Tom McHale

The APX was born out of the Army’s Modular Handgun trials. Manufacturers came out with new pistols and revisions of existing models in their efforts to win the lucrative contract to equip the United States Military with 74 boatloads of new handguns to replace the Beretta M9 series now in service.

SHOT Show 2018 has just under 2,000 vendors on site this year, so there’s lots of new long-range shooting gear to see. Better yet, the Range Day outing Monday before the show opens has a 1,000-yard range where some vendors provide the opportunity to try new guns, ammo, and gear. Here are some of the interesting long-range shooting products we found this year.

Over the years I’ve learned exactly how to find all the cool stuff at SHOT Show. Level One is where most of the new companies get space, so it’s where you find all the latest new inventions, guns, and gear. When the bell rings on opening Tuesday, I head straight there, where I spend the entire day wandering the aisles of the basement. Yes, it takes a whole day because the show as a whole is the same size as the Pyramid at Giza and you’ll walk over 12 miles just passing by every booth. Here are some of the cool things I ran across at SHOT Show 2018.

With over 1,600 exhibitors in attendance showing 7 million pounds of gear, there are a lot of new products for legally armed citizens at the Shooting, Hunting, And Outdoor Trade (SHOT) show. If you choose to carry concealed, you might be interested in some of the new concealed carry gear we found this year. Here are a few items that peaked our interest.

As defensive weapons, rifles rock. They’re easy to shoot accurately unless you’re into torching off .577 Nitro Express cigar cartridges. With box magazine designs like the those of the AR-whatever families, capacity is great, and reloading is easy. In fact, the only real downside of a rifle as compared to a pistol is maneuverability and portability.

Would you rather be quiet or accurate? Do you have to choose between them or do this two concepts coexist like politicians and sex scandals?

Not so long ago, I competed in an F-Class match, shooting at a distance of 800 yards. One thing that stood out was the competitors’ finicky attention to muzzle devices, or more accurately, the lack thereof. First, F-class allows none, so there’s that. Second, the chatter on the firing line was that muzzle devices like brakes, flash hiders, and suppressors only reduce the accuracy of a rifle. I have no reason to doubt that, but it did get me thinking.

It’s that time again. You know, June, when all the stores start putting up their Christmas decorations! Just kidding, it’s November, so you saw all the holiday hubbub start months ago. Whenever you choose to start the celebrating, it’s time to start thinking about gift lists. Here are a few items that are on ours. [...]

The very last step in the reloading process is inspection and packaging. After all is done, I like to combine the inspection and packaging steps. As I put each completed cartridge into a box, I look it over to make sure everything is in order.

Crimping gets a bad rap. Just as we sometimes tend to fix construction mistakes with a hammer rather than taking the time to properly fit parts, we tend to view crimping as a way to “fix” a less than perfect bullet seating. The problem with crimping is that it sounds so logical. The word “crimping” kind of implies the process of locking a bullet in place. But, there is more to it than just that.