or Nielsen devices, were developed to mitigate this problem. They use gas pressure from the blast along with a piston and spring to essentially temporarily uncouple the weight of the silencer…

The No. 1 Mk III Short Magazine Lee Enfield or SMLE, often loving referred to as the “Smelly” was a magazine-fed bolt-action rifle manufactured in various guises (some before the Mk III designation) from 1895 until 1957. It was manufactured by multiple countries and many manufacturers including but not limited to Birmingham Small Arms in Britain, Lithgow in Australia (this one), and Ishapore in India. Its active service predates World War I, and it can still be found in use in Africa and Asia by various irregular forces, and some police units. Although many have been surplused, some countries still maintain them in storage. The SMLE was designed with a 10-round detachable box magazine. However, it was meant to be fed via five-round stripper clips. The stripper clip guide facilitated…

We first got word of the HS Produkt Kuna on a factory visit to Croatia, just before the world lost its collective marbles due to a Chinese lab leak. Since then, the design has been refined, and Springfield has added it to their considerable list of SKUs, importing it for the general public as a large format handgun. Why then, should you consider this particular wannabe subgun, versus anything else out there? Glad you asked. UNDER THE HOOD There are essentially three operating systems available to the end user, when looking at the 9mm carbine scene. The most basic — straight blowback — has the advantage of being inexpensive to manufacture, but comes with the downside of a heavy bolt and more recoil than the 9mm Luger cartridge has any…

Trijicon is not a normal company. Trijicon makes optics, and they aren’t afraid to take risks. To make cool, weird, and downright strange optics no one else would dare to make. If it weren’t for the fact that they’re also known for putting Bible verses on their optics, I might even suspect some psychedelics were sometimes involved. When people think of Trijicon they probably think of the ACOG, the most successful combat optic in the history of the world. Or the little RMR, originally designed to piggyback on the same, but now mostly seen riding on pistol slides. Folks don’t necessarily think of traditional dot sights or thermals — though lately Trijicon has been taking some time to change some minds. MRO SD It’s not that Trijicon hasn’t done anything…

Several years ago, against the base of a mountain north of Spokane, friends and I escaped from our serviceindustry jobs to shoulder shotguns, sling clays, and let fly strings of lead, watching as the discs turned to dust and showering pines and dirt in bursts of orange. It was cheap fun — gas was likely more expensive than the $10 for 90 clays and the other $10 for the handheld disc thrower we forgot back at home. Crushing clays was fun, but I also really enjoyed rearing back and serving up a fast pigeon like some MLB submariner. In some ways, it seemed more fun than wielding the boomstick itself. Then, at SHOT Show 2025, Caldwell demoed its ClayCopter. Their product managers launched thousands upon thousands of plastic copters for…

As the inexorable march of progress continues across the firearms industry, the proliferation of red-dot sighting systems has expanded to shotguns as well. While those who shoot upland birds and clays may not wish to partake, there’s clear advantages for tactical and other hunting applications. Despite the recent push to mount optics on rifles ever higher and higher, shotguns remain best employed with a natural mount, low on the gun. But the typical mounting options on shotguns — such as an optic mounted on a Picatinny rail mounted on the receiver — result in a sight that’s quite high, ruining your natural mount and often requiring a raised comb. Mossberg’s new shotguns with an optic cut very low on the receiver are a notable exception. Vortex has come to the…