Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2022 i Handguns

I was just perusing your excellent (as always!) October/November issue and was relishing Bob Campbell’s fine article on the Ruger Security-Six. My first .357 Magnum was one of the first of these exemplary revolvers. You mentioned the grip design, but I wanted to add my two cents. The first ones bore the serial prefix of 150-xxx (mine), whereas the subsequent models began with 151. The grip frame was changed with the 151s. I foolishly traded away my 150 because the grip frame wouldn’t accept Pachmayr grips, which were the fashion at the time. I’ve had two of the later style in six-inch versions, but I wish I had kept that first one. Jim C., OregOn Thanks for the article on the Ruger Security-Six. It was the gun I bought when…

A 2020 SURVEY BY THE WELL-ARMED Woman found that the second most popular method of concealed carry among women, after inside-the-waistband, is the concealed-carry purse. About a third of the respondents said they prefer off-body carry. While this style of has its drawbacks, it’s comfortable, and in many cases it can be your only option. One of the newest carry bags is Versacarry’s Concealed Carry purse ( VERSACARRY.COM ). It’s a great-looking and practical shoulder bag with room for just about everything. The bag I tested was made of sturdy olive-green canvas with leather straps, but this bag also comes in camo canvas, black vinyl, and if you like a higher-end look, an attractive brown leather version. The pocket setup is practical, with a large, zipper-top center gun pocket plus…

Ultra Custom models use Memory-Lok—essentially a moldable polymer inner liner—to allow shooters to form the leather holster to fit any semiauto within the holster’s size class. It comes with everything you need to do the job. Place the holster in the provided plastic bag and submerge it in hot water—not boiling but around 165 degrees. I used an oven thermometer to keep an eye on mine while preparing to mold it to a Taurus G3C. Remove at the prescribed time, then use the sight-channel and molding tools to fit it to your pistol. Goof up? Just do it again. Decide you want it for another gun? Re-mold it. The outside-the-waistband version shown here is new, and it works like it’s supposed to—providing a smooth draw, good retention and easy holstering.…

O.F. Mossberg & Sons is an iconic name in the firearms business. You may know it from the justifiably legendary 500 shotgun, a tough-as-nails, reliable scattergun loved by generations of hunters and defensive shooters. Or maybe you’ve crossed paths with the excellent Patriot line of bolt-action rifles—some of the most accurate centerfires I’ve ever laid my hands on—or the innovative MVP bolt-action rifle that accepts AR-15 and other semiauto magazines. But perhaps you haven’t tumbled to the fact that the company makes handguns as well, a history going back to the founder’s first firearm created by his newly established company: the four-shot Brownie .22. Fast-forward 100 years to 2019, when Mossberg brought out the MC1sc, a subcompact single-stack 9mm. It was followed a year later by the double-stack MC2c, supplanting…

The .22 semiauto pistol has always had an outsized place on the American shooting scene, one far out of proportion to its bore size. This applies whether you’re talking about small game hunting, plinking, informal target shooting or serious competitive endeavors. In fact, many of America’s most storied gun guys—shooters most often associated with the big stuff—used them. Ernest Hemingway was a fan of the Colt Woodsman and owned several. So was legendary African professional hunter Harry Selby. Jeff Cooper liked the Walther PP in .22 Long Rifle. These men appreciated the field advantages of a good .22 pistol: a relatively low noise signature; no recoil to speak of; small-game-getting capability with minimal meat destruction; and the obvious advantage of a 50-round box of .22 ammo that took up little…

North American Arms offers a large line of tiny rimfire revolvers for pocket or belt, and the newest Pug features a Viridian grip laser. A palm-size, five-shot .22 Magnum revolver with a 1.2-inch barrel, the Pug is one of NAA’s more popular little revolvers. It gives concealed handgun practitioners magnum punch in a deep- or even light-cover handgun for times when all more powerful firearm options are off the table. It’s also an able backup to larger arms. The addition of the laser grip is a great improvement and measurably speeds up aiming and increases the distance at which productive hits can be made. The Viridian unit is activated by gripping the revolver. You don’t have to bother about reaching for the laser and throwing a switch or wrestle with…

