Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2021 i Handguns

Get Out of Dodge As a retired federal agent and current CCW handgun instructor, I liked Richard Nance’s article on page 12 of the August/September issue. I agree seeking cover is important, but our concealed-carry guns really should be used to ensure the safe escape of ourselves and our loved ones. While safely away, call 911 and report the circumstances rather than take cover and remain in harm’s way. Been there and done that many times. Cover is very good, and escape is better. Ron Benjamin, Pennsylvania Super, Man I noticed in the article on pistol calibers (April/May) that the .45 Super was not included. That round is the equivalent of the 10mm but doesn’t need a new pistol. The .45 pistol can be outfitted with the right new springs…

ALMOST 50 YEARS AGO I WAS READY to obtain my first .357 Magnum revolver. It seems strange to say, but my grandfather was leery of the relatively new Ruger brand. Ruger’s double-action revolvers were competing squarely against Smith & Wesson and Colt brands. The price was right—about half the cost of a new Colt Trooper and considerably less than a Smith & Wesson Combat Magnum. Ruger designed this midsize revolver with an investment-cast frame to provide a strong and reliable but relatively lightweight service handgun at 34 ounces. In production in 1971 and generally available by 1972, the revolver was offered in blue steel. The barrel was four inches long, and it was chambered in .357 Magnum. A few were chambered in .38 Special, and there were numerous variants: the…

WILSON COMBAT SFX9 The latest addition to the X9 family is the SFX9, a subcompact with a 3.25-inch barrel and built on a solid, one-piece lightweight aluminum frame. It offers 15-round capacity and an empty weight of just 26.9 ounces. Overall length is 6.75 inches. The gun features Wilson’s X-Tac tread pattern that provides good control without chewing up clothing or skin, and the ERS system gives reliability with any 9mm load. The slide is stainless steel with a black DLC coating with chromium and tungsten under-layers for top-notch corrosion and abrasion resistance. {$2,895 (base price), WILSONCOMBAT.COM } AIMPOINT ACRO P-2 The next generation Acro now takes the more common, higher-capacity CR2032 battery while retaining the same footprint as the P-1. The change also brings a 50,000-hour battery life. That’s…

Polymer pistols have stormed the professional and civilian markets, offering affordability, durability, performance and reliability– especially reliability. With that baseline set, many shooters add custom touches such as slide lightening, special finishes and sights from a big custom aftermarket. The most popular gun is still basic black, and many have a military/police attitude coming in olive drab or flat dark earth, but few come stock with upscale looks for the civilian. A pleasing new entrant specifically geared to the civilian is the SAR 9X Platinum by Turkish maker Sarsilmaz through SAR USA. The Platinum adds upscale styling cues with subtle, subdued color to the already rugged and proven SAR 9X pistol. Several premium accessories are included, and the pistol can go from box to range with little else except ammunition…

Let’s see a show of hands: How many people know—without Googling it—that the Smith & Wesson M&P Shield turns 10 years old next year? Time sure does fly, and this popular S&W design has undergone several modifications and iterations over that decade. Now we have what may be possibly the best one of all: the M&P Shield Plus. The “plus” part refers to an increase in capacity, from 7+1 and 8+1 rounds to 10+1 and a whopping 13+1 rounds. Engineers accomplished this with a new narrow-neck, double-stack magazine while gaining only 0.15 inch in frame width compared to the other 9mm Shields. Height is 4.84 inches with the M&P Shield Plus’s 13-round magazine in place and 4.4 inches with the 10-rounder in place. For most people that means you’ll be…

KIMBER’S MICRO 9 RAPIDE BLACK ICE semiauto sports a stainless steel, traditional round-top slide. It’s finished in KimPro II silver/gray, while the aluminum frame gets a Kimber KimPro II silver treatment, giving the gun a two-tone look without being gaudy. The slide has “stepped” cocking serrations front and rear. Lightening cuts on either side of it add a touch of flair while also speeding up cycling time. The ejection port is flared, and Kimber has installed Tru-Glo Pro sights, which are easy and fast to pick up even as the light goes down. At the rear is a drift assembly containing dual Tru-Glo TFX inserts, with a single insert on the front sight. The Micro 9 Rapide Black Ice has a 3.15-inch stainless match grade barrel featuring Kimber’s proprietary Diamond…

A FEW ISSUES BACK WE PUBLISHED A roundup of popular pistol cartridges, and I thought it would be interesting to do the same thing with revolvers. I’m sticking with popular rounds chambered by major makers, and I’m not including pistol rounds, some of which are found in revolvers today. Except for the .22 Long Rifle (Federal Punch) and .44 Magnum (Hornady Custom), I used Hornady Critical Defense for the muzzle energy figures in an effort to make this as apples to apples as possible. The Relative Recoil Factor data are from Bob Forker’s Ammo & Ballistics 6th edition. The factors are calculated based on momentum of gas and bullet for a typical loading. These figures don’t account for gun weight or design, which plays a huge role in felt recoil,…

