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Long-Range Target Rifle – Part 3
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If you enjoy fine firearms, says Ayoob, you’ll enjoy reading “American Beauty” by Tim Mullin. NM’s gorgeous finish is evident even in this “photo of a photo.”
The history of the 1911 pistol’s design and the nature of its many uses and special-purpose modifications are far too broad to be effectively addressed in a single book chapter … or, indeed, in a single book. A substantial section of a firearms library could be devoted to 1911 books by Donald Bady, Dave Lauck, Tim Mullin, James Serven, Layne Simpson, Bill Wilson, Larry Wilson, et. al. Today’s Gun Digest listing of every variation of currently produced 1911 pistol might well exceed the entire section on semiautomatic pistols in a Gun Digest of the early ‘50s.
Thus, a treatment of the topic in article length demands a specific focus, and no 1911 is more pleasing to focus on than the Colt National Match.
1911 Colt National Match Review and Pedigree
Tim Mullin’s ode to this pistol, American Beauty, states boldly, “…no finer semi-automatic handgun than the prewar Colt National Match ever left the factory, and anyone who owns one of these American Beauties holds a national treasure in his or her hand.” In terms of appearance and workmanship, few would argue with him. There are more accurate pistols today, and more user-friendly ones, but none with the pure Quality with a capital “Q” that permeates this rare and storied handgun.
Those experts who knew the pistol during its short life had good things to say about it. Said Elmer Keith, “It was fitted with target sights, a match grade barrel and carefully honed action parts. Trigger pulls were carefully adjusted. These fine pistols were marked on the left side ‘National Match Colt.’ This was and is, a very fine match .45 auto…The Super Match was a fine target sighted and selected Super .38, but is no longer made. It was brought out soon after the introduction of the National Match .45 Colt.” Actually, most NMs wore that marking on the right side of the slide.
A contemporary of Keith was Charlie Askins, who used a Colt .45 automatic along with .38 Special revolver and .22 auto by the same maker to win the national pistol championship in the 1930s. He once wrote of the National Match .45, “This is the Government Model with target sights and a target barrel, finely fitted and finished. Heretofore the targetmen fell on this gun and felt they had the best. It is believed Colt halted the production of the National Match grade simply because it was too expensive to manufacture and it could not thereafter be offered to the public at a popular price. Hand labor is a costly proposition and a good deal of highly skilled hand effort had to go into the completion of each pistol.”
A Brief History
Born as an expensive gun in the depths of the Great Depression, the finely crafted National Match sold better than expected but was never destined to be a mass-market success. The addition of the Super Match, a .38 Super with the same treatment, differing only in markings, caliber, and cartridge capacity, did little to change the inevitable.
When production ceased with the outbreak of WWII, the epoch of the Colt National Match had come to an end. While Mullin notes that a few were assembled from leftover parts after the war’s conclusion, the company chose not to make it a catalog item. However, the concept was resurrected in 1957 with the Gold Cup. The first runs were marked only “National Match” on the slide, and later “National Match Gold Cup,” and finally just “Gold Cup.”
The legendary J.H. Fitzgerald had a lot to do with the National Match. He’s seen here adjusting a 1911 at Camp Perry circa mid-1930s in Tim Mullin’s American Beauty.
According to one of the great Colt authorities, James E. Serven, “The ‘National Match’ first appeared in the 1933 Colt catalog. In all general specifications it resembled the standard 1911 model. However, Colt workmen gave these pistols very special attention. The action was hand-honed, a selected, carefully targetted [sic] match barrel was used, the trigger was checked and of course there was the ‘hump-backed’ checked arched housing.”
As Serven noted in his updated 1964 edition of Colt Firearms, “In 1957 the Colt Company resumed manufacture of a deluxe .45 automatic target pistol, naming this model the ‘Colt Gold Cup National Match.’ Working parts are hand-fitted; the pistol is meticulously made and super-accurate for championship shooting. Slack between the barrel and slide is automatically eliminated. The very wide, grooved trigger is fitted with an adjustable, spring-loaded trigger stop…Finish is Colt ‘Royal Blue’ with sandblasted areas where glare might affect aim.”
To Mullin and many other purists, only the prewar guns are the true American Beauties, the original National Match Colts of legend. Whether or not the Gold Cup generation measured up is a matter of debate among 1911 enthusiasts to this day. Serven seems to have been impressed with the Gold Cup incarnation. So was Charles M. Heard, a popular gun expert of the day, who described it in 1960 as the “Colt ‘National Match’ .45 ACP, factory accurized and custom crafted for target. Trigger pull: 4 lbs., adjustable with trigger stop. Full target sights, straight back-strap. Has all other features of Government model. REMARKS: My tests only proved this gun to be all that is claimed for it and expected of it. May be used for match target, combat, or self-defense; still the most powerful semi-auto made.”
Today, the mantle of the National Match has fallen on the shoulders of the custom houses. Dave Lauck at D&L Sports built this “LFI Special” to the author’s specifications on a new 5-inch Colt. It will stay in an inch at 25 yards, and he can’t recall its last malfunction.
The argument over the Gold Cup’s right to wear the mantle of the National Match wasn’t entirely nit-picking. While the original National Match was a true heavy duty Government Model .45 or .38 Super finely polished and blued and then fitted with match barrel and altogether slicked-up, the Gold Cup was seen as a lighter weight, lighter duty gun. Circa 1949, Remington had come up with a factory target load in .45 ACP that captured the bullseye shooters immediately: a 185-grain semi-wadcutter loaded to a mid-range velocity of only 770 foot-seconds velocity. It did not reliably cycle a Government Model pistol with its heavy-duty slide and full power recoil spring built for a 230-grain GI hardball round at 820 to 850 feet per second.
