Table of contents for April 2026 in Gun Digest

"Your home and property are a form of terrain, just like being in the woods. You have elevations, blind spots, hiding places, areas to protect and others to flee. You might think you know your home very well, but problems arise when you must think of your place as a dynamic environment that can get you killed.” You’ll find the above quote buried within one of the features in this issue. As you can imagine, I read thousands of gun articles every year and edit a great number of those pieces. And through all that, this one paragraph struck me. What a powerful statement. When it comes to defending the loved ones in your home, it’s a daunting concept to view your safe space as a dynamic environment that can…

01 Nosler ASP Revolver Loads Nosler’s ASP line of defensive handgun ammo stands for Assured Stopping Power, and the cartridges’ construction using fine Nosler components like the company’s hollow point bullets suggests they live up to their name. Previously only available in autoloading pistol calibers, Nosler recently expanded the line to include three straight-wall revolver calibers as well. These include a 125-grain .38 Special load, a 125-grain .357 Magnum load and a 240-grain .44 Magnum load. If you rely on a wheelgun for defense, you may want to consider loading it with Nosler ASP. MSRP: $28 for .38 SPL // $29 for .357 Mag. // $32 for .44 Mag. // all per 20-round box 02 Mossberg 990 SPX SBS The recent changes in NFA tax stamp pricing have ushered in…

When things go bump in the night, there are of course some things to consider before you start bumping back. The gun community has been a mixed bag of sorts lately with products and technology coming out at a blistering rate thanks to changes in legislature and the expansion of the broader consumer base. There are more gun owners on a much wider spectrum of diversity than ever before, and this has inadvertently led to less tribal knowledge, less general understanding of technology and a “too many cooks in the kitchen” situation with the spread of information. Something I’ve paid a great deal of attention to in the past few years has been the growing number of so-called experts who are little more than entertainers in tactical kit. Somehow, each…

Imagine you wake at 2 in the morning to the sound of breaking glass. Your heart races. In a split second your brain goes into overdrive: you worry about your family, defending your home, and the safety of the people you love. You jump out of bed, grab your weapon, and move through a house you know like the back of your hand. In the living room you see the silhouette of a figure who is too large to be one of your loved ones. You turn on your weapon light. A pistol is raised toward you and a shot rings out—it misses to the left. You raise your weapon, present, engage, fire three shots, and the intruder drops to the ground. You move forward cautiously, weapon trained on the…

HISTORICAL NOTES The 9mm Luger, or 9mm Parabellum, was introduced in 1902 with the Luger automatic pistol. It was adopted first by the German Navy in 1904 and then by the German Army in 1908. Since that time, it has been adopted by the military of practically every non-Communist power. The 9mm Luger has become the world’s most popular and widely used military handgun and submachine gun cartridge. In 1985, the 9mm Luger was adopted as the offcial military cartridge by U.S. Armed Forces, along with the Beretta Model 92-F (M-9) 15-shot semi-auto pistol. GENERAL COMMENTS Although the 9mm Luger delivers good performance for police, military or sporting use, it was not popular in the United States until years after its inception. The principal reason was that no American-made arms…

It’s easy to get jaded when perusing the offerings at the local 9mm blaster emporium. They’re all black, they all are plastic, they all look like industrial tools, and yet … The Springfield Armory Echelon is more than that, and to get a sense of it you must realize the advances that have happened in the firearms world since the first plastic pistol. Back then, we took what there was because it was new and had advantages. Since then, manufacturers have improved, improved and improved, and Springfield has done that and more with the Echelon. This isn’t a review, but a technical overview, letting you in on the “inside baseball” of pistol development. SUM OF ALL PARTS First of all, there’s the “chassis,” the central operating group (COG). No, the…

For years now, I have been saying that anyone wanting to up their tactical shotgun game should be training in clay sports, such as skeet, trap and sporting clays. However, unfortunately, a lot of tactical shotgun courses have people training on static targets … but shotguns excel at hitting moving targets and are perfect for learning instinctive shooting. Instinctive shooting teaches a shooter to break free from sights and optics. That’s right: Say goodbye to red-dots, ghost rings and rifle sights. Many might find not using sights hard to believe, but ask yourself this: If a clay shooter can hit a target 4 inches in diameter moving upward of 42 miles an hour at more than 37 yards away, how hard would it be to hit a man-sized target? If…

Ever since the advent of both the handgun and the longarm, people have been searching for the best way to bridge the gap between the two. The tree created in this quest for compromise has many branches and brought us to entirely new categories (looking at you, PDW). But one of the easiest ways, and first attempts, to clasp hands was simply adding a stock to a sidearm. This makes a lot of sense. A buttstock increases stability and allows for better recoil management by adding more points of contact with the body. It won’t make a [typically] smaller pistol round hit harder, but it’ll make the shooter more accurate while allowing for faster fire. This is why detachable stocks were seen with some 19th century calvary guns, horseback being…