Gun Digest January 2021

When’s the last time you sent a .22 LR bullet downrange? Seriously. Ease your finger off the 9mm, .5.56 NATO or .30-06 trigger for just a moment and think about that question. Has it been a while? I presume I’m in the majority that, when I have the itch to shoot a few rounds at the range, I grab my concealed-carry 9mm gun, my .270 Winchester hunting rifle or a 5.56-chambered AR-15 to do the scratching. Why? Because those are the guns with which I want to always be proficient in case there’s work to be done. And with those three guns, I can do darn near anything that needs doing. But those three firearms are also extremely difficult to feed right now. With the current ammunition climate becoming more volatile by the…

HISTORICAL NOTES Winchester Ammunition, in conjunction with Savage, introduced the .17 Winchester Super Magnum rimfire rifle cartridge at the 2013 SHOT Show. A Winchester Ammunition announcement called this “the most revolutionary rimfire cartridge in the company’s almost 150-year history.” Further, the company said, “The .17 Win Super Mag. offers the downrange performance of a centerfire cartridge at only a fraction of the cost. For the first time in history, hunters can expect pinpoint accuracy and devastating performance from a rimfire cartridge, at ranges well past 200 yards.” .17 WINCHESTER SUPER MAGNUM FACTORY BALLISTICS One of Winchester’s goals with the new .17 was to keep it affordable. A box of 50 should retail for about $15, which is much cheaper than almost any centerfire varmint load. “Our engineers have been developing the top-secret .17 Win Super…

Instructors have been preaching it for years, and in my 2013 book, Handgun Training for Personal Protection, I called it “the secret.” The single, most important skill you must master with a handgun is the ability to operate the trigger—make the handgun fire—without disturbing the sight picture. As simple as it sounds, this single task is the most difficult part of becoming proficient with a defensive handgun. It’s the foundation which must be laid before any other skills can be built. Anything you build on a foundation that’s not up to par is doomed; at some point, you’ll add something to this—less-than-ideal—foundation, which will cause it to collapse. It might be stress, unique positions, low light or a host of other circumstances through which you must perform. Sight alignment and trigger control…

Back when I was in martial arts, we worked hard to improve hand strength. Knuckle push-ups, fingertip push-ups and tossing bags of sand back and forth were standard practice, and we were dedicated. Not everyone can do that, and not everyone has the option of increasing hand strength. For a lot of people, what they have is what they have. And if that isn’t enough to reliably cycle the slide on a pistol, they have a problem. Well, there’s a solution. Handi-Racker to the rescue. The idea is simple: The Handi-Racker, which comes in three sizes to match your pistol, acts as a third hand. There’s a slot in the bottom edge with a pinched-in middle. The two ends are different widths, so you can match pretty much any slide size with…

On June 28, 2020, in response to a riotous mob breaking through an iron gate into their St. Louis gated community, with a mass of approximately 300 people coming down the road toward their house, attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey grabbed firearms, he an AR-15 and she, a Bryco 9mm. They went outside their home to confront the riotous mob from their front porch. In doing so, they set themselves up for St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner to charge them with “Unlawful Use of a Weapon.” The legal case against the McClos-keys will take many months to resolve, and until the trial occurs, we won’t see all the evidence of the case, although YouTube videos featuring Mark Mc-Closkey indicate that he had a fear of being attacked by the mob,…

A couple decades ago, I bought a rifle which would become—and remain—my dedicated varmint rifle. It’s a Ruger Model 77 MKII in .22-250 Remington, with a sporter-weight 22-inch barrel, a Hogue over-molded stock and Timney trigger. While the accuracy wasn’t terrible with factory ammunition—though the factory trigger was a different story—I wasn’t getting exactly what I wanted from handloads, predominately using IMR4064 and IMR4320. Both of those powders were chosen because I had them on hand from years of loading for my .308 Winchester and because they sat in the middle of the burn rate choices for the .22-250 case. Speaking to some guys who I knew were serious about the .22-250 as a target cartridge, they enlightened me. “Look no further than Hodgdon H380; anything else and you’re wasting your…