Recognizing this, Colt lightened the slide of the 1957 series National Match/Gold Cup .45s. NRA’s technical staff writer for American Rifleman, M.D. Waite, “outed” this fact in his December 1957 review of the new pistol.
Waite wrote, “Our preliminary firing tests indicated uniform functioning with both full charge and mid-range ammunition. This puzzled us a bit until we noted that the interior of the slide is cut away somewhat to reduce its weight approximately two ounces. It is thus unnecessary to change recoil springs when using factory ammunition of differing recoil potential….”
Rumors spread that this made the gun weak. It certainly did not make it inaccurate, and the Gold Cup worked as advertised. Added Waite in that seminal test of the budding Gold Cup, “When machine-rest tested at 50 yards, our gun shot possible-size groups with commercial wadcutter ammunition but did not perform quite so well with government-loaded Service ammunition.” The very top champions kept on using Government Models that had been accurized by Chow, Clark, Dinan, Giles, Shockey, and other master pistolsmiths of the period.
Adding to the Gold Cup’s bad rap for fragility were its sights. Crude by today’s standards, the Stevens National Match adjustable rear sight of the prewar years at least did not break or fly off the gun. A relatively large number of original National Match pistols had sturdy fixed sights that offered a larger sight picture than the standard service pistol, the best of these being the excellent high visibility sights manufactured by the King Gun Sight Company and for some time available on the NM pistols from the Colt factory. King made a practical sight that was adjustable for windage but not elevation.
Alas, Colt management in the latter half of the 20th century manifested some truly egregious short-sightedness and loss of institutional history. The Gold Cup generation of the National Match series was never offered with fixed sights. Instead, it came with the Elliason adjustable rear sight and an undercut Patridge front. The front sight was not properly staked and would often depart from the slide within 500 rounds of hardball, though it lasted longer with the “softball” target loads.
A contemporary ad for the Colt National Match, reproduced in the Mullin book.
The Elliason rear sight proved to be superb on the Python revolver, where Colt offered it as an extra-cost option, but it did not stand up to the rocketing slide of a 1911, particularly with full power .45 ammo. Secured with hollow pins, the Elliasons often came loose when the pins cracked.
All this was a shame, because the Gold Cup was beloved by handgunners including cops of the Sixties and Seventies who wanted a gun that would feed the jacketed hollow point ammo that was becoming popular but didn’t want to send their Government Model to a pistolsmith to throat its feedway for the high performance rounds. A Government Model or Commander of the period was “mil-spec” in that regard. It would feed fine with the 230-grain round-nose full metal jacket military cartridge (or, from its introduction in the early 1970s to this day, with the Remington 185-grain JHP whose nose duplicated the ogive of hardball), but would often balk at hollow-cavity projectiles with wider mouths. The Gold Cup, designed to feed the softball round, with its strangely shaped button nose and short overall length, was much more amenable to the hollow points once Lee Jurras’s pioneering Super Vel ammunition company got the ball rolling in that direction in the Sixties.
Unfortunately, many of the people who wanted beautifully made Colt .45 automatics with the gorgeous Royal Blue finish, which gave the deep, rich blue-black of the prewar National Match pistols a solid run for the money, wanted heavy duty fighting handguns. The Gold Cup’s reputation for fragility, to whatever degree it may or may not have been deserved, got in the way of that. By the time Colt started using the same heavy-duty slide dimensions as the Government Model, it was too late to change the Gold Cup’s image. Sales of the Gold Cup were long disappointing. Colt briefly offered the Combat Elite, in essence a Gold Cup with fixed sights but without the gorgeous finish and without the advertising it should have had, and it went by the wayside. Colt produces in dribs and drabs a pistol they call the Gold Cup Trophy today.
In everything but glassy finish, Wilson Combat CQB equals National Match in quality and exceeds it in accuracy. The author bought this one after shooting multiple one-inch 25-yard groups with it in testing.
In time, with the big resurrection of the 1911’s popularity, new manufacturers came along to fill the void. The Kimber pistols, particularly the Gold Match, and the upper lines of the Springfield Armory 1911A1s, especially the TRP (Tactical Response Pistol) with fixed sights and the Trophy Match with sturdy BoMar or equivalent adjustable sights, are today’s heirs to the National Match concept. They will not have the lustrous, captivating finish of the best Colts of yesteryear, however, though they’ll be proportionally more affordable than the NM was when Colt introduced it in 1933.
Production pistols of fine quality, like the Bill Wilson and Ed Brown lines, come closer. Perhaps most in keeping with the NM tradition are the top-line pistols from Rock River Arms and Les Baer. The latter two brands are the only out-of-the-box 1911s likely to take you to the winner’s circle today at Camp Perry without aftermarket custom work. More accurate than the Springfields or Kimbers, each can be ordered in a super-tight version that guarantees accuracy on the order of 1.5 inches at 50 yards. That’s more than the Colt National Match in any of its incarnations could offer. But even these fine pistols will not come with a finish that matches a prewar Colt National Match, or the best of the Gold Cups in Royal Blue.
The few thousand National Match pistols shipped out of Hartford in the less than a decade of their epoch also presaged the “combat custom” 1911 so popular today. The best of the current craftsmen, Mark Morris and Dave Lauck and Dick Heinie and a handful more, will give you today’s equivalent of a National Match for several thousand dollars after a considerable wait. These guns will be much more user friendly, with lighter and cleaner triggers, beveled magazine wells, beavertail grip safeties and other amenities. But, geared for heavy duty, they will come with a finish that cannot equal the beauty of that old National Match.
The Colt National Match is a timeless pistol. Here Justine Ayoob, then 19, shoots her dad’s with .45 hardball.
Shooting the National Match and Its Successors
Way back in the Fifties, Jeff Cooper said that all the Government Model really needed was a lighter, crisper trigger; throating to feed high efficiency ammo; and more visible sights. Given that hardball was about all you could buy over the counter for a .45 auto before WWII and the NM fed it just fine, the National Match pistol had anticipated the Colonel’s needs and delivered them amply when Jeff was a youngster. It is a formula that has stood the test of time.