I DON’T THINK A MONTH GOES BY WITHout a mention of the Single Action Army revolver in my emails, correspondence or a press release. No doubt, this gun is still popular among the shooting public, and it’s not hard to see why. The growth in popularity of this type of gun seemed to swell upward in the 1950s with the advent of the Western series of television shows and movies. Down in Connecticut, an enterprising young designer named Bill Ruger took interest in the trend, and he came up with a design of his own—a scaled-down single-action .22 revolver called the Single-Six followed by full-frame guns like the Blackhawk, Super Blackhawk and, some time later, the handsome Ruger Vaquero. The Vaquero was an instant success. Introduced in 1993, it was…

Recently we asked our social media fans what their pick among the “big three” large pistol cartridges for defense would be: .40 S&W, 10mm Auto or .45 ACP. Below is a sampling of what they said. Why pick? Variety is the spice of life. —Boone Big and slow gets the job done! .45 all day! —Brian 10mm. With the different load ranges it has, it’s more versatile than the other two. —Jon 10mm. It’s what’s on my hip. —Michael Been carrying a 1911 since the ’70s. No reason to change now. .45 ACP. —Jim I’m still rocking the .40 S&W, even though it’s becoming a dead cartridge. Looks like I’m gonna have to stockpile some ammo! —Jose Foot-pounds of energy are king, which would be the 10mm. Hot loads are…

THE HUSQVARNA MODEL 40 IS PROBably the most overbuilt 9mm pistol you’re likely to encounter in a lifetime of fooling around with military sidearms. Originally designed by Finland’s Aimo Lahti as the Lahti L-35 and produced by Valmet from 1935 to 1952, the Lahti saw service in the brutal 1939 Winter War against the Soviet Union. It also was in action in the Continuation War when the Finns, in concert with Germany, tried to settle scores with Stalin The pistol was copied by the Swedes, who apparently knew a good thing when they saw it, as the Husqvarna Model 40. It served Sweden into the 1980s, when it was ultimately replaced by Glock’s G17. The lines, most specifically the grip angle, are decidedly Luger-like—although the Husqvarna lacks the P-08’s artillery-like…

AFTER MASTERING HANDGUN SAFETY and developing a firm grasp of the fundamentals of marksmanship, many people assume they are ready to protect themselves or their loved ones with a handgun. Those who understand the naiveté of this rationale may believe that more advanced training—where they learn to shoot with greater speed and accuracy—is the answer. While this can’t hurt, even high-speed/low-drag live-fire training can only go so far toward preparing you to defeat a living, breathing adversary intent on harming you. Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in a three-day team tactics course sponsored by Mossberg at the prestigious Gunsite Academy in Paulden, Arizona. While there was plenty of live-fire training with Mossberg’s red-dot-ready micro-compact MC2sc, the culmination of the course was several force-on-force scenarios using Simunition marking cartridges.…

For more than a century, the combat revolver reigned supreme. You could say the era was born in June 1844 when Texas Rangers armed with Colt Paterson revolvers routed a band of Comanches at the Battle of Walker’s Creek. Its symbolic death took place on April 11, 1986, when a pair of heavily armed bank robbers killed two FBI agents and wounded five others on a south Florida street. In the wake of the Miami shootout, law enforcement turned to the semiautomatic, and these days, a cop with a sixgun on his or her hip is a rare sight. Most of us civilian types are unlikely to take on rifle-wielding bank robbers, so our needs are different from those men and women in blue. And not everyone who owns a…

Stoeger is a brand well known to shooters and hunters, having been around since 1924. As familiar as the name is, though, it is more likely to evoke images of a shotgun than a striker-fired, polymer-frame 9mm handgun. But that’s changing fast. Released in 2019, Stoeger’s STR-9 is a capable defensive handgun available at a very attractive price. The new tricked-out STR-9S Combat pistol is packed with features and is even more capable. The Combat takes many of the parts that are often added to polymer handguns as aftermarket accessories and includes them right from the factory. At first glance, this is just another striker-fired, polymer-frame, double-stack 9mm that looks, well, like every gun on the market since the 1990s. I’ll start with the elephant in the room. Yes, the…

