Ballistic October/November 2021

If you’ve been a Ballistic mag reader for long, then you get it, we often take paths less traveled when it comes to our eclectic editorial mix. And when it comes to mag cover hardware, rarely will you see a plain Jane, stock production firearm. Sorry, Jane, not sorry. We’re featuring an outof-this-world pair of custom pew-pews (insert the sound effects of blasters going off in every Star Wars movie) on this issue’s national newsstand cover—Mandalorian Bravo 5.56s. What’s that, you’ve been living under a boulder your whole life and don’t know that Mandalorians are fearsome warrior people who live and fight by the creed “This is the Way” and that Jon Favreau has created the best space Western television series, ever? We’re gonna cheat-sheet you up with this bit…

We all love firepower and the quest for more gives me a reason to get up each morning. In that vein, would you rather own one fully-loaded F-15 (including a pilot under your command for one year) or a lifetime of ARs and ammo? I’m all about that F-15 because I’m pretty sure I could conquer a few small countries and then set up a factory to build AR’s for the army I would compile on the quest for world domination. Looks like I’m in the minority, though. Final tally was 34 to 14 in favor of unlimited AR rifles. Best quotes: Dane Becker: Does the F-15 have nukes? Stephen Graham: The ARs and ammo. They leave more usable meat. The F-15 has the advantage of killing, cleaning and cooking…

About six or seven years ago I had enough time and money to move from road hunting (“Hold my beer!”) to getting a decent rifle and scope and starting to push out my shots to hundreds of yards instead of dozens of feet. I took a weeklong class on how to use the mil-dot system to estimate range, left the class and threw away my notes on the way to buy a decent rangefinder. Math to me is only useful when figuring the ratio of gin to vermouth. My laser rangefinder found a home on my bino harness, and I spent many a blissful hour walking the woods and switching back and forth between the two. Laser rangefinding binos certainly aren’t new, but they are new to me. Bushnell just…

› Drinking beer at breakfast.› The feeling of accomplishment from my once-a-week shower.› Working on this column while getting paid for another job.› Netflix.› Dressing for work means clean boxers and an almost clean T-shirt.› Naps.› Ogling my wife running around the house in even less clothes than me.› Sending the kids to school while I stay home.› Using a “mouse jiggler” that kept my laptop on even though I hadn’t touched it in hours.› Streaming porn 24/7.…

COVID, WHAT COVID? The country fully reopened and everyone outside of airports has returned to some version of normal. I recently dug through three months of dirty clothes to find my face mask and hopped a flight to Dulles to see if there was anyone left in Foggy Bottom that had a clue what was going on outside of their ivory tower. But facing the dismay of an empire in its demise calls for liquid fortification, so I headed for one of the nearest breweries as soon as I landed. The Lost Rhino Brewing Company felt like a San Diego beach bar dropped into the heart of our nation’s capital. The signature symbol of a rhino carrying a surfboard (I’m still scratching my head about that one) and the long…

MY latest get-richfast scheme involves the plot line from almost every great Hollywood blockbuster: killer for hire. You know, a mercenary. Wet work. Assassin. Hit man. Hired Gun. Sicario. Liquidator. What I need: Basic firearms skills. Check! Lack of a strong moral compass. Check! Somebody willing to pay me millions of dollars to fly somewhere exotic and then give me a super high-dollar weapon that is perfectly sighted in to take out a much hated, evil bad guy. Hmmmmm. I don’t know anyone with that kind of budget or altruism. I could try my skills at home but the last time I checked, $50 bucks was the going rate for one gang member whacking another gang member in the inner city. With the price of ammo these days, that is…