Some say that the Gold Cup generation of National Match pistols raised the bar with its slanted slide grooves and flat top slide.
Whether these truly enhance performance is an unresolved debate, but I for one just like them esthetically. The original National Match is so rare and precious today that virtually no one actually carries or shoots one anymore. If they did, they would fit them with beavertail grip safeties and perhaps larger-profile thumb safeties (maybe even ambidextrous), and throat them for JHP ammo.
NM suffix is noted on serial number of author’s pet pistol. Signature Gold Cup style trigger was later replaced with this Videcki unit. Note slanted slide grooves, relieved ejection port, both standard on second incarnation of the National Match. This gun has the controversial light slide, not externally detectable.
The last person I knew who carried an original National Match “for real” and used it as such was Bill Allard. Bill was the partner of the NYPD Stakeout Squad’s famous Jim Cirillo, and the only man on that high-risk unit who killed more armed opponents in gunfights than Cirillo. Allard’s favorite pistol – used in more than one of those shootings – was an original Colt National Match .45 with high fixed sights, a gun he had special permission to carry on duty. He has since retired his pet National Match to the gun safe, and now, in retirement, carries a Kimber .45 auto daily.
In an early Gold Cup with the lighter slide, I’d be sparing with hardball and would use no +P ammo at all. With light loads, use a light spring; with heavy loads, use a heavy spring. The 1957 concept of one spring for both helped lead to the Gold Cup getting that reputation for fragility. With a lighter spring, the slide comes back harder and hammers the frame proportionally more.
Do not expect 1-inch groups at 25 yards or 2-inch groups at 50 unless the gun has been accurized or you’ve paid extra for a top-line Les Baer or Rock River pistol. That degree of accuracy never seems to have been present in the original National Match, and as Waite noted was not present with ball ammo in the Gold Cup. (Even the short-lived Gold Cup factory-chambered for the .38 Special wadcutter cartridge was disappointing in its accuracy, according to most testers.) My own National Match cracks the 1-inch/25 yard mark, but only because it was accurized by the USAF Marksmanship Training Unit at Lackland AFB. In conventional configuration 1911 pistols in the National Match mold made more recently (as opposed to long-slide or compensated target guns), only my custom Colts by Morris, Lauck, et. al. will deliver that magic inch.
The one exception is my Springfield TRP Operator, whose heavy extended frame with flashlight rail alters the 1911 silhouette unforgivably for the purist. It will do an inch on the nose for five shots at 25 yards with Federal Gold Medal 185 grain Match softball. The rest will do in the neighborhood of two inches at 25. For practical purposes, that’s a good neighborhood, and about where the original National Match and Gold Cup dwelt with service hardball ammo. The finest “boutique .45s” from semi-custom houses such as Ed Brown’s and Bill Wilson’s will deliver an inch at 25 yards with the best ammo, too.
Springfield Armory’s match grade guns are spiritual descendants of the National Match, author suggests. This one, in 9mm, is also an effective fight-stopper with the sort of ammo shown.
Personal Experience
Although I’ve shot original Colt National Match pistols, the only one I ever owned was a 1962 production Colt marked “National Match” and not “Gold Cup.” It had already been accurized at Lackland and fitted with BoMar sights for the Distinguished (service pistol configuration, .45 hardball) bulls-eye matches when I got it, around 1970, for $100 from a bullseye shooter who was giving up the game and wanted to get rid of his equipment. Its gorgeous Royal Blue finish was soon marred by constant presentations from concealment leather and, before long, police duty holsters.
The thumb snaps of the period did not have the cushions you see today to protect a gun’s finish from metal-to-metal drag during the draw.
This Kimber Gold Match is another spiritual heir to the National Match concept. Author shot his first Master score in IDPA CDP with this one, now in the Penny Dean collection.
It never jammed until the day (at Bianchi Cup, naturally) that its extractor gave up the ghost. I pretty much wore out the trigger and Bill Laughridge at Cylinder & Slide Shop replaced it with the much better Videcki unit. I won guns with it at Second Chance, won a police combat state championship with it, and even took my share of trophies with it in the bulls-eye days of my youth. I eventually retired it to the gun safe and ultimately gave it to my ex-wife, who was my young fiancee when I bought it. My younger daughter likes to liberate it from her mother’s gun safe and take it to the range, like giving a retired racehorse some exercise.
Over the years, the deep lustrous blue of the top-line Colt finish lost its appeal. Having ruined that finish once, I was more interested in rugged gun surfaces that didn’t wear and better resisted corrosion. By the late ‘80s I was spending more time with the new generation of National Match inspired pistols. These days, Kimbers and Springfields and “combat custom” Colts fulfill my 1911 needs, along with Ed Brown, Nighthawk, and Wilson Custom guns. I used a Kimber Gold Match to first make Master in IDPA’s single action .45 division, and shot the Springfield Trophy Match at Camp Perry one year.
Yet for me, as for anyone who appreciates handguns, the great old Colt National Match remains the piece de resistance. As a tool, this accurate yet reliable gun was the apotheosis of the powerful semiautomatic service pistol in its time, and it spawned generations of similar guns in the decades that followed. As an icon of fine craftsmanship, it deserves the “American Beauty” title Tim Mullin bestowed upon it. Colt’s Custom Shop today has the ability to resurrect this pistol in its original glory. So does the Performance Center at Smith & Wesson, who could duplicate the original NM’s old world blue-black finish that looks like liquid, on their SW1911 .45.
I really wish they would. Great beauty … unparalleled functionality in its time … that honed action that racks so smoothly, it feels like running your hand over Waterford Crystal … the Colt National Match pistol was truly one of a kind. It would find a much more receptive market if reincarnated today.
