GunsAmerica Blog

American Tactical Imports ATI 1911 .22 Rimfire with Fake Silencer- New Gun Review

Administrator — Mon, 14 May 2012 03:32:09 +0000

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.

FN-FAL/L1A1 Quad Rail & Picatinny Rail System – Leapers UTG

Administrator — Mon, 14 May 2012 01:04:21 +0000

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.

Summer Hunting Anyone? – Varmint and Predator Hunting All Year Round

Administrator — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:41:42 +0000

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.

Springfield XDS vs. XDM .45 Compact – Range Report

Administrator — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 22:58:49 +0000

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.

Half Price Varmint Nightmare AR-15 Bullets from Midsouth

Administrator — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:46:21 +0000

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.

Buying M1 Garands from the US Government – CMP – Civilian Marksmanship Program

Administrator — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 04:11:18 +0000

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.

Blake Shelton to Quit “The Voice” Over NBC Remington Hit Piece?

Administrator — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:17:49 +0000

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.

The First Great Firearms Sale of the Decade

Administrator — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:46:03 +0000

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?

Ruger .22 Package Giveaway – 10/22 Takedown & 22/45 Lite

Administrator — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:25:14 +0000

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.

Ruger 22/45 Lite Mark III – New Gun Review

Administrator — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:02:19 +0000

If any gun is quintessentially Ruger, it’s their .22 caliber pistol. Originally designed by Bill Ruger in his garage, it was the very first gun Sturm, Ruger and Company sold, and has been in production continuously for nearly 63 years. It was a huge success from the get go and has continued to get better as new materials, new manufacturing methods, and other refinements have been made in response to consumer demand. The 22/45 Model variation was introduced in 1992 to provide a training gun for the venerable 1911 Government Model .45. It has the same grip angle and control locations giving 1911 owners a less expensive alternative for perfecting their pistolcraft. In fact, it’s so faithful to the 1911 that you can use 1911 grips on it. All you have to do to make them work is to relieve the upper front corner of the left grip panel to accommodate the slide stop button. So if you have a set of the new Crimson Trace laser grips on your 1911, you can put them on your Ruger for training.

GunsAmerica NRA Show 2012 Giveaway – Walther, Kel-Tec, SlideFire, Leatherwood

Administrator — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 05:04:20 +0000

The NRA Annual Meeting & Exhibits is this weekend in St. Louis. It starts today, April 12th, and goes through the weekend. If you are an NRA member you can go to the show for free. If you aren’t an NRA member, please consider JOINING NRA now. No matter what candidate gets in this year at this point we are going to have a tough 4 years ahead and NRA is the only organization that consistently is watching the ship. As is our custom, we are doing a big giveaway for the weekend. This is our biggest yet actually. Because of the issues with spam filters and a ridiculous delay on all of our communications by AOL, Yahoo and many cable internet providers, we have to do the announcements for the giveaway through Facebook. As with all of our Facebook giveaways, you don’t have to be a member of Facebook to get the codes. It just makes it easier. The codes will be posted to our public Facebook page throughout the show. The process is the same as the others. We will post a code and you use standard email to send it to NRASHOW2012@gunsamerica.com (not case sensitive) to enter.

SlideFire SSAR-15-SBS and SSAK47-XRS

Administrator — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 03:42:18 +0000

It has been just over a year since we first posted an article about the bump stock from SlideFire Solutions called the SSAR-15. At the time, nobody knew if this cool new toy would still be legal a year later, but here we are. Not only is the SlideFire still legal, it has gone from an obscure product we had to stumble across to nearly a household word for those of us who think of gunshops as our second homes.

Leatherwood ART M-1000 Auto-Ranging Riflescope

Administrator — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:06:13 +0000

When it comes to shooting gadgets it is very seldom that I want to jump up and down on my roof and yell “look at this look at this look at this!” But this is the way I feel about the Leatherwood M-1000 scope. I almost wish it was a $2,000 thing, because people would take it more seriously, but though it is based on technology going all the way back to 1970, and the MSRP is $459, with a generalstreet price under $400, it is one of the most excitingly nerdy thingamajigs I have ever encountered in the shooting world. It may be a little ugly compared to the more elegant scopes of today, but this largish awkward looking scope can give you the ability to “frame, aim and shoot, ” point of aim, point of impact between 100 and 1000 meters without ever having to lift your eye from the eyepiece. And you can change from one load to the next, or even one rifle to the next with two minor adjustments. Does that totally rock or does that totally rock?

Bullet Casting for Beginners Part 2 – Hardness, Sizing & Lubing

Administrator — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 02:17:43 +0000

Once you understand the basics of bullet casting, which we covered in Part One of this series, you are well on your way to a finished bullet you can actually shoot. The next two steps are sizing and lubing the bullet, which we will cover here. I will also go over the basics of “hardness,” which will determine how much pressure and velocity your finished bullet can handle. If you are already a handloader/re-loader, you should be able to load up your bullets after this installment. This is not rocket science as you will soon see, and a lot of the mythology of bullet casting you can pretty much ignore for simple range rounds. Remember we started this series with the concept of “free bullets for life.” The more you complicate anything the more expensive it becomes, so at first, let’s just keep it simple.

