Category Archives: ccw

The Lahti 20mm Anti-tank Gun: The ‘Finnish Boombeast

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You’ve all seen the pictures of the bearded gun guy spooning a gigantic seven-foot long rifle deep in the woods (well, you have now). While we can’t give you an answer as to who the lucky lovebird is, we can identify the object of his affection as the Lahti L39 anti-tank gun. Some just call it the Finnish Boombeast and it’s real.

In the late 1930s, it was thought that any future war would involve the use of armored vehicles. But about that. The tanks and armored cars of say, 1938, were far from the M1 Abrams and M2 Bradleys of today. These early tanks, such as the German PzKpfw I and the Soviet T-26 were small slow tanks (under 20 mph top speeds) with thin armor that ran 6-15mm thick. It was thought that a group of tank hunters—a couple soldiers on foot armed with a very large rifle—could move around the battlefield and pick off these vehicles like big game hunters on safari.  This led to such guns as the British Boys Anti-tank rifle, the German/Swiss Solothurn S-18, and others.

Finland in 1939 was on shaky ice with the Soviet Union, who at the time, shared a border with the small country. As the Soviets had no less than 18,000 tanks, the Finns felt the need to get their own locally made anti-tank rifle ricky tick.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

The Finnish boombeast being spooned in the woods....location undisclosed...

The Finnish boombeast being spooned in the woods….location undisclosed…

5 Rimfire Subguns Ready for War

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Today we think of the humble 22LR as a round best left for slaughtering tin cans. But what you may not know is that this much loved pipsqueak has been pressed into both military and police service over the years, in a rather unique series of weapons—rimfire subguns.

Modern shooters have always held the .22 LR round (which dates back to the 19th century and is one of the cheapest and, until 2013, most readily available cartridges available) to be the perfect training round for military and law enforcement and with a lot of familiarity with the round at the target range came a lot of experimentation. It didn’t take these shooters long to discover that if you take this same practice round, put it in a low-recoil select-fire rifle capable of going full-auto and give it a huge magazine, you now have something much different than a cheap to shoot plinker.

Although the 22LR round was never designed as a man-stopper with very marginal one-shot stopping capabilities, a burst of 15-20 of these rounds could ruin what plans you had for the rest of your life. Additionally, guns built around these comparatively low-pressure rounds could use lighter materials than full-sized rifles firing high-velocity cartridges thus keeping the weight and cost down—always buzzwords in military trials. From these humble beginnings, the .22 submachine gun formula was hatched and has been repeated often, with mixed results:
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

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Colonel Cooper’s Bren Ten: Shooting Too Close to the Sun

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Legendary Marine Colonel John Dean “Jeff” Cooper was possibly one of the greatest ambassadors of the arts of combat shooting. The Colonel was and remains among the most influential thinkers on modern tactical shooting yet his greatest foray into the handgun market was the ill-fated Bren Ten.

Though he often taught pistol with 1911s, Cooper was a fan of the Czech designed CZ-75, a 1970s double stack 9mm with great ergonomics. The Colonel liked everything there was about the CZ, except its caliber, deeming it too low-powered.  After reading an article Cooper wrote about the CZ and its perceived limitations, two like-minded gunmakers, Tom Dornaus and Mike Dixon, reworked the basically public domain design, stretching it out to a 10-shot doublestack magazine holding .45 ACP.
This gun in hand, they went to talk to the Colonel.

Read the rest in my column GUNS.com at

bren ten note the Cooper Raven on the frame

The Neat Little Davy Crickett Rifle

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Your child’s first gun is a momentous choice to make. Children who are brought up without an introduction to firearms become adults who are afraid of guns. One of the best firearms on the market today is the Cricket series of single shot 22 rifles.

This is no high-power sniper rifle that you can run out and take Cape buffalo with at 1000-yards during a hailstorm. Its super-simple youth model rifle that is just…tiny. The has a short length of pull, an ideal for those pint-sized shooters. The firearm will only accept one round (in the chamber) and after inserting the .22 caliber cartridge, you have to cam the turn bolt forward then cock the striker before you can fire. This gives the user, especially new shooters, a simple and safe experience.

A nice little rear peep sight that is adjustable for windage and elevation with a tall ramp front post help train those basics of proper alignment. A pushbutton safety on the bottom of the rifle will lock the bolt from being able to cycle. This safety button pin has a locking key that Mom or Dad can use to disable the rifle to keep those unauthorized little hands out of it….

Read the rest in my artcile at Firearms Talk.com

cricket

The Semmerling LM-4 Pistol: Sleek, strange, secretive, sought

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Sure, it looks like a smooth little semi-auto mouse gun but, as with many things in this crazy world, under it’s sleekness hides some strangeness. First, it’s not a pee-shooter, but rather a 5-shot .45 ACP hardballer. Second, its not semi-auto at all but rather more of a pump-action. It’s the Semmerling LM-4, and though it may look like a swan to some, at its heart it’s still one odd little duck.