This article is an excerpt from Massad Ayoob's Greatest Handguns of the World.
Montenegro is a small mountainous country of less than a half million people. It has a tumultuous history of wars and revolutions. The nation was independent from 1868 to 1920, when it was absorbed into Yugoslavia. When Yugoslavia broke up in a bloody civil war in the 1990s, Montenegro once again opted for self-rule. It is also the only nation that ever had its name become synonymous for a type of firearm. I speak today of the Montenegrin revolver.
What is a Montenegrin revolver? Basically it is a large-frame double action revolver chambered for the 11.25x36mm cartridge. These guns were made in Austria, Belgium and Spain. Oddly, none were made in Montenegro. The reason they became associated with Montenegro is that the king of that country ordered his citizens to own these revolvers. I think this is the only case in history where a national leader ordered the general population to arm themselves with a specific firearm.
“Every male citizen of Montenegro is a member of the Militia, and therefore not only justified but also obliged to possess at least one Gasser Pattern revolver.” That proclamation was issued by King Nicolas, who ruled Montenegro from 1910-1918. The Gasser Pattern revolver he was talking about was the Austrian Gasser Model 1870 revolver. This was the issued sidearm of Austria from 1870-1878. When they were replaced by the Gasser M1878, some of the earlier 1870s were sold to Montenegro. These became very popular with the military officers.
After Nicolas was made King by the Montenegrin parliament in 1910 he tried to unite his small kingdom into a formidable foe that would strike fear in hostile neighbors like Albania or Austria. Among his many reforms was the proclamation ordering revolver ownership by the male population. It is rumored that King Nicolas held stock in the Leopold Gasser company and made a bit of money off his order. Production of the Montenegrin revolvers helped keep the Austrian arms maker in business through the end of WWI. Of course, such things were not as controversial then as they would be today.
With the huge demand for new Gasser revolvers other makers jumped in to the market. Most were in Belgium and Spain. Both nations were home to cottage gun industries that turned out all kinds of guns. Quality ran from excellent to dangerous. Some of the manufacturers deviated from the Gasser design. There were solid-frame and hinged-frame designs; long and short barrels. The things that identify a Montenegrin revolver are the huge cylinder that accommodates 11.25x36mm ammunition and the rounded handle that resembles that found on the Mauser Model 1896 “Broomhandle” pistol.
The 11.25x36mm cartridge is much longer than a .44 Magnum. It was loaded with black powder and fired a 310-grain bullet at almost 900 feet per second. It was the ‘Magnum” of the era, more powerful than contemporaries like the .45 Colt and .44 Russian. I made a dummy cartridge out of a Danish Remington rolling block cartridge, just to see what they looked like next to a .44 Magnum. I would never attempt to fire any of the Belgian or Spanish Montenegrin revolvers. I might be tempted to try a Gasser-made specimen, if it was in good condition.
The revolvers became status symbols among the Montenegrin population. The men would wear one or more hanging out of their traditional attire like some sort of early 20th Century bling-bling. The revolvers were offered with ivory or bone grips, nickel plating and engraving. The well off bought the Gasser-made guns while the common folk settled for the less costly Belgian or Spanish examples.
I recently examined a pair of the Belgian-made Montenegrin revolvers at a local gun show. Both guns were of the same design. There are no clear maker’s names, only Belgian proof marks on the cylinders. One is marked on top of the barrel “Vero Revolver Montengrino.” Both are marked “Cuss Stahl” which means cast steel. That, in my opinion, would not be the best material from which to make a firearm. Cast parts can have unseen faults that make themselves known only when the gun blows the top off a chamber or splits the barrel.
Many Montenegrin revolvers found their way to North America in the luggage of immigrants from Montenegro. They were considered an essential part of life in the old country so of course their owners took them along to the new country. Once here, the old rivals were spread out so they rarely came in contact with each other. Within a couple generations, the reasons and perceived need for the revolvers faded. And the status gained from wearing a revolver was lost in many parts of America. The revolvers ended up being given away or sold. If you look for them, you can find Montenegrin revolvers at gun shows and online. They are interesting collectibles, but don’t plan on taking them to the range.
This article appeared in the July 18, 2011 issue of Gun Digest the Magazine.
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As you read this, Canada’s federal government will have reportedly introduced new legislation, “to kill [that nation’s] long-gun registry,” the National Post reported. “Since it came into force in 1998, lawful gun users say they have lived with intense surveillance, and sometimes harassment and prosecution by police.
After years of complaining about being treated as presumptive criminals, they hope the legal noose that has been tightening around their necks will at last loosen.”
“I feel like I have no rights,” said Lawrence Manzer of New Brunswick, who was charged criminally after taking an unloaded shotgun to help a neighbor during a disturbance. “They should be punishing criminals with smuggled, illegal guns and leaving us alone.”
According to Solomon Friedman, an Ottawa-based lawyer specializing in Canadian firearm laws, a huge problem with the current long gun registry is that, “all laws relating to guns are in the Criminal Code, and can only result in criminal charges. In effect, he said, Canada does not have a regulatory framework for firearms, only a criminal one.”
“If you forget to file your paperwork, it’s not a ticket, it’s a criminal record,” Friedman explained. “The first thing that happens is you’re taken in handcuffs to the station, booked and you’re looking at custody and incarceration as a penalty.”
The long-gun registry has also been insanely expensive. When it was introduced by liberal politicians, the registry, it was claimed, would cost Canadian tax payers no more than $2 million dollars a year to operate. To date? It has cost just under $2 billion!
The Barnes Precision DMR or Dedicated Marksmanship Rifle.
In a defensive situation, nothing beats a long gun for power and accuracy. Here are some of the latest tactical rifles.