Ruger 10/22-TD Takedown Model – New Gun Review

Administrator — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:15:28 +0000

The Ruger 10/22 generally needs no introduction. There is no more recognizable and ubiquitous .22 rifle on the planet. Today Ruger released a new 10/22-TD, MSRP $389, which stands for “Takedown,” and it is a completely new design for the gun. It even comes with its own backpack. You probably already have questions formulating. Takedown designs can sometimes have issues with accuracy, returning to zero and long term reliability, but Ruger seems to have addressed all of these going into the design of this new gun. From what I can see so far, the 10/22-TD should be a great long term success and a reliable gun for those fortunate enough to get one. You may have heard already that Ruger has stopped taking new orders temporarily from distributors because of record sales, but there should be plenty of them available at least for a couple weeks.

GunStock – 3 Day Event – Gun Club of America

Administrator — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:52:50 +0000

If you are serious about guns and learning how they work inside, the Gun Club of America (GCA) may be something you should consider. It is run by the American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI), and for three days in June, the 15th to the 17th, they are going to have their first “GunStock” event ever in Fallon, Nevada. It is a chance for students to meet the instructors that appear in the AGI videos, and learn about a bunch of new subjects. Most importantly, you get to shoot OPG and OPA, “other people’s guns,” and “other people’s ammo.” For members of the GCA the rates for the event are discounted through April 25th, and besides being a great learning experience and a lot of fun, part of the proceeds will be donated to a veterans charity called The Pathway Home.

Gibbs “Pig Buster”—A Hard-Hitting Hog Hunting Rifle With A Little History

Administrator — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 04:11:45 +0000

The folks at Gibbs Rifle Co. have a history of taking surplus military rifles of arguably minimal collector interest and turning them into sport specialty rifles that have a serious “fun gun” factor and “tough as nails” demeanor. Perhaps the best known of them are the Summit and Quest chambered in .45-70 and .308, respectively. Those were built on surplus Enfield actions and were not attempts to reproduce any sort of historical military gun at all. Instead, they were practical, utilitarian rifles that made good use of surplus military and some new parts. “Commercial sporterizing,” probably best describes it, and as Gibbs puts it, they “…take the best features of historic military arms and translate them to meet modern sporting needs.”

Eric Holder Racist Anti-Gun Rant Victimizes Minorities – Editorial

Administrator — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 21:29:45 +0000

Isn't it time to detach the 2nd Amendment from politics? Having the freedom to defend yourself is a fundamental right. Don't we all agree on that? Who wants to see innocent law abiding Americans live life in fear of crime because the government has taken away their fundamental right to defend themselves? The political climate is perfect right now for politicians to stand up for 2nd Amendment rights for all Americans. Nobody is buying the anti-gun spin and lies anymore. It is time for a real change.

You may have heard news about a new video that has surfaced of Attorney General Eric Holder plotting to change the way people think about guns. Most of the gun news website have been buzzing about it this week, but so far I have yet to find anyone who doesn't totally miss the point. It shouldn't come as any surprise that Eric Holder is part of the liberal anti-2nd Amendment machine, and that he is just one more of President Obama's appointees that are completely out of touch with mainstream America. If you actually watch the video though. It will show you how black leaders have become racist, and that black leaders like Eric Holder just plain old don't trust law abiding black people with guns. Black leaders have created a subculture of disarming victims in the black community, and this has got to stop.

Have You Considered Re-Loading Your Ammo?

Administrator — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 02:18:04 +0000

As ammo has gotten more and more expensive over the past few years, a lot of people have begun to consider re-loading, and well they should. Because when you buy loaded ammunition, part of what you are paying for is the bullet you shoot downrange and the powder and primer that burn, and part of that cost is also the brass case. Re-loading, or for the purpose of discussion here, “handloading,” allows you to reuse that brass case for more loaded rounds, thereby saving you money on re-buying the brass. Not all cases are brass of course. These days some cases are aluminum or steel, and these generally cannot be reloaded (That is why steel and brass cased ammo is cheaper). But almost all brass ammunition is capable of being re-loaded, and when you get right down to it, brass ammo was created to reload. Leaving brass on the ground is just plain old wasting, and these days who can afford that?

Birchwood Casey Dirty Bird Game Targets

Administrator — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 01:34:00 +0000

Once upon a time paper targets were boring. Concentric circles are fun and all, but if you shoot regularly, especially with friends, finding other stuff to shoot at is always a welcome addition to our sport. Birchwood Casey has for some time been experimenting with ideas for targets that not only make hits more detectible, but also give you multiple positions on the target to shoot at.