Founded by two friends in 2017, Montana’s Shield Arms has a simple philosophy of bringing new and innovative products to the firearms industry – while ingraining perseverance and community in all they do.
Established by Brandon Zeider and Seth Berglee in the Bigfork area, Shield is probably best known for its series of S15 pistol magazines for the Glock 43X/48, which boosts the pistol’s capacity from 10 rounds to 15.
My Fink’s Custom K-frame snubby, completed by a Galco Combat Master (All photos: Chris Eger)
With an origin story that began with making a custom shoulder holster catering to Chicago Police detectives that later skyrocketed to fame with Sonny Crockett, Galco has been the quiet force in the American gun community that you never knew you knew.
It was in 1969 that Richard N. Gallagher formed The Famous Jackass Leather Company as a small family business in Chicago. The custom leather shop originally specialized in items ranging from sheepskin jackets to handbags and wallets to hats, with everything made on-site. While some leather holsters were offered from time to time, it was in the early 1970s that an early H-frame harness combo shoulder holster and magazine carrier, crafted from hand-polished saddle leather and harness-stitched with six-cord waxed linen thread for durability, became a local hit.
Dubbed the Jackass Rig and hand-molded for then-popular carry guns such as the 1911 and Browning Hi-Power, it was advertised for $29.95 in “The Blue Light,” a journal for Chicago PD officers, and soon orders for hundreds of the shoulder holsters were placed.
The original Jackass Rig, this one for the Browning Hi-Power.
The hard-wearing holster launched The Famous Jackass Leather Company on a trajectory that saw it re-brand as the Great American Leather Company, or Galco International, LTD, in 1980, and move to Phoenix, Arizona shortly after.
With former Chicago PD detectives such as Dennis Farina working for director Michael Mann as a police consultant, it was logical that the Jackass Rig would show up on screen sooner or later. When Mann’s “Miami Vice” hit the small screen with a bang in 1984, its lead character, Don Johnson’s Rolex-and-pastel-clad fictional Detective Sergeant James “Sonny” Crockett, carried first a SIG P220, then a Bren Ten, and later a S&W 645.
He did it all in a modified Jackass Rig, which, in honor of the show’s popularity, became the Miami Classic in Galco’s catalog.
One of the Jackass Rigs used in Miami Vice.
I was able to tour Galco a couple months ago, and we made (what I feel is) a great 21-minute video of the Galco story.
The Pentagon on Wednesday announced a 10-year contract to General Dynamics-Ordnance & Tactical Systems for new M61A1 Vulcan 20mm guns.
The firm-fixed-price award, for $88,275,000, was granted to Gen Dyn by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, based at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. Classified as an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity requirements contract, it will cover the purchase of new M61A1s in support of the F-16 fighter aircraft. Of this amount, some $7.8 million in funds set aside for Foreign Military Sales were obligated. Notably, 25 overseas allies fly the aircraft along with Venezuela, which probably doesn’t rate FMS dollars anymore.
Battlefield Vegas’ 20mm Vulcan nicknamed ‘The Hand of God’ at the Big Sandy Shoot October 2018. (Photo: Ben Philippi / Guns.com)
More on the Vulcan contract, and Gen Dyn’s work on the Next Generation Squad Weapon for the Army, in my column at Guns.com.
One of the places I stopped at on my trip to Minnesota last month– in the 91-degree heat just a couple hours south of Canada?!– was Maxim Defense. For a company that didn’t exist seven years ago, they have really come out of nowhere and made a name for themselves.
They specialize in the “short space” so to speak, with products like the PDX.
The PDX had its origin in a PDW project for Tier 1 operators which specified a gun that, above all, was extremely compact for close quarter encounters– but still able to fire 5.56mm rounds. Crafted with that use in mind, Maxim’s result was a gun that is as sweet as it gets– just 18.75-inches long overall with a 5.5-inch barrel that ends in a Hatebrake muzzle booster while the collapsible stock is Maxim’s in-house SCW stock system. The PDX includes an integrated BCG with interchangeable buffer weights to maximize performance. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
The Army’s recently announced budget request for the fiscal year 2022 includes at least $114 million for new rifles, handguns, and the next generation of small arms.
While the overall FY2022 Defense Department Budget is $112 billion, most of the non-operational dollars are for high-level R&D and big-ticket items like the F-35 fighter. The Army’s budget book for weapons and tracked combat vehicles meanwhile has a low nine-figure ask when it comes to individual small arms.
The bulk ($97 million) is to go to the Next Generation Squad Weapons, with much of the balance to acquire new Barrett-made Precision Sniper Rifles, and a few crumbs for M4s, M17s, and the like.
Sig Sauer this week announced it has completed the delivery of the company’s Next Generation Squad Weapons system to the U.S. Army.
The company is one of three contractors who in 2019 got the nod from the Pentagon to continue with the NGSW program. The sweeping initiative aims to replace the Army’s 5.56mm NATO small arms – the M4 Carbine and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Sig’s program consists of an in-house-designed lightweight high-performance 6.8x51mm (.277-caliber) hybrid ammunition, NGSW-AR lightweight machine guns, NGSW-R rifles (based on the MCX carbine), and next-gen suppressors.
They certainly look the part and, if selected, would give Sig the small arms hattrick as their P320s have been adopted as the DOD’s standard handgun to replace everything from the USAF’s lingering K-frame 38s to the Marine’s M45 CQB railguns and everything in between. At that point, the only man-portable system used by the Army not made by Sig would be the M240 and M2, which FN still has a lock on.
The U.S. Army is full-speed ahead on an initiative to select a new series of innovative 6.8mm-caliber Next Generation Squad Weapons to phase out its 5.56mm platforms for combat troops. However, it would seem the Department of the Army is hedging their bets with traditional systems just in case things don’t work out like planned such as in past ambitious programs for futuristic small arms.
And this week, Big Army likewise issued a $78 million award to FN for more M249s, the squad-level U.S-made variant of the FN Minimi light machine gun that has been standard since 1982.
Last year, FN apparently trialed a version of their MK 20 SSR (sniper support rifle) in 6.5 Creedmoor as USSOCOM was flirting with the idea of fielding the new– and increasingly popular– round for future use. Not to let research go to waste, the company just announced they will start selling the commercial variant of the SSR, the FN SCAR 20S, in 6.5CM.
So a spent some time at Daniel Defense in Georgia recently, filming an episode of Select Fire. Marty Daniel has an interesting story, with the basis of his company starting because his golf game sucked.
They made their first rifle in 2009 and now, just a decade later, are cranking out 40,000 a year. Talk about growth.
So I told you guys that I spent some time in the Palmetto State last month filming at FN with Guns.com. Want to see how the tour went? I think you will find the M240 and M4 production lines interesting. Do you know FN makes roughly 500 M4s every single day?
After they’re test fired, they’re disassembled, cleaned, then reassembled and given a 101-point inspection. Then, they’re literally dipped in preservation oil and packaged 50 rifles to a large wooden crate.
Some poor Joe or Devil is going to have to clean that off one day…