Barnes Precision
Barnes Precison Machine, Inc. (barnesprecision.com) has been licensed as a Type 7 manufacturer by the ATF and has an SOT stamp for suppressor manufacture and currently manufactures a full line of AR-15 parts and accessories. The also produce three outstanding finished rifles.
The BPM CQB/Patrolman’s Carbine is is an agile, soft-shooting carbine loaded with features normally seen on rifles at twice the price.
Features include:
BPM Stainless Steel Match Barrel, available in 11.5”, 14.5”, and 16” lengths.
5.56 NATO Chamber
Mid-length gas system with stainless steel low profile gas block.
9” or 12” BPM PSFFRS hand-guard with sling swivel options.
Receiver ‘accurizing’ set screw.
7075 Forged Mil-spec CNC machined-hard anodized lower receiver with accurizing screw and rear detent set screw.
12” or 9” inch Picatinny Spec Free-Float Rail System. Featuring BPM enhanced barrel nut to achieve unprecedented rigidity for the length of the rail. Each rail system features four steel reinforced interchangeable sling swivel inserts.
Barnes Precision Machine A2-Style muzzle device. Reduces muzzle blast and felt recoil, complete with a breaching tip.
The Barnes Precision CQB.
The Designated Marksman Rifle includes an 18 or 20-inch barrel, a fixed A-2 style stock and can be had with a nickel boron bolt carrier group.
The Tactical Match Carbine comes complete with a mid-length gas system, low profile gas block and a 12-inch BPM handguard with sling swivel options.
It also includes an ACE SOCOM stock with a full-length buffer spring and buffer.
Just add your preferred optics and a couple accessories and this rifle is ready for service in any 3-Gun Match.
All of Barnes Precision rifles are built on the reputation of quality parts and manufacturing experience BPM has put together over the years in this industry.
Often times you will find similar rifles that cost twice the price.
The Del-Ton GRFTRX-16 Rifle.
Del-ton
Del-Ton (del-ton.com) continues to be my favorite AR-15 manufacturers for a variety of reasons. The fact that it is a family run husband/wife-well operation that produces a high quality properly made weapon, in a wide variety of configurations, in a price range affordable for average guys makes it hard to beat. In fact, DEL-TON rifles are the lowest priced, American made rifles around, and always my first recommendation to my police academy cadets when they seek information about their first AR-15 purchase.
Del-Ton has just introduced the brand new Del-Ton TRX16 rifle. TRX16 is a 16” M4 type variant equipped with the latest Troy Industries accessories. Chambered in 5.56×45 mm, the TRX features a forged 7075 T6 Aluminum hard coat anodized mil-spec upper and lower receivers. The barrel is 1×9 twist chrome moly vanadium with a threaded muzzle, mid-length gas system, (my favorite for a carbine system), a Troy Industries Low Profile gas block and A2 flash hider.
The TRX also features a reinforced fiber adjustable Troy™ Battle Ax (troyind.com) butt stock and a Troy 13” TRX Extreme forend. Weight is 6.8 lbs. empty and has a fully extended length of 36.75” and a collapsed length of 33”. The sights are Troy DOA/STD Rear folding and Troy M4/HK Front folding. The TRX has an HPT/MPI tested bolt.
The forend is great. It is compact and easily usable without a vertical foregrip because it isn’t festooned with railing. You select where you are going to put the rail segments-very nice touch. I also like the feel of the Troy Battle Axe butt stock. I tested a TRX-16 with carbine length gas port earlier in the year for another project.
All the Troy accessories on my sample gun were flat dark earth, with the upper and lower receiver left in black. Very sharp! It was a great trouble free shooter up to any task than could be expected of it! If you want an excellent M4 type weapon that is ready to go right out of the box, look no farther. The sights are so good that they aren’t just for backup- they can stand alone unless and until you want to add an optic. And while you’re looking, make sure you check Del-Ton’s complete AR15 line on their online catalogue. If you don’t see it, they can probably build it. MSRP for the Del-Ton TRX16 rifle is $1250 and comes with a hard case, 30-round Troy magazine and a cleaning kit.
The Bates and Dittus AR 37mm Launcher.
Bates And Dittus
The black rifle or shotgun itself is not the only news out there. I think the coolest area of accessories for the AR is the 37mm launcher. While a number of companies either make or import them, the models from Bates and Dittus (batesanddittus.com) are my favorites to date.
Their recently introduced UBL (Under Barrel Launcher)-37 exudes quality manufacture, and has some promising tactical applications as well as being just plain fun. For those of you unfamiliar with 37mm launchers they are the standard diameter used by civilian law enforcement and the rounds are propelled by black powder rather than the smokeless powder used in the military 40mm rounds-there are no HE 37mm rounds available. Point of order here-37mm launchers are totally legal for civilians to own, as long as you are in possession of ONLY smoke and flare rounds.
If you possess LE rounds that shoot a projectile designed to cause less lethal physical harm-tear gas, stingball or wooden baton rounds then the launcher becomes a “destructive device” according to ATF. Any 37mm launcher can shoot the smaller and cheaper 26.5mm maritime signaling rounds through an adapter system, which is an excellent option. The UBL-37 attaches to any M4 or AR15 carbine that features a lower Picatinny Rail on the bottom of the forend by means of a two-sided rail clamp. Barrel style does not matter.
The UBL-37 is unique because it has a full-length strip of rail on the top and bottom of the barrel that allows for optional equipment to be directly mounted to it such as a bipod, lights or sights. Operation is similar to the M203 launcher but due to the solid steel construction the UBL-37 weighs in at a pound more (4lbs 11oz total) than a 203. The manual of arms for the UBL-37 is very similar to the M203 with the exception of a cocking lever and the rotating safety lever on the right side. The cocking lever is on the right side, above the trigger guard and is pulled to the rear for cocking.
