GunsAmerica Blog

How to Butcher a Wild Hog – Photo Essay
With so many first time gun owners out there are bound to be a whole bunch of first time hunters as well. Wild hogs are available to hunt year round, and because they have a short gestation cycle, there are almost no bounds to their numbers. Corn feeders can bring wild hogs in to a specific location at fairly reliable regular times, and the wild-caught meat is not gamy at all. Most would agree that especially corn fed wild hog is much better than feedlot commercial pork. This is a photo essay on how to butcher your own wild hog. read more 1 Comment

American Tactical Imports ATI 1911 .22 Rimfire with Fake Silencer- New Gun Review
Not too many guns have been copied to the extent of the ubiquitous 1911. There is nary a gun nut without at least one in the safe, but these days they are expensive to shoot. A box of .45 ACP on a good day in bulk quantity is still over 30 cents a round, even with throw away steel cases. If you want to shoot a 1911 for just fun plinking, or to train gun handling for competition, you really need to get one of the .22 rimfire versions of the 1911 that have come out in the last few years. The first ones came from Italy and had some problems, but they have worked out the bugs with those, and this new German version is nearly perfect. It is called the GSG 1911, from German Sport Guns, imported by American Tactical Imports (ATI), and the MSRP is $399, with a street price a little less. read more 42 Comments

FN-FAL/L1A1 Quad Rail & Picatinny Rail System – Leapers UTG
If you can handle the FAL, and it is heavy and awkward, the history of the gun has shown it to be a reliable and formidable battle rifle. Tricking it out with accessory rails is extremely easy and affordable. UTG (Leapers) seems to be the only company actually making a quad rail for the FAL. It isn’t expensive, MSRP $79.95, and, except for its own 6 bolts, the whole system installs with one screw. This is the same screw that holds on the regular hand guards. The rear Picatinny top rail shown here in the pictures, MSRP $69.95, slides into the slots for the bolt cover. Both parts are what is now called “fourth generation” from Leapers. The concept of tricking out a traditional battle rifle with rails and accessories isn’t new. The rear slide in scope mount rail for the FAL has been available for many years. The quad-rail is fairly new, though it did have its predecessors, but none of the old FAL stuff was all that stable. It worked, and as an initial idea, that was good enough, but in today’s mature accessory market consumers want failsafe reliable platforms that hold zero, and that is what these were made to do. read more 21 Comments

Summer Hunting Anyone? – Varmint and Predator Hunting All Year Round
Calling all hunters! While most of the hunting world is off thinking about whitetails in the fall, varmint and predator hunters are gearing up for an exciting summer. I decided to write this article in collaboration with our regular hunting contributor Carlos Lopez, and our newest discovery, Dwayne Powell, who runs Kissimmee River Hunt and Fish in Okeechobee, Florida, to see if you guys would like to see a summer full of hunting here at GunsAmerica Magazine & Blog. Carlos and Dwayne are passionate hunters and hunt all year, and if we all would like them to share some of their summer experiences with us, they have agreed to put it together. Some folks would argue that hunting goes away until after the kids go back to school, but we disagree. Varmint and predator hunting is all year round, and even if you can’t get out this summer, there is a great deal of merit to keeping your head in the game. Please comment on this article, like it on Facebook, and tweet it on Twitter if you feel like you’d like to see the tactics, the guns and gear in action that you will use this fall, or during the summer yourself. read more 65 Comments

Springfield XDS vs. XDM .45 Compact – Range Report
Back before SHOT Show this year we got a chance to take a look at the Springfield Armory XD(M) .45 Compact 3.8, but we never got to do a real test for a range report. So as we eagerly await the coming of the single stack XDS, before you decide that you must have it, let’s take a look at the Compact XDM .45 alongside the XDS first. read more 28 Comments

Half Price Varmint Nightmare AR-15 Bullets from Midsouth
Half price bullets for an AR-15 is a dream come true for many shooters. But is cheaper inferior? That is exactly our question as we take a look at the half priced bulk purchase .223 “Varmint Nightmare” bullets from Midsouth Shooters Supply. In the interest of full disclosure, Midsouth is an advertiser here on GunsAmerica, but most of the gun industry advertises here over the course of the year, and we try to be objective as possible when it comes to products that our people plan to go out and buy. If these bullets weren’t every bit as good as bullets twice their cost, we simply wouldn’t have written about them. read more 19 Comments

Buying M1 Garands from the US Government – CMP – Civilian Marksmanship Program
Did you wish you bought real estate in 1999? What about gold in 2001? Well the same thing is happening right now with the rifle known as the M1 Garand, the primary battle rifle of the US throughout both WWII and Korea. On the consumer market Garands have already begun to rise in price, but what many people don’t know is that the US Government, or rather a quasi-governmental non-profit corporation who took it over from the US Army in 1996 called the Civilian Marksmanship Program, or CMP, is currently selling off what are probably the last batch of government Garands to the public. All you have to do is apply, supply the required documents, pay, and you can have a certified authentic M1 Garand shipped right to your door, in most states. read more 102 Comments

Blake Shelton to Quit “The Voice” Over NBC Remington Hit Piece?
Don’t worry, Blake Shelton isn’t quitting “The Voice on NBC.” That was just to get you to click this and read it. He should though, if he really believes in “representing country values” that he so lectured his contestant ReaLynn this past week. And for everyone reading this, and even those who didn’t click on it, we should all boycott “The Voice” and everything else on NBC until they issue a public apology to Remington. But like Blake Shelton, we won’t. All of us love guns, we love shooting, and we are proud to support the 2nd Amendment, but we really won’t pull the plug on things we like in protest of a perverted hit piece on Remington that was created to attack our gun industry and our 2nd Amendment freedom. read more 139 Comments

The First Great Firearms Sale of the Decade
Rock Island Auction Company (RIAC) is holding an auction later this month that it’s billing as “The Great Firearms Sale of the Decade.” That’s a pretty bold claim, even for the “nation’s leading auction house for firearms, edged weapons, and military artifacts,” so I did some checking to see what all the hype was about. I wanted to know not only what was going to be auctioned that makes this one so great, but also what the auction is like for sellers and buyers. Was this an auction just for well-heeled collectors and museum staff, or could an ordinary gun owner such as me simply find a deer rifle? Why would someone choose to sell a gun by auction in the first place, and of the major gun auction houses, what should I look for if I was going to sell off a collection? read more 22 Comments

Ruger .22 Package Giveaway – 10/22 Takedown & 22/45 Lite
As a nice end to the NRA show this weekend, Ruger Firearms has offered to run a special post-show giveaway for their two news guns announced for the show, the 10/22 Takedown and the all new 22/45 Lite Mark III. As you may already know, Ruger has passed their original goal of 1,000,000 guns between last year’s NRA show and this one. It has been a company dream since the days of Bill Ruger, and they TOTALLY BLEW IT OUT OF THE WATER! I don’t know what the final number worked out to be, but the latest goal was 1.2 million, and the NRA gets one dollar for each of those guns, which ads up to a huge donation for the NRA of well over $1,000,000. read more 87 Comments