Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2022 i Handguns

High Standards Enjoy the magazine especially the issue with the High Standard article. I have one I bought in the 1950s: the M101 Dura-Matic. I would appreciate any information you could share on this one. RogeR PeteRson, ConneCtiCut The Dura-Matic M101 was an economy-priced, no-frills Hi-Standard offering made from 1954–70. In 1969 it had a suggested retail of $59.50 as opposed to the $65 sticker price of the Sport King discussed in my article. Despite its original economy niche, I’ve seen Dura-Matics in pristine shape go for as high as $750, with starting bids in the $400 range! —Payton Miller More on Charter Arms Really enjoyed your article on the Charter Arms Undercover in the April/May issue. I have five Charter Arms guns. Can you tell me where I can…

THEY SAY TO BE THE CHAMPION YOU must challenge the champion, and that’s certainly what Federal Premium is doing with the release of the .30 Super Carry cartridge. For decades, the .380 Auto and 9mm have been the round of choice for compact carry pistols, but Federal believes its new .30 Super Carry can outperform both these stalwarts. As Paris killed Achilles by striking him in the heel, Federal plans to prey upon the weaknesses of both the .380 Auto and the 9mm. By loading the .30 Super Carry with a 0.312-inch bullet between 100 and 115 grains and driving that bullet between 1,150 and 1,250 fps from the muzzle, the .30 Super Carry duplicates 9mm performance. It also soundly outperforms the .380 ACP, considered marginal by many as a…

Massachusetts-based Savage Arms is a well-known and respected player in the rifle world, but some handgunners may not be intimately familiar with the brand. After all, Savage Arms had not released a new handgun since well before World War II. That changed earlier this year when Savage announced the Stance, a micro-compact, striker-fired, polymer-frame handgun designed with concealed carry and personal defense in mind. This handgun combines many of the features that consumers have come to expect on a carry gun but with characteristic Savage Arms value. Though Savage Arms isn’t a brand often associated with concealed carry, the company was actually an innovator in the development of compact and concealable handguns. The Savage Model 1907, which was a compact and relatively lightweight pistol, was released more than a century…

RUGER INTRODUCED THE WRANGLER A FEW years back, and this year it added a few new models in the unique birdsheadstyle grip frame. It’s available in three Cerakote ceramic colors—black, silver and Burnt Bronze—so it’s made to be rugged and weatherproof outdoors. The $279 price tag reflects the savings of doing away with polishing this aluminum-framed gun, as is the case on the big-ticket centerfire revolvers. Regardless, the Cerakote finish is smooth to the touch, durable and made to last the lifetime of a gun that’s used reasonably. In addition, I found that all the parts of the gun—the frame, grip frame, ejection rod and trigger assembly—are assembled with precision like you’d see in a hand-built gun thanks to modern CNC machining. The grip is fashioned in the well-known birdshead…

ONE OF THE TENETS OF TRADITIONAL martial arts is that they be used exclusively for self-defense. This philosophy is exemplified by axioms such as, “There is no first strike in karate.” While that’s a virtuous sentiment, fights—whether with fists or guns—are not won by defending. Allowing your opponent to make the first move inherently means you’ll be a step behind, always trying to catch up—reacting to his actions. In a fight, you should never resign yourself to the role of defender. Sure, there are times when you have no choice but to defend, but the goal should always be to attack the attacker at the earliest opportunity. If you’re alert and know what to look for, you may be able to upend an attack before it starts. This is accomplished…

Not long after the 10mm was released, the cartridge found itself hanging over the yawning abyss of obscurity thanks in no small part to a lack of suitable firearms. Bren Ten pistols, which were the first to be chambered in 10mm, were available in the early 1980s, but unfortunately magazines for those pistols were not. To add insult to injury, the FBI—for whom the 10mm was essentially developed when the agency decided it needed more stopping power after the infamous 1986 Miami shootout—gave up on the 10mm in favor of the .40 S&W. One group that never gave up on the 10mm, however, was shooters. Competitors, hunters and some law enforcement and military units stuck with the 10mm, and as the years passed so did those early bad memories of…

THE OLD SAYING THAT GOES “BIGGER IS better” surely applies to both the Taurus Raging Bull and the larger of its two chamberings, the .454 Casull. “Bigger” is the perfect word for this revolver. “Better”? The .454 Casull certainly upstages just about everything in a hunting cartridge the average person can handle. At 53 ounces, this is a full-size gun. It’s built on what Taurus calls an Extra Large frame, and the heavy-duty rubber grips—complete with a red insert—are contoured with finger grooves. The Raging Bull is precisely fitted to include the almost invisible mating of the sideplate to the frame, the joining of the barrel to the frame, and the way in which the underlug blends into the barrel. This is a five-shot revolver, although the version chambered for…

GROWING UP IN GERMANY AFTER WORLD War II, Gary Wilhelm set his sights on being a gun designer. After three years of work, he had a .22 version of the famed Luger pistol that had the same beautiful handling characteristics of the P08 9mm Luger. Wilhelm wanted a high-quality pistol of the best materials yet still be cheap to produce. His design was a straight blowback using many sheet metal parts. The sheet metal was not mere 1010 mild steel but proper alloys for long life and ruggedness. It was a bit wider and bulkier above the hand than the P08, but it handled like a P08. The new pistol was brought out by Stoeger in 1969 with much fanfare. The new gun had a forged 7075 T6 aluminum frame…

SIG P365 .380 Surely by now you’re familiar with the SIG P365, essentially the first high-capacity micro-compact 9mm. Now this excellent pistol is available in .380 for a low-recoil option with the same footprint and a 10+1 capacity. It has a 3.1-inch barrel, and it’s 5.8 inches long, an inch wide and 4.2 inches tall. Weight is 15.7 ounces. It features SIGlite night sights and is available with or without a manual safety. {$600, SIGSAUER.COM } FEDERAL PUNCH .44 SPECIAL The .44 Special is my favorite revolver cartridge, an effective but relatively easy-shooting round. So it’s good to see major makers like Federal are still developing new loads for it. The new .44 Special Punch load features a 180-grain skived bullet and soft lead core for excellent penetration and expansion.…

Federal recently announced the release of its new .30 Super Carry, which offers 9mm ballistics from a cartridge that uses a 0.312-inch bullet. (You can read about it in “Essentials” elsewhere in this issue.) To demonstrate the full accuracy and performance potential of the new cartridge, Federal needed to chamber it in a handgun that would function reliably and wring out its full accuracy potential. Not surprisingly, one of the companies Federal chose to partner with on this project was Nighthawk Custom out of Berryville, Arkansas. Currently, Nighthawk is offering both its President and GRP 1911 pistols chambered in the new .30 Super Carry. The GRP (Global Response Pistol) is Nighthawk’s all-black entry-level 1911, although that brief description hardly does this gun justice. For starters, while this pistol may bear…

John Wesley Hardin was a murdering son of a bitch. From the time he was 15 until he was shot in the back of the head in 1895 at the age of 42, he left a trail of dead bodies—nearly 30 that were corroborated and a lot more he or others claimed he’d killed. Most of his killings were done with cap-and-ball revolvers and a few long guns, but the murder for which he was finally apprehended and jailed—the killing of lawman Charles Webb—was with a Smith & Wesson Model 3. Few figures in the American West were more notorious, so it makes sense that Uberti would include Hardin and the Smith & Wesson Model 3 top-break revolver in its Outlaws & Lawmen series. The Hardin gun is a classy…