Category Archives: ccw

The Webley MkVI Brutal Brit Manstopper

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Perhaps no other revolver screams ‘British’ louder than the .455-caliber Webley six shooter. This wheelgun was the go-to sidearm of the King’s military for generations and once you look at it, you can see why.
The British Army had been in the revolver game for more than thirty years before the Webley came on the scene. Starting with the Adams revolver of the 1850s (models of which popped up in the US Civil War) and moving onto the disliked and slow to reload Enfield .476-caliber six-shooter, a reliable handgun was increasingly needed in the Victorian era. This was the days when young British officers on colonial duty in far off and exotic lands needed sturdy, and effective firepower to stop charges of irate local warrior types in situations where numbers were very much relative. For instance, in the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879, 1800 British and colonial troops faced 20,000 Zulu warriors and were overwhelmed.
The redcoats needed a capable handgun that could be reloaded ricky tick, so they turned to Webley…
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com

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NAA Mini Revolvers: Five rounds of ‘Get off me!’

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Guns come in all shapes and sizes from behemoth Dirty Harry hog legs down to pipsqueak pinfires. On the small end of things is the North American Arms Mini Revolver, but don’t let its size fool you into thinking it’s unloved.  These minis are plenty popular, plenty powerful and plenty useful.
Wayne Baker and Dick Casull started Freedom Arms in Wyoming in 1978. It may seem strange, but Casull, famous for super-high powered handgun rounds like the notable .454 Casull, also had an affinity for tiny guns. Freedom Arms began selling a small, single-action revolver that fired .22-rimfire ammunition. While this wasn’t new, heck Bill Ruger had been selling his Single-Six for 20 years before then, what was innovative was the size.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com.

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Caracal Wants Thier C Model Pistols Back ASAP

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Up and comer firearms company Caracal has taken the step to ask its customers to send back to them their C series pistols.

All of them.
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The Winchester 1911 Widow Maker

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Its dubious distinction has kept collectors away but this is changing in recent years. However, be careful with this hundred-year-old shotgun, before it adds you to its list.

The beginning of this story starts with a Dear John letter. You see, Winchester firearms had a long and fruitful relationship with a genius gun designer from Utah by the name of John Moses Browning. It was Browning that worked in partnership with Winchester for nearly twenty years, giving them some of the most classic designs of all time. These included the Winchester Model 1887 and the Model 1897 pump shotgun, the falling block single shot Model 1885, and the lever-action Model 1886, Model 1892, Model 1894, Model 1895 rifles.

Well, in 1898, Browning left Winchester, formed a partnership with FN in Belgium, and brought to that Hertsal-based company a revolutionary new semi-automatic shotgun, his Auto-5. Browning also collaborated the design out to Winchester’s archrival, Remington, who produced it as the Model 11 starting in 1905.

This led Winchester with an urgent need to beat Browning at his own game, while not being able for the first time in twenty years, of using his patents. …
Read the rest in my column at FirearmsTalk.com

winchesters model 1911 1

7 Gun Myths, Attacked Head-on

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Ever wondered if Patton really did shoot down a German plane with his pistol? Does the gun always beat the blade? Or how

Buffalo Bill shot so well? Well the answers to these and other gun mysteries are explained here.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

British Bayonet Charge

Ammo Short Cops Moving to 9mm and Airsoft

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With the great ammo shortage of 2013 rolling into its 9th month, everyone has experienced problems keeping their stocks of bullets at pre-freak out levels. One of the classes of shooters that are feeling the crunch especially hard is the law enforcement community. Several are looking for alternative options to keep their officers current.

When the grumbles and rumbles of possible increased regulations on firearms and ammunition sales started in December 2012, there was a mass scramble to grab anything in any caliber, ‘just in case’. This led to runs on gun stores, big box chains, and online outlets, with customers buying until the shelves were empty. With ‘just in time’ point of sale ordering common in your large retailers, shelves remained shallow as most remaining stocks of ammo was in transit, increasing the anxiety of the consumer.

Even now, three quarters through the year, supplies are just barely reaching demand. While normal recreational shooters can just put off going to the range and sit on their stocks for when the zombies come, law enforcement must continually train. The last thing an agency wants to say in a shooting incident was that they have suspended or cut back on the number of training days.

You can win that lawsuit with a lawyer from the mall.
Read the rest in my column at Firearms talk.com

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The TEC-9: An immigrant’s tale

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As anyone who was around in the 1980s will tell you, all the coolest guns were plastic (we mean polymer) 9mms. Some, like the Glock 17, were cooler than others. Still, if looks could kill and looks were your thing, in the 80s you turned to Miami, Florida and found the good old TEC9. The thing was, you really did have to depend on its looks because the gun itself often left you hanging.

In invasion-conscious 1970s Sweden, the military was looking around for replacements for its vaunted Carl Gustav M/45, better known as K-gun. The Swedish K was a weapon for issue to commando types as well as truck drivers, vehicle crews and the like. It was a 7.7-pound (unloaded) 22-inch long 9mm burp gun that could chew out 600 rounds per minute. The local firm of Interdynamic AB of Stockholm put one of their designers on the task, a young man named George Kellgren.

His soultion was a gun that became infamous in the US as the TEC-9.
Read the rest in my column at Guns.com

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The Ballester Molina Pistol: Argentina’s almost 1911

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Floating around the surplus firearms market is a gun that is often derided as an ‘unlicensed Colt 1911 copy’. Well the truth is, this gun, the Ballester Molina, was designed from the ground up as an homage to John Browning’s .45ACP classic, and they have a growing legion of collectors.

In 1916, Argentina ordered 10,000 Colt 1911s from the US for their military. Unsurprisingly, they liked those so much that they asked for 10 times as many of a slightly modified version from Colt.  These are known today as the Colt Systema Modello 1927. By the 1930s, as the US Great Depression turned global, the Argentine government was looking for more of the same gun, only cheaper.  And that’s when a local carmaker named HAFDASA seized the moment.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

ballester with correct argentine military holster

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