Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i Shooting Times

IT SADDENS ME TO REPORT THAT SHOOTING TIMES COPY EDITOR MICHAEL Brecklin died peacefully at home in January. He was 69 years old. Mike was born in 1953 and raised in Sunnyland, Illinois. He was a popular, athletic student, and he once told me he had been elected president of his high school class. He attended Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, and Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, studying journalism. Sometime in the mid-1970s, Mike took a summer job at PJS Publications (which is now part of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment Outdoor Sportsman Group)—and stayed. He worked on a number of magazines and also served as a special projects editor until 1987. From 1987 until 1990, he was the editor of Handgun Quarterly, which later became HandGunning magazine. Mike took…

INTRODUCED IN 1933, WINCHESTER’S MODEL 63 was the descendant of the Model 1903, which had the distinction of being the first U.S.-made semiautomatic .22-caliber rimfire rifle. (It was chambered for the .22 Win. Auto cartridge.) Just as impressively, the Model 1903 was the first-ever semiautomatic rifle produced and marketed to the civilian market. However, the Model 63 also bears a “first-ever” distinction. It was the first semiautomatic rifle Winchester ever chambered in .22 Long Rifle. The Model 63’s design harks back to Thomas Crossley Johnson, who was a noted firearms inventor for Winchester and was known for creating the Model 10 rifle that fired the .401 Win. Self-Loading cartridge. Johnson’s systems utilized lightweight bolts and counterbalance weights tuned to balance the recoil. They created a delayed reaction and—once chamber pressure…

A FEW SHORT YEARS AGO, YOU couldn’t turn around without bumping into a new 10mm Auto gun of some persuasion. Semiautomatic pistols, revolvers, carbines—you name the type of gun, and it was being chambered for the four-decades-old 10mm Auto cartridge. The cartridge, which was originally designed for law enforcement use in 1983, was undergoing an interesting revival close to 35 years after it was introduced. Many of the new guns were intended for multiple uses, including as self-defense guns, as trail guns, and as hunting guns. At about the same time, FN was developing its 509 semiautomatic pistol, which would be submitted for military trials in 2017. The FN 509 is a striker-fired, polymer-frame 9mm modular pistol that a lot of development went into. (You can read Joseph von Benedikt’s…

WEBLEY IS UNDOUBTEDLY ENG- land’s best-known revolver maker, thanks in part to the sidearm carried by fictional character Doctor Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories. More significantly, the Webley revolvers were Great Britain’s wartime go-to and served in the fists of soldiers for more than three-quarters of a century, including both World Wars. Notoriety was first achieved when the Royal Irish Constabulary made Webley’s double-action revolver standard issue in 1867. The “RIC” gun was forward-looking and utilized a centerfire .442-caliber cartridge. Interestingly, a pair of the Royal Irish revolvers were allegedly given to General Custer by Lord Berkeley a couple years later, and Custer was probably using them when he led the 7th Cavalry to its demise at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. With the primary world power at…

UNVEILED AT THIS YEAR’S SHOT SHOW IN LAS VEGAS, SAFARILAND’S ALL- new SafariVault is the strongest holster body the company has ever produced. It offers the most adaptable design for use with optics and lights. According to the company, SafariVault’s improved ALS design reduces flex and increases crush resistance. Internal locking components protect the firearm and accessories from impact and the elements, a brand-new self-clearing optic cover accommodates closed and open emitter handgun optics, and a new trigger guard stabilization mechanism prevents movement of the pistol within the holster. The holster’s open muzzle design provides clearance for threaded barrels and compensators and allows debris and brass to pass through. The SafariVault is compatible with Safariland three-hole-pattern accessories. It has a more prominent lever button and a magnetic slide guidance system.…

THE WORD “ICONIC” GETS THROWN AROUND these days with reckless abandon, being applied to everything from photographs to ice cream cones, and I’ve long since lost count of the number of so-called “iconic” handguns throughout history. Having said that, however, one of the few I believe to be genuinely iconic—that is, representing an ideal type—is the Colt Woodsman in its many and varied forms. The Woodsman is a 10-shot, semiautomatic .22 rimfire pistol designed by John M. Browning and put into production by Colt’s Manufacturing Co. in 1915. It was originally called the Target pistol, and the Woodsman name was adopted in 1927. Over the next 50 years, it evolved through three distinct patterns and was only discontinued in 1977. During its lifetime, an estimated 800,000 were produced by Colt.…

The great-grandson of a co-founder of Smith & Wesson formed his own gun company and created what many think was the most accurate revolver in the world. EVERY SERIOUS GUN ENTHUSIAST MOST LIKELY knows that John Moses Browning, one of America’s most prolific gun designers ever, was descended from a gunsmith/gunmaker. Well, the subject of this column also had an ancestor who was a famous gun developer. I’m referring to Daniel Baird Wesson II, also known as Dan Wesson. Daniel Baird Wesson II was born on April 22, 1916, in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. He grew up amid stories of the gun industry and his flamboyant great-grandfather D.B. Wesson, co-founder of Smith & Wesson. Dan graduated from Deerfield Academy and Amhurst College in Massachusetts. On April 12, 1938, at the age of…

