Gun Digest May 2022

Everyone who loves guns, loves big guns. Don’t believe me? Pull out a .44 Rem. Mag. at your range and watch everyone flock. Uncase a .500 S&W Magnum and a couple bystanders might even work up enough courage to ask if they can pull the trigger a time or two. The same gravitational pull applies to long-guns, too. Shooters will stop and stare for a bit at a $15K Perazzi, but when the .50 BMG lays down at the line, everyone drops what they’re doing to take in the experience. Aesthetically, this makes sense, right? Big guns are generally beautiful: A large hunk of metal crafted into a high-functioning piece of working art. Even an X-Frame revolver is stunning through its polished simplicity. But I believe it’s the power that really draws shooters…

HISTORICAL NOTES Originated by the British firm Holland & Holland in 1912, this is one of the original belted, rimless, magnum-type cartridges. It has been used as the basis for numerous wildcats and most of the Weatherby cartridges. Holland & Holland furnished it in a magnum Mauser action, and Griffin & Howe chambered rifles for it, beginning about 1926. The Western Cartridge Co. first offered it in 1925. At present, Federal, Remington and Winchester load the .375, in addition to a few others. The first commercial rifle of American make to chamber the round was the Model 70 Winchester, in 1937. Weatherby rifles were at one time available in .375 H&H, as was the Remington Model 725 Kodiak. At present, several American manufacturers list the .375 H&H as standard including Ruger, Winchester…

TriStar Arms: Have you heard of them? If that answer is “no,” you don’t need to start questioning your gun knowledge. The brand has only been around for a short time and, oddly enough, TriStar’s success story was almost never written—until Gus Bader bought the pen in 2005. But his love affair with firearms began long before he bought TriStar. “It was almost purely by accident,” said Bader, president of TriStar. “In my previous life, I worked for Carrier. I was stationed in Greece and had most of Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East as my territory. Growing up in Lebanon, shooting sports were few and far between, but my father introduced me to shotgun shooting, and I was hooked. “I was in the Basque region of Spain for business,” Bader…

In 2018, I reviewed the Sig Sauer P365 for this magazine. In that review, I wrote that the P365 wasn’t the easiest gun I’ve ever carried concealed, but that it was the easiest-to-carry 10-shot 9mm I’ve came across. That opinion hasn’t changed. What did change was my opinion on how the P365 fits my hand. During the test for that review, I fired a little more than 500 rounds, and the pistol and I got along great. Since then—three years and several hundred more rounds later—I’d fallen somewhat out of love with the P365. It just seemed to not fit my hand as well as I’d initially thought. This happens with guns sometimes, just as it happens with boots and people. After you put some miles on footwear, you discover things. Similarly,…

Some mistakes you make only once. If you want to practice more, you reload your ammo. If you want the best-possible ammo for a given competition, you reload your ammo. And, sooner or later, when vacuuming up the range, you’ll pick up a piece of brass that won’t chamber after you’ve gone to the trouble of cleaning, sizing, priming and loading it. Usually that happens in a match. Murphy’s Law and such. That night you’ll be searching out case checkers online. Save yourself the match hassle and do it now. Case checkers are simple—a steel or aluminum block with the chamber reamed to absolute minimum chamber dimensions. These are used in rifle reloading to check the “shoulder bump,” the setting back of the shoulder you check so you have a proper headspacing…

About 15 or so years ago, the concept of “shooting the person to the ground” came into vogue, and while many instructors gave the idea up when the ammo crunch hit, I still know a few who hang onto that ill-conceived idea. Let me tell you why that advice is, in my opinion, ill conceived. TACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS First, it’s not really tactically sound for a couple of reasons. Assuming your life is in grave, immediate danger (meaning you need to stop the individual as quickly as possible), would a single or perhaps two well-aimed shots into the upper thoracic cavity (heart, spine or arteries to the brain) be more likely to put the individual out of commission quicker than a half a dozen randomly placed shots? An argument can be made for…