This feature could allow a civilian LE operator to have one mounted on his entry weapon, loaded with a bean bag round, but uncocked. If during the entry a less lethal close response is needed then the launcher can be cocked and fired. Between the manual cocking feature and the smooth double action trigger, an accidental discharge isn’t likely. The UBL-37 is what I would describe as a “long action” launcher compared a standard M203, as the length of the civilian 37mm rounds vary greatly, with those such as “knee knocker” wood baton rounds measuring nearly 8 inches in length (depending on brand).
I have mounted a Lasermax™ UniMax ( lasermax.com) green laser on the top rail of the UBL for separate aiming. While this doesn’t provide for longer distance sighting like a military M204 sight, it does the trick for close range riot control rounds. Most 37mm flare or “breaker” (read that “fireworks”) round measure around 4 inches. At an MSRP of $429, the Bates and Dittus UBL-37 gives you solid American made quality. Speaking of solid, here is a tip. Use the lightest M4 you can find to mount it on, and only add the smallest of optics, such as a SIG mini-red dot (sigsauer.com) to save weight.
Whether you use this for law enforcement, ranch defense along the border, nostalgic former military reasons or just for fun, you are sure to get some attention. Watch for a shoulder stock adaptor for increased versatility of the UBL-37 in the future.
The Losok Valkyr is based on the M14 action.
LOSOK Rifles
Of course, the AR15 is not the only tactical rifle game in town. In fact, some older, much older designs have had fresh life breathed into them-and one of these is the LOSOK Valkyr™ (losokcustomarms.com). Using what could be described as the original tactical rifle, the M-1 Garand, owner Mark Lammers has turned the old warhorse into a modern, long-range tactical tack-driver.
Using the long action of the M-1 Garand, a new receiver, and modified Browning BAR magazines, the Valkyr is available in calibers .30-06 through .458 Winchester Magnum. However, the gun is not recognizable to the untrained eye as a Garand-it appears to be a variant of the Springfield M1A or M14-which it isn’t, although mark also makes a variant of that too.
According to Mark, the receiver in early production rifles is milled from solid billet, later rifles will be hammer forged once the forging tool is complete. The receiver will be manufactured from 8620 steel heat treated to milspec for the M14/M1 Garand. The receiver design is Patent Pending, and is now licensed to another Ohio Company, 7.62MM firearms, for production and worldwide distribution-although LOSOK will still be producing its own version of the rifle. The receiver features a 20MOA canted rail on top for optics mounting, eliminating the greatest difficulty in achieving scoped accuracy on the M14 or Garand.
The bolt in early rifles is a USGI Garand bolt inspected, and fitted with firing pin, extractor, and ejector, but will later be newly manufactured utilizing the same methods as the receiver. So those of you who might be concerned about LOSOK gobbling up a bunch of M1 collector rifles, take heart, things will change soon.
The magazine is a modified M1918 BAR magazine with a capacity of 20 rounds and using a new follower to activate an M14 style bolt stop after the last round is fired. The steel body and follower are FNC treated as well to give outstanding corrosion resistance and durability.
I had an opportunity to test a pre-production Valkyr in .30-06 at a Counter-Sniper School put on by OSS-I (https://www.oss-international.net) in nearby Zanesville Ohio at an abandoned concrete factory. Mark brought the rifle and a supply of Hornady .30.06 M1 Garand rounds loaded with the 168 Gr. Hornady A-Max Bullet. Mark had mounted a 3-12×50 Horus Vision Hawk, in Burris XTR rings with a H425 reticle with adjustments and central grid in USMC mils. Although I would have liked a bit more power, the scope worked out very well.
The Valkyr factory prototype was fitted with a McMillan M3 Adjustable M14 stock modified to fit the larger Valkyr (M14-06) action, rail guard, free floated barrel and gas system.
The bipod was a Harris clone, made for Winchester.
The muzzle brake was a slick touch-it was a Beretta BM59 muzzle brake. Very distinctive with the array of holes on top-and I’m sure it added to the overall shootability of the Valkyr.
The weight of the Valkyr prototype with scope, rings, magazine, bipod and sling is 16.5lbs., OAL is 46.25 inches with the stock at max length of pull and muzzle brake installed, and 43 inches with no brake and LOP at minimum. It is a pretty substantial weapon, but definitely what is needed when shooting this length of cartridge.
This was one great shooting rifle with under MOA groups at 100, 200, 300 and 465 yards, where it banged the steel plate set there with no effort. One thing it didn’t bang was me. While the .30-06 offers about 20 lbs of recoil energy with 165-grain bullets vs. 18 for the .308 the gun was one that could be shot all day. With that 16 lb. weight to hold it down, plus the Beretta muzzle break, it truly is a rifle that could be shot all day long comfortably-and believe me, I am no fan of recoil. Having to hump the Valkyr with its support ammo over hill and dale on a mission wouldn’t be much fun, but when it was time to take that shot, the Valkyr would shine. One last note, it was cool just loading Browning BAR magazines (the all time coolest battle weapon) for firing.
I asked Mark Lammer’s why John Garand didn’t use the BAR magazine feeding system on his M1 rifle instead of the 8 round en bloc clip during his 15 year epic development of the M1 of that monumental weapon. The answer was simple. The military at that time believed that the BAR magazines would be too easily lost or damaged if mass issued, so they insisted on a fixed, internal magazine specification. Probably the same guys who insisted on magazine cutoffs so that in battle soldiers would fire their bolt guns single shot, and hold the magazine supply in reserve on their Springfield and Enfield rifles so as not to waste ammo. Think of how much farther ahead our military would be if thinking of this type didn’t so often prevail.