THE FULL-FEATURED, SWITCH-BARREL, RIMFIRE CZ MODEL 457 IS NOW offered in two left-hand versions in American and Varmint (shown) configurations. Available in .22 LR and .22 WMR, the 457 LH rifles come with left-side bolts, left-side safeties, left-side extractors, a 24-inch light-profile barrel or a 20-inch heavy-profile barrel, Turkish walnut stocks, adjustable triggers, and five-shot detachable magazines. There are no sights, but the receivers have integral 11mm dovetails for scope mounting. MSRP: $589 (American), $625 (Varmint) cz-usa.com Remington .22 LR Viper, Yellow Jacket & SubSonic Remington’s Viper, Yellow Jacket, and SubSonic .22 LR loads now come in new 225-round packages. The 36-grain Plated Truncated Cone Solid Viper has a factory-rated velocity of 1,410 fps. The 33-grain Plated Truncated Cone Hollowpoint Yellow Jacket’s velocity is rated at 1,500 fps. And…

SOME PEOPLE NEED A REVOLVER MORE powerful than the venerable .44 Magnum. Smith & Wesson and CorBon teamed up to meet their exact needs in 2003. This project was not easy. CorBon developed two cartridges that required S&W to create a new frame size not only because of the cartridges’ impressive sizes, but also because of peak pressures rivaling our most powerful rifle cartridges. The new revolver—designated the X-Frame—weighed between 56 and about 80 ounces, depending on barrel configuration and options. Compare that to the 45 ounces of the original S&W Model 29 .44 Magnum with a 6.0-inch barrel. Then look at the cartridges. The .500 S&W Magnum The .500 S&W case appears unrelated to any standardized preexisting case. Its empty case length (1.625 inches) is slightly longer than a…

E VERYBODY LOVES TAKEDOWN RIFLES, RIGHT? I KNOW I SURE DO. Two of my all-time favorites are Browning’s semiautomatic SA-22 and Winchester’s vintage pump-action Model 1890. Those both happen to be .22 rimfires. Surely everybody loves .22 rimfire rifles. When you combine the takedown concept with the .22 rimfire chambering, you have a winning combination, and that’s exactly what Savage’s newest version of the semiautomatic A22 is. What’s more, the A22 Takedown has one of the simplest takedown procedures I’ve come across. Features & Operation Before I get to how the A22 Takedown takes down, let’s look at its main features, starting with the innovative stock. The buttstock and forearm are made of a high-strength synthetic composite material. The sculpted forearm has three textured areas that wrap all the way…

Q. LAST MONTH SHOOTING TIMES PUBLISHED TWO WELL-WRITTEN GUN reviews of new semiautomatic pistols but did not describe how to disassemble them. One was the Ed Brown EVO E9-LW Model 1911, and the other was the Dan Wesson DWX hybrid CZ75/Model 1911. I’m relatively new to guns, especially handguns, and have a question that applies to both pistols. I want to know how to disassemble them. I bought a Model 1911 and have learned how to disassemble it for routine cleaning. It has the traditional barrel and barrel bushing setup. I’ve read in several gun magazines about how to disassemble a striker-fired semiautomatic pistol that doesn’t have a barrel bushing, so I sort of have an idea about how that is done, but I haven’t seen anything on how to…

CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, THE CLIMATE’S not always comfortably warm down South. In fact, many days during winter in northern Alabama, where I live, can be miserable. For example, last December when I was preparing this column, we did not see the sun for nearly a week, and 6+ inches accumulated in the rain gauge. The rain and unseasonably warm temperatures made it muggy outdoors, which made for unfavorable shooting conditions. The following week it was much colder, again not conducive to going to the range, and the forecast was calling for snow flurries! However, the silver lining in that cloud was all that inclement weather gave me ample time to stay home and ruminate over some of the lessons I’ve learned in my handloading endeavors over the 50+ years…

HORACE SMITH AND D.B. WESSON formed a partnership in 1852 and called it Smith & Wesson. During the next year a patent was filed for the improvement of a metallic cartridge that had been introduced in 1845 by Frenchman Louis-Nicolas Flobert. His invention consisted of a small lead projectile secured to the mouth of a percussion cap. Containing no powder, ignition of the priming compound in the cap served as the propellant. In those days, the sprawling homes of wealthy Europeans often had parlors where indoor target shooting at fairly close range was popular. For this reason, small single-shot rifles and pistols chambered for the Flobert cartridge were often called parlor guns. Even though the sport was not as popular among Americans, prior to forming S&W, D.B. Wesson produced a…