Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2023 i Handguns

9mm or .30 Super Carry? For eons, the great debate has been .45 ACP versus 9mm. In the minds of most, that has been settled in favor of the 9. But with the introduction of the .30 Super Carry, we wondered if 9mm versus .30 Super Carry will be the next great debate. We posed that question on our social channels. Here’s a sampling of what our fans had to say. It won’t. Too much time, effort and product went into the 9mm, and there is no more oxygen for anything else. Watch if Taurus, SCCY or Ruger brings out product for it.—Don K. Not hating on the Super Carry, but it kinda feels like a solution looking for a problem.—Bradley C. .45 ACP, 9mm, .30 Super Carry. Why not…

AS A YOUNG MAN I READ EVERYTHING I could about the 1911, including work by George C. Nonte, an innovative gunsmith who “chopped and channeled” Government Model 1911 pistols. One of his interesting pistols, the Star PD, was featured on a 1975 cover of Guns & Ammo—and found its way into the holsters of many shooters. The pistol was a highly modified Star B, a gun produced by Star Echeverria in Eibar, Spain. The Star B isn’t really a 1911, but it is close. It doesn’t use a grip safety. The pistol’s action features a drawbar that trips the sear, and while the pistol is similar to the Browning Hi Power in some ways, it is unique in others. As an example, the safety may be placed in the Safe…

SINCE CRIMINALS OBVIOUSLY PREFER to avoid apprehension, it should come as no surprise that criminal activity spikes at night. The cloak of darkness provides fewer witnesses and makes it more difficult for their intended victims to detect their approach. But darkness isn’t confined to night. Consider being inside a building where the lights are off. If you carry a gun but haven’t practiced with it in a low-light environment, you’re way behind the curve. Training in diminished light will reveal shortcomings not only in your shooting skills but also in your equipment. The need for a weapon-mounted or handheld light—preferably both—becomes clear. After all, how can you shoot what you haven’t identified as a deadly threat? And if you’ve ever tried to align black sights on a silhouette target in…

Walther’s PDP F-Series is not the first gun designed primarily for women, but it may just be the best. As Jens Krogh, Walther’s vice president of marketing and product development, told me right off the bat, the one thing they didn’t want to do is “just pink it and shrink it,” as in make a PDP with color accents some women might find attractive and simply make it smaller. Instead, designers set out to rethink the company’s flagship pistol platform to make it truly better for female shooters. For starters, it ain’t pink—or blue or purple or what have you. Just basic black, thank you very much, and it looks for all the world like the regular PDP. But looks are deceiving, and the F-Series departs from the PDP design…

WITH THE ADVENT OF THE STR-9 LINE of semiauto striker-fired 9mm semiau-to pistols, handgun shooters learned what shotgun enthusiasts have known for some time: Stoeger knows how to build affordable firearms that don’t feel cheap or fail to operate. The newest member of the STR-9 family, the SC (Subcompact) Optic Ready shares the same can-do attitude as the rest of this family, but the SC is the easiest of all the STR-9s to conceal and comes with a slide that’s cut to add a red dot sight—all for a suggested retail price of under $400. STR-9SC pistols have 3.54-inch blued stainless steel barrels and a black nitride slide with aggressive angular serrations fore and aft. The standard SC model ($329) features-three-dot sights that are dovetailed at the front and the…

WE DON’T TALK ENOUGH ABOUT HANDgun security. Just the other day our local paper carried a story about a woman who left a loaded handgun unsecured—and her six-year-old child got hold of it and died from an accidental gunshot. I don’t know the circumstances in that home, and personal responsibility certainly comes into play, but there are so many security solutions out there that this sort of thing simply shouldn’t happen. If you’re new to gun ownership, it is especially important for you to be aware of what handgun security products are out there. If you’re not new, don’t turn the page. There’s a good chance you have friends or acquaintances who have recently become gun owners. Hopefully, you will either share this information with them or give them your…

SIG P226 XFIVE The single-action-only 9mm from SIG’s Custom Works features a five-inch bull barrel and a stainless steel frame with alloy mag well. The trigger is fully adjustable for pull weight and overtravel, and the removable trigger shoe is adjustable for length of pull. Sights include an adjustable Dawson-style rear, and the slide is also cut for red dots that take SIG’s Pro footprint. Comes with three 20-round mags (a version with 10-rounders is available) with alloy base pads. Available with Black Piranha G10 (shown) or a Classic version with Hogue cocobolo grips. {$2,677, $2,585 Classic; SIGSAUER.COM} VERSACARRY INSURGENT DELUXE The inside-the-waistband/outside-the-waistband rig combines a polymer front with a water buffalo hide backing. The polymer pocket is custom molded, has an open bottom to accept threaded-barrel guns and is…

