Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i Gun Digest

In the court of public opinion, rules are rare and logic even less so. What’s popular at one moment is often gone tomorrow, and the fallout is generally hard and fast. Today, we call this nasty phenomenon “cancel culture.” In the fictional world that is social media, the cancel culture progression often blows in and out like an early May cold front. A turnover of the 24-hour news cycle and a new account can give most anyone a new start. But when it comes to cartridges, cancel culture often lingers, developing slowly and rarely ending with any form of thunderstorm: A cartridge slowly loses popularity, and then loses the support of gun and ammo manufacturers … until one day it’s little more than a pet favorite for a little more…

01 Military Armament Corporation MAC IX Military Armament Corp (MAC) just unveiled the MAC IX—a sleek, no-nonsense 9mm PCC designed in Knoxville, Tennessee. This direct blowback semi-auto runs an AR-style pistol grip, full-length Picatinny rail, M-Lok forearm and accepts MP5 mags. It’s compact (15.97 inches overall), lightweight (5 pounds) and tough, with a 7075-T6 aluminum build and black anodized finish. Features include ambi charging handle, adjustable sights, tri-lug + ½-28 threading and AR-style takedown pins. Bonus: It ships with two metal mags, a hard case and cleaning gear. It’s a modern, modular pistol-caliber carbine that’s ready to run right out of the box. MSRP: $833 02 Apex Predator TSS Apex Ammunition is now shipping its hard-hitting Predator line, loaded with ultra-dense Tungsten Super Shot (TSS). Handloaded with care and trusted…

It’s fair to assume that most shooters have at least a general understanding of how their guns work on a technical level. The ins and outs of specific designs can be a fairly specialized knowledge set, but I’d wager that most people using common semi-autos know they are, in large part, gas operated. However, there is quite a bit of nuance that we’re going to dive into here talking about the various gas systems and how they work, especially with suppressors and how things like gas flow and bleedoffs work. This is a technical topic, but I’ll spare the jargon and try to relay as much of this as possible in layman’s terms so everyone ends on the same page. GAS SYSTEM TYPES For what we’re talking about here, we’re…

Earlier this year, Gun Digest’s parent publisher Caribou Media, LLC released its debut foray into commercial fiction, penned by former staff editor Tom Marshall. Some of you may know his byline from his Vets Vices column in RECOIL, or from his time as editor of RECOIL OFFGRID, but he’s also been harboring a lifelong passion for military thriller fiction that has manifested in his first full-length novel: Close and Destroy. Close and Destroy follows the men and women of Windsor Kraft Strategies, a wellheeled private military company combating a thriving insurgency in the (mostly) fictitious failing nation state of Daristan. If the premise sounds ripped-from-the-headlines, that’s because it’s informed directly by Tom’s own experience in Iraq and Afghanistan where he logged 14 separate deployments between the two theaters as both…

HISTORICAL NOTES Hornady and Marlin announced the .450 Marlin at the 2000 SHOT Show. This was the first new chambering from Marlin since the introduction of the .444 Marlin, in mid-1964. The motivation for this cartridge is simple: Handloaders had been souping up .45-70 loads for use in Marlin’s modern 1895 since the day that gun was introduced. Owing to the many weaker .45-70 rifles still in use, Marlin could not condone this practice, nor could the company stop it. Something had to give. Some have asked why Marlin didn’t simply lengthen the .45-70 case and standardize a new higher-pressure cartridge. That alternative wasn’t tenable, because such a cartridge would have chambered in older (potentially weaker) rifles de-design with a cartridge that would function better through the Marlin rifle and…

Knives are hazardous … and dull knives are particularly hazardous because you have to use more force to cut, and that means any error can lead to gashes. The solution? DMT, the maker of diamondsharpening tools, has a pocket-sized sharpener so compact that you might lose it in your gear bag or toolbag: the Glide-Pro. It has four angled pull-through sharpeners, a carbide and ceramic 20-degree, and a carbide and ceramic 30-degree sharpener. There are medium and coarse flat sharpeners, a carbide plate that lets you free-hand the angle you need, two stones on the bottom and the two ends feature one each of flat-blade and Phillips-head screwdriver. So, if you have a pistol grip or such that is a tad loose, the Glide-Pro can tighten it for the next…

Maintaining popularity for more than a century is quite the accomplishment in the cartridge world. For every one of the “classics” that have made that mark, there are several that fell out of vogue, and many others that have disappeared altogether. Sure, the .30-06 Springfield, .45-70 Government, .45 ACP, 9mm Luger, .22 Long Rifle and .30-30 Winchester have all made that mark, but the .30-40 Krag, .38-55 Winchester, .300 Savage and .22 Short have lost much of their following of late. And while much of the cartridge market seems to be a popularity contest, a cartridge has to have something substantial to offer to maintain any sort of popularity for more than a century … especially considering the recent advancements in powder and bullet technologies. Celebrating their 100th trip around…

My buddy Frank writes with a Montblanc pen. I once asked him why. “First and foremost, I like nice things,” he said, “Second, I do sales, and when you hand a client a nice pen to sign the contract with, it helps them feel good about the decision because the act of signing is made into a pleasure and a feeling of success.” There is no limit on who can enjoy luxury items. That’s how I see Parkwest Arms and, in particular, the SD-22 we are looking at in this article. Parkwest’s guns delight the senses. When the new owners started up the company, they hired as many of the experienced craftsmen as they could from the old Dakota Arms. They have since added even more talented people to their…

Probably the easiest way to add a red-dot sight to your factory non-MOS Glock is to just buy an aftermarket slide for it. Plenty of companies make these, but SilencerCo has just thrown its hat into the ring as well with the SCO Slide. Designed for Gen 1-3 Glock 19s, the SCO Slide is being launched with three variants available each with a differ-ent optic footprint—RMR, ACRO and 509T. The best part is the SCO Slide allows for direct-mounting red dots, so there’s no need for an optics plate. The machined slides are made from corrosion-resistant 17-4 stainless-steel and feature a black DLC coating. As for the SCO Slide’s aesthetics, SilencerCo took inspiration from its s-steel integrally suppressed Maxim 9 pistol for the slide serrations. The deep, aggressive cuts should…

Alittle more than a decade ago, I edited Gun Digest’s 13th Edition of Cartridges of the World. If you’re unfamiliar with that book, it’s essentially an encyclopedia of metallic cartridges. I’m not sure how many cartridges the latest volume covers, but the 13th Edition contained the history and specifics for more than 800. Some of those cartridges were, by at least some measure, failures. What makes a metallic cartridge a failure? It could be because shooters failed to grasp the cartridge’s intended application, or it could be that the manufacturer failed to effectively convey that message. Sometimes manufacturers fail to divine what the shooting public really wants, or they gambled on past successes with a similar cartridge. On occasion, a cartridge might be too much of a good thing or…

The boss asked me, “How about a musing on the most popular firearms of all time? Or the past century?” OK, I’m game … but we have to have some rules here. I mean, if we’re going to go simply by the number made, then the 1898 Mauser and the AK-47 are the tops of the top. But they were made in such volume because governments bought them. Popular had little to do with it. So, “popular” in that they were something that people reached into their pockets and pulled out their own cash to buy is what we’re looking for here. I used to work on radio broadcasting, where I first heard the “went platinum” term. That meant 1 million albums and 2 million singles. (There were other limits…