Personal Defense World #230 Gun Buyer's Guide

What is your firearm of choice? Do you need a full-sized handgun, rifle or shotgun for home defense? How about a subcompact or pocket-sized sentry that you can easily carry? Or do you instead need one that does the duty of both? Read on to find out about the best options out there. From in-depth gun reviews to our 96-page buyer’s guide section rounding up the best available firearms on the market, we have everything you need right here. Our experts also pick out the top 16 shotguns for 2020 that can pull duty from defense to hunting to competition. Want to know a good self-defense load for your newly acquire scattergun? Then check out our review of Federal’s Force X2 Buckshot; it is a hair-splitting article. And this decision…

While we focus on the new and shiny items in the firearms world, sometimes we forget about the things that have remained unchanged. One such item is our venerable buckshot. There have been vast improvements in rifle and pistol bullets over the last century, but buckshot has remained largely unchanged for more than 100 years. During that time, generations of Americans have protected themselves, their loved ones and their homes with buckshot-loaded shotguns, relying on buckshot’s ample knockdown power and oversized pattern to neutralize any threat quickly and effectively. That changed recently when Federal released something that is truly innovative: Force X2 splitting buckshot. FULL FORCE Federal set out to develop a buckshot load that hits like a train, forcing the target to absorb the full force of the pellets’ power. And…

SCCY’s CPX compact 9mm and .380 ACP autoloaders deliver quality manufacture and design that you wouldn’t expect in pistols that often retail for less than $300, even with three magazines included. Now SCCY is offering them with factory-installed Crimson Trace CTS-1500 red-dot sights. I tested the .380 ACP CPX-3RD and CPX-4RD. These pistols are identical, except for the addition of an ambidextrous external thumb-operated safety on the CPX-4RD. Either gun can be bought for about $300 if you shop around. The factory-installed sight nests in a deeply milled cut on top of the slide, which secures the unit and protects it from getting knocked out of alignment and makes for a very low profile. The glass is about level with the top of the slide, and the rear of the sight…

Just as no particular firearm is created exactly equal to another, neither is the human body. Carrying a concealed firearm presents its challenges for anyone, but more so for folks with bigger body types. Some folks might think that carrying a firearm is the same for one person as it is for another, but it just simply is not. There are many different pistols to choose from. There are just as many different body types. You have skinny, fat, tall, short and any variation in between. What is meant by a “bigger person,” you ask? I am talking about those of us out there who are overweight or round-figured. With the bigger body types come some obstacles anyway, let alone when you’re carrying a firearm. This is especially true when…

The world is full of unknowns, so we must “Always be ready.” This is not just a motto for 5.11 Tactical; this is a mindset that its founders built a company around. No one can possibly predict what’s going to happen every minute of the day, but if we choose to, we can prepare for it. The gear we carry, the clothes we wear, the mindset we hold—whether we are on or off duty, in a big city or out of cell range—no matter what happens, we push forward, not out of the absence of fear but in spite of it. 5.11 ORIGINS It all started with a pair of pants. The FBI training academy adopted the original 5.11 pant as its preferred training pant in 1992, forging a decades-long relationship that…

I have to admit I didn’t pay much attention when Sig Sauer first introduced their polymer framed, striker-fired Model 320 in 2014. Anyone over 50 will probably know what I mean when I say age had suddenly made my arms too short for most conventional iron sights. At the time, I had just started to explore the world of red-dot reflex sights on both handguns and rifles. First a Winchester 94 .44 Mag Trapper was converted to a red-dot, followed by a .44 Mag revolver, another rifle and then a couple of more handguns. These experiments convinced me that electronic sights were a workable solution for people of advancing age and/or farsighted tendencies. Then in mid-2016, I noticed that Sig had introduced a new variant of their M320 handgun that came standard…