Since the beginning of modern time, there have been rough handed individuals whose services are retained by certain quiet branches of the government to maintain a fragile system of covert operations. These individuals are sent to exotic places, meet interesting people, and occasionally have to fight for their lives to make it back home.

In the 1970s, a small shadowy company in the Boston area by the name of the Semmerling Corporation began producing a compact little gun for the special purpose of arming such individuals. The primary tenants of the pistol was that it be a small and durable as possible, with absolute reliability but crucially pack a decent punch—no mouse guns, as the gun was to allow a covert agent working deep cover, to have a concealed firearm to engage in violence if they could not otherwise extract themselves from the situation.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

semmerling holster stainless

3D Printed Pistol Gets Shut Down by State Department

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Cody Wilson, maverick firearms geek behind the printable gun craze is back in hot water again.  This time its for the design of his new single shot (single use) Liberator pistol. The thing is, he didn’t even sell it, he gave it away. This brought the ire not of the ATF, FBI, or some other law enforcement organization– but instead, the State Department.

After all the original Liberator was designed as a throwaway ‘gun to get a gun’ that could be dropped to resistance fighters behind enemy lines during World War Two. It seems that some overseas governments may be scared of letting this genie get out of the bottle.

As crazy as it sounds, this is for real.

Read the rest in my article in Firearms Talk.com

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Put a Saiga Mag on Your 870 or Moss 500

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Black Aces Tactical has done it again by listening to the marketplace and giving the shotgunners what they want– a retrofit kit that will enable your humble Remington 870 or Mossberg 500 to accept detachable box magazines. Not only is this not just a theory, it’s a reality and they are selling them now.

Shotguns are not new. They have been around for hundreds of years, it’s just that in the past century, or so we have decided to increase their magazine capacity. Early shotguns were single shots, with the double barrel being brought on the scene to increase magazine capacity by 100%.  In the late 19th century, the first tubular magazine shotguns came out. They allowed faster follow-up shots as well as being more tactically sound in a combat situation. Today almost every serious rifle in the world uses detachable box magazines– so isn’t it time that the shotgun caught up with the times? Black Aces thinks so.
Read the rest in my article at Firearms Talk.com

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Woman Saves Hubby with Empty Shotgun

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Don’t tell Joe Biden but it looks like the humble shotgun has triumphed again in one of the most amazing tales of home defense you are likely to read. It involves a shotgun, a bear, two senior citizens, and a cautionary tale about training.

Outside of the small village of Silver Cliff (pop 529) in Marinette County, there was a small cabin. A rural, back-to-nature way of life is central to this part of the country as the area’s two main rivers, the Peshtigo and Menominee, and many lakes, streams, and forests make it an outdoor destination. As reported by the IBTimes, WPRI, the Green Bay Gazette and others, it was here that 74-year old Gerre Ninnemann and his 71-year old wife Marie were spending a quiet spring day relaxing. That was until Gerre noticed their pet dog barking and went to see what the commotion was all about….

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk

fox11

The Rough Parts of Going while Carrying

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No matter whether you call it dropping a deuce, hanging 10, the call of nature, a trip to the water closet, or going code brown, everyone has to seriously relieve themselves at some point. Often this situation presents itself when you are out and about in a public venue. If you are armed this leads to the dilemma of what do you do to keep your firearm safe while you drop trou. Here are the options:
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

(Which one of these stalls would you pick? If you choose the one with the dead wall on the strong hand side that your firearm is on…good choice!)

CORRECTION Mens Room Tourism

The Suppressed ‘Shaft’ and ‘Threadcutter’ Rifles: One bad mother, shut your mouth

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Thought historically tight-lipped about all things military, one thing the Russians have never kept secret is existence of their robust special operations, or spetsnaz, community, which they have fostered for many generations. These operators fielded the finest hardware found East of Berlin and, going back to the 1980s, the Soviets had an itch for a long-range suppressed rifle and scratched it with a Shaft and a Thread Cutter, so to speak.

Formed in the 1950s from lessons learned fighting the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany, the spetsnaz (a Russian acronym for special purpose) units were bad hombres and by the later Soviet era, spetsnaz troops (roughly the commie version of the special forces/ranger type units) were a huge part of the Motherland’s military machine. At the height of the Cold War, the Soviets had no less than 14 army and 2 naval brigades of these troops compared to the sole US Army Ranger regiment and five Special Forces groups.

These groups in general, by the nature of their role on the battlefield, have long sought out suppressed weapons and on both sides of the curtain, most got by with regular issue guns with fitted external suppressors. By the early 1980s, they wanted something better and that is where the VSS and AS came in.
Read the Rest in my column at GUNS.com

AS on top with folding stock and VSS on bottom with fixed wood stock the guns share internals

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