SEVERAL YEARS AGO I WAS AT A GUN writer’s event, and instructor Scott Reitz said he’d have us doing things with a 1911 that would make our friends call BS. As a Glock shooter, I was intrigued but skeptical. Part of the curriculum was long-distance shooting, which, of course, is a relative term. There are officers at my police department who would argue that the 25-yard line is long distance. I figured instructor Reitz might have us shooting steel out to 100 yards or so. As it turned out, 100 yards was just a warm-up. To make a long story short, I, along with many of the other students, was able to hit a man-size steel silhouette target offhand at 250 yards—a feat that I would have believed to be…

If you choose to carry a concealed handgun every day, it’s probably because you realize it could come in real handy when faced with a deadly threat. Your gun may not be comfortable to lug around day in day out, but you do it because having a gun and the skill to employ it effectively could save your life or enable you to save someone else’s. You know what else saves lives? First aid supplies and training in gunshot wound care. What sense does it make to be armed and trained to protect yourself and others yet ill equipped and incapable of providing first aid or self-aid to treat a gunshot wound? As my friend and retired Fire Service Lt. Jonathan Willis says, “Always be able to defend yourself, and…

Shooting is a perishable skill, meaning that your ability will diminish without continual training. Unfortunately, training consistently is often challenging due to a variety of reasons, most notably, time, money and range access. Of course, dry-fire training is one way to enhance and maintain your shooting skills. The problem is dry-fire is as boring as hell, and there’s no feedback. It’s hard to tell a good repetition from one that’s lacking because there’s just no way to gauge your progress. As an alternative to dry-fire training, many defensive shooters are turning to airsoft training. While it’s not a substitute for the real thing, airsoft is legitimate training, as evidenced by the number of law enforcement agencies that rely heavily on it to prepare their officers for the street. Today, companies…

RED DOT SIGHTS ARE POPULAR, BUT THAT doesn’t mean reflex sights make sense for every handgun and every handgun owner. Many shooters prefer the compact size, toughness and value of using a quality set of iron sights. And, in truth, a good pair of night sights is often just as versatile as a reflex sight—at a lower price. XS Sights is one of the leading manufacturers of iron sights for defensive pistols, and its DX family of “express sights” are uniquely designed to provide fast target acquisition in any light conditions. The term express sights was originally coined by dangerous-game hunters who found that a wide, shallow, V-shaped rear sight and a large dot front sight were an effective option for stopping dangerous game at close quarters. The setup works…

SIG Sauer has been a leader in the handgun realm since the 1970s, feeding civilian, law enforcement and military customers with innovative and dependable firearms. Among SIG’s more recent game-changing products has been the polymer-frame, striker-fired P320—a handgun that has grown immensely popular. SIG has offered numerous variations of the P320 for defensive and competition use, and the new limited-production AXG Scorpion from SIG’s Custom Works is one of the latest evolutions in the series. The AXG Scorpion combines modern features with some traditional elements to create a unique and capable handgun. I first became acquainted with SIG’s flagship striker-fired handgun early in 2014 when I reviewed the P320 for another publication. I was impressed with the modularity and function, but the shooting world at first didn’t go bananas for…

Ruger’s LCP and LCP II .380 Auto pistols have been frontrunners in the race to offer effective stopping power from a pocket pistol, but to maintain minimal size and weight, these guns have had to give up a few things, including magazine capacity. The original LCP and LCP II are extraordinarily light and small, but they hold just six .380 rounds in the magazine. If you’ve always been keen on carrying a small .380 Auto but weren’t willing to sacrifice round count, I have some wonderful news for you: The LCP Max has arrived. The Ruger LCP Max utilizes a bottleneck double-stack magazine. The “stack-and-a-half” design was first popularized by SIG’s P365, though Springfield’s Hellcat, Taurus’ GX4 and Ruger’s own Max-9 all employ similar magazine designs. And while the bottleneck…

RIMFIRE STEEL TARGET MATCHES ARE fun to shoot for people of all ages and skill levels, but not everybody wants to spend a fortune to get in the game. Taurus has answered the call for a less expensive rimfire semiauto that’s suitable for match shooting, and based on initial impressions this gun is a winner. Dubbed the TX22 Competition, this new .22 LR match pistol is a variant of the company’s popular TX22 semiauto pistol that debuted a few years ago. Like the original TX22, the Competition version is a striker-fired, blowback-operated semiauto with a polymer frame and an aluminum slide. The upper portion of the Competition model’s slide is skeletonized from the ejection port to just behind the front sight. The top of the breech portion of the barrel…