Article first appeared at Shooting Illustrated. Bullets predated firearms by centuries. Two millennia ago, sling bullets cast from clay, stone and lead were used in battle, and in the second century A.D. the Romans took it  further with whistling bullets. Those were made by casting 1-ounce lead balls and drilling …

Article first appeared at Shooting Illustrated. Sheer coincidence has had me shooting 1911-pattern pistols more in the last few months than I had for the previous five years. See, from about 2003 through 2011, I was a die-hard 1911 True Believer. I figured that every serious handgun shooter would eventually …

Article first appeared at Americas 1st Freedom. IWI US, Inc. announced the arrival of the first IWI bolt-action tactical precision rifle in the DAN .338. The DAN .338 is designed to offer reliability, ruggedness and sub-MOA accuracy in the .338 Lapua Mag. caliber. “Having the extraordinary DAN .338 in the IWI …

Article first appeared at Americas 1st Freedom. Since 2008, reports of gun sales figures have felt like temperature checks of the American public’s passion for freedom. Looking back at 2016, we see that the FBI’s numbers show the agency conducted 27.5 million gun-related background checks in 2016, which is about …

Article first appeared at Americas 1st Freedom. Last week’s attack at the Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., airport has provided anti-gun activists another ill-advised opportunity to try to advance their cause in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy. Minutes after the first fragmented news from Ft. Lauderdale streamed across our social media …

Article first appeared at Americas 1st Freedom. Choosing a handgun is a subtle undertaking, at least the second time. This caveat acknowledges the simple fact that most first choices are at least partial mistakes, if not comparative disasters. There’s no mystery as to why. As a non-scientific poll recently conducted …

Article first appeared at Shooting Illustrated. Many people who don’t have small children in the home have gotten into the practice of keeping a defensive firearm in a readily accessible gun safe somewhere in the house, immediately available in case of a home invasion or other violent crime. The key, …

Article first appeared at Shooting Illustrated. In 1966, a writer at the Palm Beach Post, in what is now a largely forgotten article, coined the term “comfort food” when they wrote “Adults, when under severe emotional stress, turn to what could be called ‘comfort food’- food associated with the security …

Article first appeared at Shooting Illustrated. Statistics compiled by the FBI indicate that, during a self-defense situation where the victim’s gun must be fired, it takes an average of three rounds to survive the incident. That statistic is, no doubt, comforting to those who carry the ubiquitous five-shot .38 Special …

Article first appeared at Shooting Illustrated. The shooting world has exploded with the popularity of the AR-15 rifle, and rightfully so. The AR-15, based on a design by Eugene Stoner in 1956, has rapidly become America’s most popular rifle. Estimates on the number of AR-15s in civilian hands in the …