YOU HEAR PEOPLE TALKING ALL THE TIME about how dry-firing is boring. Sure, I don’t dry-fire as much as I should—not because I find it boring but because I get lazy. However, when I am working at it like I should, I do find dry-firing a bit ineffective. I might be drawing and pressing the trigger in whatever par time I’m trying to meet, but I don’t truly know whether my sights were precisely on target. The Expert Laser Marksman System or ELMS from G-Sight (G-SIGHT. COM) addresses both concerns. It’s neither boring nor ineffective. The heart of the system is the caliber-specific laser training cartridge. This cartridge—available in .380, 9mm, .357 SIG, .40 S&W, .45 ACP and 10mm Auto—is inserted in the chamber of your semiauto. A series of…

PILGRIM TORCH AMMO EMPLOYS A super-light, lead-free bullet pushed at high speeds. But instead of a traditional, mushrooming bullet, Torch projectiles fragment, creating multiple small projectiles in a short amount of travel. I tested the 50-grain +P 9mm load in two different pistols. Velocity from a 3.7-inch-barreled SIG P365 Spectre was 2,007 fps. From a Walther PPQ with a four-inch barrel it was 2,045 fps. I shot the Torch into a bare synthetic ballistic gelatin block from 15 feet with both guns, followed by a round from the SIG into a block covered with a single-layer T-shirt, single-layer sweatshirt and double-layer denim. All the bullets broke into a base and a number of fragments. With the Spectre in bare gel, the base penetrated 10 inches. Seven small fragments penetrated two…

MANY DEDICATED FIREARMS ENTHUSIasts like to customize and upgrade their firearms. Upgrades like custom engraving, aftermarket barrels and action or trigger tuning can cost a considerable amount of money and may require special skills and tools to accomplish. One upgrade that’s fast, simple and affordable, though, is applying a set of Showgun Grips ( SHOWGUNGRIPS.COM). Located in Lakeside, California, Showgun Grips offers a wide range of adhesive decal grips for Glock, SIG and Smith & Wesson pistols that are easy to install at home and don’t cost a great deal of money. And the number of styling options is vast. There are 600 options for Glock pistols alone, covering every model and offering just about any graphic you can imagine—from Armed Forces insignias to camo to outlaw zombies and the…

Most new companies are lucky to last five years. Beretta has survived for five centuries, which is a remarkable feat indeed. Over the course of the company’s history, the Beretta family has seen the advent of breech-loading guns, repeaters, smokeless powder and much more. And through it all, Beretta has managed to remain on the leading edge of firearm innovation for 500 years. Today, the company is as strong as ever. But Beretta faces new challenges. The large and growing concealed-carry market has prompted all gun makers to develop lightweight, compact, polymer-frame semiauto handguns for personal defense. Beretta has been making pocket pistols for decades, and its latest personal defense handgun, the APX Carry, competed well with other guns on the market and was attractively priced. But since the APX…

TAURUS’S ENTRY INTO THE MICRO-COMPACT concealed-carry pistol market, the GX4, made its debut less than a year ago. Now the company has added red-dot capability with the new T.O.R.O. (Taurus Optic Ready Option) version. Pop off the slide optics plate and install a sight. That’s it. With one exception, sights attach without requiring an adapter plate. The GX4 T.O.R.O. accepts the following sights: Shield RMSc, Holosun HS507K and HS407K, Sightmark Mini Shot A-Spec M3, Springfield Hex Wasp, SIG Romeo Zero, Riton 3 Tactix and Trijicon RMRcc (requires adapter plate). That’s a great bunch of options, and you shouldn’t have a problem finding the sight that’s right for you and your budget. Other than this new red-dot capability, the GX4 T.O.R.O. is largely unchanged from its predecessor. One change is it…