FN America is a company on the move. Just a few years ago, its handgun options were limited, but that has changed dramatically as the Columbia, South Carolina, firm continues to expand its lineup. Recently, FN’s engineering team has been developing and launching handguns with a variety of cutting-edge features, sizes and chamberings—for everything from concealed carry to competition. The newest of the bunch is the FN 510, a handgun that combines the proven attributes of the 509 series of handguns in the powerful 10mm Auto chambering. I tested the fully accessorized 510 Tactical variant. I should warn you at the outset that I am an unabashed fan of the 10mm Auto and have been since Sonny Crockett carried a Bren Ten handgun so chambered in the early seasons of…

In 2018, SIG Sauer hit a home-run with the introduction of its micro compact 9mm-chambered P365 pistol. With its previously unheard-of capacity-to-size ratio, it’s no exaggeration to say this little pistol revolutionized the firearms industry. For comparison, the similarly sized Glock 43, which preceded the P365 by about three years, featured a flush-fit, six-round magazine. The P365’s flush-fit magazine held 10 rounds. The extended magazine held 12 rounds and provided just enough room to establish a full firing grip. Thanks to the P365, you no longer had to carry a bigger gun to have a double-digit round count. Glock answered with its 43X and 48 models, which upped the capacity to 10 rounds. Springfield entered the micro-compact 9mm capacity competition with its Hellcat, which trumped them all with an extended…

IF YOU’RE A STRICT PURIST, YOU’LL probably dislike the Heritage Rough Rider TC .22 LR. Even the name—TC for Tactical Cowboy—might irk you. However, if you’re a bit more open-minded to the idea of wrangling the single-action revolver into the 21st century, I suggest you give this gun a closer look. The Rough Rider TC has styling cues that call to mind the iconic Colt 1873 Single Action Army. Mechanically, it’s similar to other single-action wheelguns in Heritage’s lineup, but it has a modern flair to this gun thanks to its carbon-fiber grips, Picatinny top rail and threaded barrel. If that sounds as incongruous to you as mounting a set of Pirelli P Zero tires on a ’59 Edsel Corsair, keep in mind that a brand like Heritage—whose catalog contains…

MORE SO THAN OTHER ANIMALS, HUmans are visual creatures. We rely almost exclusively on our eyes to navigate our world, and our dependence on light to navigate our surroundings is fundamental to our existence. Scientists believe it’s the reason we’re naturally afraid of the dark. When we lose awareness of our surroundings we feel anxious. Bad things happen in the dark. That’s a lesson that many victims of violent attacks have learned the hard way. Predators, both the two- and four-legged variety, use the cover of darkness and our resulting vulnerability to their advantage. But you can level the playing field when you carry your own light source, and there are few companies that offer more solutions to illuminating your world than Streamlight. The company’s newest family of weapons lights…

Smith & Wesson has been competing in the 9mm polymer-frame pistol market for well over a decade, and while S&W is hardly the only manufacturer in this segment, I don’t think any other company has spent the time and effort refining and updating its guns that Smith & Wesson has. That’s not to say the original M&P guns weren’t good, but through the years features have been changed, modernized and improved, in both large and small ways, to create pistols that compete well in the carry gun market. The company’s new Equalizer NTS (No Thumb Safety) is a perfect example of this commitment to fine-tuning firearms for the end user. And considering millions of first-time gun owners have been created since the start of the pandemic, the “end user” is…

If you’re going to be a snake, you might as well be a big snake. And like its namesake, the Colt Anaconda is one big snake. While we can debate the relative deadliness of the other reptiles the company’s current snake-gun revolvers are named for—Cobra, King Cobra and Python—there’s no denying the recently reintroduced Anaconda is not only the biggest but also the baddest, thanks to its .44 Magnum chambering. This is truly a hand cannon, a six-shot .44 that’s built on an oversize Python frame and available in six- and eight-inch barrel lengths. Weight on my six-inch sample is three pounds, five ounces, thanks to its beefy stainless steel construction that includes a full-length underlug on the barrel. The barrel also sports the vent rib that sets it and…

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN MOST OF US believed that Smith & Wesson would never bring out a handgun chambered for the .45 ACP. Then, all of a sudden, wham! we were hit with the new Model 645. This new second-generation of semiautomatics was meant to replace the 4500 series of guns, and it came with major improvements. Constructed entirely of stainless steel with a low-luster, bead-blasted finish, the Model 645 was perfect for the sportsman or for law enforcement duties. That was back in 1985, and partnered with the Model 745—a single-action version with a carbon blue slide engineered as an IPSC competition gun—they were instant hits, especially after the Sonny Crockett character on Miami Vice used a Model 645 for two seasons. Still looking for ways to improve…