LOSOK also has a M14/M1A version of the Valkyr-the M14-06™, which uses the same receiver as the Valkyr, but with the shorter gas system of the M14. The M14-06 is setup in an Archangel (archangelmanufacturing.com) fully adjustable stock that seems to naturally mold into the shooters body in the prone position, which is the position you shoot both these guns. Even though the M14-06 is lighter, it still weighs in fully setup at 15 or so pounds. Both the Valkyr and the M14-06 can also handle the .308, but adapters are needed to allow for the use of M14 type magazines to go with the .308 chamber.
LOSOK will also chamber the rifles in .300 Win Mag as mentioned but you lose magazine capacity AND you don’t gain anything in ballistic performance with custom loads in .30-06 or factory loads like Hornady’s Light Magnum™ line. Mark says that he is getting 2900 fps out of the 180 grain Light Magnum round compared to 2950 to 3000 FPS for the 180 gr. .300 Winchester load.
The Sig-Sauer M400 M4 AR15.
Sig-Sauer
The big rifle news at SIG (sigsauer.com) is not what one would expect. The SIG M400 is an M4 carbine-of direct gas impingement design.
This model has been introduced in light of the existing SIG516 Patrol Rifle, an M4 model of piston design and the piston driven SIG551-A1, long the bread and butter of the SIG assault rifle line.
The M400 is pure military style AR, with a standard M4 collapsible stock, round carbine handguards, and removable carry handle. It was developed to meet demands from police administrator’s who favored the SIG516 but wanted all parts to be standard MIL-SPEC GI for ease of service. There are no MIL-SPEC standards for piston driven AR’s. So SIG came up with a GI upper to mate to their 516 lower and the M400 was born. I will be testing the M400 for a future article for Tactical Gear magazine. MSRP is $1099.
Windham Weaponry
The Windham Weaponry AR-15.
When the new corporate owners of Bushmaster chose to move the Bushmaster factory from its original Windham, Maine, you had to know that not everyone would be willing to relocate. In fact at least 24 stayed behind, and the original Bushmaster founder Richard Dykes started a new company in the old location, calling it Windham Weaponry (windhamweaponry.com) At the time of this writing, Windham had just gotten officially up and running, so I wasn’t able to test one of their products personally.
But, you have to know that with that kind of history and former talent pool, a pool of people who want to make their newly formed locally owned company succeed, that their American-made product will be very well made-first rate I am sure. At this time, Windham is offering a variety of parts and accessories, complete uppers and lowers, or complete rifles.
As far their current lineup goes, Windham’s line isn’t extensive yet with three M4 type carbines being offered. The three basic models are the R16A4T, a basic heavy barrel model with standard round handguards, and removable carry handle, the R16M4A4T which is a civilianized copy of the basic military M4 with a stepped barrel, and the R16M4FTT which is a flattop step-barrel model sans front sight tower, but with a railed gas block for mounting backup irons. The MSRP of any of the three is right around $1000 and Windham is offering a limited lifetime warranty that transfers to subsequent owners.
That is hard to beat. Take a close look at this “new” company. I certainly will.
This article appeared in the 2012 Gun Digest the Magazine Shooter's Guide.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice has announced that it will recognize concealed carry permits and licenses from 25 states, and Washington’s is among them.
According to the Capital Times in Madison, the Evergreen State license meets the Badger State’s criteria, based on “background checks that are comparable to those required under Wisconsin’s law.” That law takes effect on Tuesday, Nov. 1.
Those states include: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.—Capital Times
Overshadowing this looming event is a trial that opened Monday in Milwaukee involving a Wisconsin gun rights activist who killed one man and left another one paralyzed in a controversial shooting in May 2010 that has nothing to do with concealed carry. Jesus Gonzalez wasn’t packing a concealed handgun; he was carrying openly when his confrontation unfolded with Danny John, 29, and his nephew, Jered Corn, 22.
The pair had just left a tavern near Gonzalez’ home and neither was armed. Gonzalez immediately called police to report the shooting, insisting that he had defended himself against an assault. Corn’s version is considerably different.
State vs. Jesus Gonzalez may prove to be the best evidence for either side of the gun rights debate: Did Gonzalez save his own life because he carried a gun, or did he kill one man and paralyze another because deadly force was readily available at his hip?—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Read more
When the folks at Winchester called to invite me down to East Alton, Ill., home to Winchester’s legendary NILO Farms, last October, they said they wanted to introduce me to a new type of non-toxic waterfowl ammunition, one they assured me would be quite eye-opening. Little did the men realize just what an understatement they’d made.
At first glance, Winchester’s new Blind Side appears to be just another 1-3/8-ounce steel load housed in a black hull with a silver base. Even the advertised velocity – 1,400 feet per second (fps) – isn’t out of the ordinary; however, once the technicians began describing the new load in detail, it quickly became apparent that this non-toxic offering was something unique.
To fully understand Blind Side, let’s break a single shotshell down internally, component by component. The first noticeable difference is the shot itself; not your traditional round pellets, but rather hexahedrons – six-sided cubes of zinc-plated steel. The technicians explained there are two primary reasons for the unusual shape.
One, the cubes allow individual pellets to be stacked inside the hull, effectively eliminating the empty space created when round shapes settle against one another. The resulting packing density increases payload by 15 percent; meaning a 1-3/8-ounce charge now fits into a 1-1/4 ounce hull. Secondly, the flat surfaces, along with the corners and edges of the new Hex Shot increases on-target trauma dramatically – this trauma translates into tremendous energy and shock transfer. The proverbial bottom line here is simple; you have more pellets and each pellet is more effective.
Next, you need to see the wad. For several years now, shotshell manufacturers have been experimenting with radical new wad designs, as they apply to non-toxic applications. Many waterfowlers are familiar with Federal’s FliteControl (FC) wad; a rear-braking cup that distinguishes itself through increased pattern densities at longer yardages. Unlike the FC wad, the Blind Side cup sports three diamond-shaped cuts on the aft (forward) portion of the wad proper.
