Combat Handguns July/August 2019

FIRST SHOT: The Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show is the biggest insider-only expo within the firearms world. Dozens upon dozens of manufacturers use it as a platform to unveil brand-new products that’ll be hitting gun shop shelves in the coming months, and our contributors carefully scoured the miles of aisles to find the greatest new gear for you. In this issue, we’ll cover the ammo, revolvers and training aids that caught our eye, but more is on the way. We’ve also got several “first looks” at new variants ready to rock, including the large-and-in-charge CZ P-10 F, Sig MPX Copperhead and Wilson EDC X9L. These exciting 9mms were born to help you put rounds on target easily. More gun reviews are in store for you in the pages ahead,…

An impartial review of the dynamics of stopping mass murder shows that the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre was right when he famously said that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun. The proof of that has been starkly seen in case after case. But what happens when the armed good guy who stopped the bad guy is then mistaken for the bad guy and shot by police? To analyze that, let’s discuss three such recent tragedies. HOME INVASION Case One takes us to Aurora, Colorado, in July of 2018. An apparently deranged man named Dajon Harper, 26, broke into a residence and decided to take a shower in the occupied home. An 11-year-old boy who lived there was awakened by the sound.…

Learning what the pros use can help our shooting skills grow and develop. We can gain new ideas and find different products and gear to try out. Plus, it’s just fun to have a free pass to nose around in their bags. That’s why I reach out to firearms experts and ask them, “What’s in your range bag?” For this installment, I tracked down Cody Osborn, the marketing manager for Walther Arms who also competes with the company’s shooting team. He graciously carved out some time for us to talk. COMPETITIVE CODY Sitting on the porch with a cold drink in hand, talking guns with a friend. This is the feeling you get having a conversation with Cody Osborn. No, we weren’t really on a porch, and I only recently…

It wasn’t that long ago that CZ, in a reversal of sorts, introduced its first striker-fired pistol. The P-10 C, where “C” stands for “compact,” immediately got a lot of positive reviews for its features and performance but left some of us with a nagging question: What is the P-10 C a compact version of? Well, after a couple years, CZ has decided to answer that question. The company recently unveiled the full-sized version, which is dubbed simply the P-10 F. Catchy, huh? Though it’s not quite as assertive a name as, say, the Annihilator 3000, there’s something respectful and thoughtful about the understatement. At first glance, the P-10 F looks just like the P-10 C. It’s just bigger and holds more ammo. Right? Well, not exactly. CZ’s made a…

To put it bluntly, the new Trijicon Specialized Reflex Optic (SRO) is awesome. Unfortunately, you won’t realize how awesome it is until you actually try it out. So, in this limited amount of space, I’ll try to convey how awesome the SRO actually is. I first laid eyes on the SRO at the 2019 SHOT Show when Trijicon representatives showed me one mounted to a blue gun. Now, usually when you have a reflex sight mounted on a pistol, it takes time and practice to find the red dot and consistently raise it to the same level. I brought the blue gun up to eye level, and boom, the red dot was immediately present. I repeated several this times with the same result. The red dot was always easy to…

While dozens of types of factory ammunition are out there, it does get a bit expensive to shoot all the time. The alternative, of course, is reloading your own ammunition, so the best place to start, whether you’re a nimrod or even a veteran, is selecting a loading manual. Considering the assortment of manuals at my favorite gun shop, it appears that anyone who makes bullets and powders publishes a loading manual. It’s a given! Hornady, Speer, Barnes, RCBS, Lyman, Nosler, Swift, Norma, Hodgdon and Sierra all stand tall on the shelf. While you don’t need all of them, it’s a good idea to look them over for your specific needs and go from there. Naturally, if you especially like Hornady or Sierra bullets, for example, their manuals should be…