Upon leaving the muzzle, the diamonds open and flex rearward, slowly separating the wad from the Hex Shot charge, but not before remaining with the charge long enough to ensure consistent patterns downrange. Interestingly, the Blind Side wad is a two-piece unit made up of the cup and a second hinged, base upon which the cup and charge sit. Because the Hex Shot creates room inside the hull otherwise occupied by pellets, more space now exists for this hinged wad. This contributes to pressure reduction, increased velocity, and reduced perceived recoil.
Blind Side is loaded using Winchester’s proven Drylock system, a sealing process that serves to keep both the powder charge and the primer watertight. Two formats – 3-inch, and 3-1/2-inch – are available, those in 1-3/8 ounce and 1-5/8 ounce loads, respectively, and containing either #2 or #BB Hex Shot in black hulls. Blind Side hit the shelves in June 2011.
Newbold polymer targets are truly versatile and easy to incorporate into any training situation.
You need to train your team with a live-fire contest. You want CQB shooting, carbine and subgun engagements and maybe even a long-range shot or two to prove to the operators they don’t “always” have to wait for the sniper. (No offense to the snipers out there. We’ll get to you next month.) And you have a budget. What do you do? The clock is ticking. What do you do? (Cue theme for Jeopardy.)
I’m going to say: You create a timed scenario your operators have to solve using a sidearm and a long gun.
That’s correct, but you did not phrase your response in the form of a question.
Seriously though, no agency can go through training with only static paper targets and call the officers qualified. But building a scenario-based training environment with reactionary targets can be really costly. Unless, that is, you shun the steel and go for polymer. With just five polymer targets from Newbold, some dimensional lumber and a little imagination you can create a shooting scenario that is realistic, challenging and, if you include a stopwatch, provides the competitive stress to elevate the operator’s heart rate. Here’s the set up.
Establish a starting line and on the command “Gun!”:
Run to cover
Engage popper at 25 yards with the long gun
Engage popper at 50 yards with the long gun
Move to secondary cover
Clear three plates at 7 yards with the sidearm
The timer starts the watch on the command and stops it when the final target disappears. Now, here is where the creativity comes in. Training officers can change the length of the run to cover, change the point of transition from the long gun to the pistol, or change the sequence of engagement. I had a bit of a reality check as I drew up the sequence. I started by planning to engage the closest targets with the handgun before transitioning to the long gun for the distant targets.
In the real world, if you are carrying a long gun on a mission, that gun is your primary weapon and you would not sling a fully functional long gun and reach for your pistol, so I turned things around, forcing the officer to run to cover, engage the closest of the two poppers (on the assumption that the closest threat is the most immediate), before hitting the distant popper. Then, for the sake of training, assume that the long gun has malfunctioned AND a close threat has appeared that requires multiple hits to be dealt with. Draw from the holster and fire the side arm.
The Newbold Targets are adjustable, allowing you to set the ease with which your particular gun knocks them down.
That is just one way to do this, not automatically “the” way. But what makes this type of training possible is the use of lightweight, affordable polymer targets like those made by Newbold. For this string of targets, which can be set up in various ways, you’ll spend about $550. Just for an “economy” plate rack of steel targets you’ll spend more than $900, plus the cost of the poppers.
You also have to deal with the bullet fragments and weight of steel targets. Have you ever tried to move a plate rack? Maybe you have a range where you can leave it out all the time, but then it is exposed to the elements. And steel targets wear out. If you use FMJ ammo against the polymer you’ll be shooting each target thousands and thousands of times before you’ll need to replace them. Yes, the wooden 2×4 rack for the polymer targets is not as strong as a steel base, but it is easy to build and rebuild and, if someone hits the rack, simply assess a time penalty as motivation to shoot straight and replace the boards as you need to.
For this story, I opted to shoot the course with .22 caliber versions of popular LE weapons: The GSG-5, a near clone of the MP-5 and my Glock 22 with the Advantage Arms .22 caliber conversion kit. I wanted to see how the targets reacted to .22 caliber hits. In the case of the poppers, they didn’t react to the hits as I would have liked. We had to adjust the bases to make sure the poppers fell with the lightest touch. But that also meant the poppers would fall over with the slightest breeze.
Running through the short scenario was not only good training, but is showed the value of the Newbold targets as versatile training tools. We could move them anywhere we wanted, change shooting angles, distances and target requirements. We could even call out something like, “Red targets are all friendly. Orange are hostile. Engage only the orange.” The training really was limited only by imagination.
Post shooting inspection showed the very typical tiny holes, really nothing more than black specs on the self-healing polymer. These targets will hold up to all sorts of abuse and thousands of rounds. And in all that time, after absorbing all those rounds, you won’t have to deal with a single sharp edge or worry about splashback or bullet fragments. Truly versatile and easy to incorporate into any training situation. For more information on Newbold targets, check out www.newboldtargets.com.
Browning Double Auto “Twelvette.” One of the finest upland autoloaders ever made. Initially designed for the European market, the Double Auto could be had in the “Twentyweight” model, which weighed one-quarter to one-half pound less than the “Twelvette.”
If an average shotgunner were asked to conjure up in his mind’s eye a scene depicting an upland hunter, no doubt that hunter would be armed with either a side-by-side or an over/under shotgun. For the past half-century or so, we have been conditioned to think that an upland gunner should be armed with a two-barreled gun. Repeaters are permissible in the wetlands when shooting waterfowl, but for upland game, double guns are what we believe are best suited. But despite all the articles and advertising about double guns, if an accurate survey were conducted, the results would show that more upland game is shot with repeaters than with doubles.
It used to be that the vast majority of repeaters found in the field were pump guns. However, in the last couple of decades, the autoloader has gained considerably on the pump gun in popularity. Today it is possible to find an autoloader that is priced a few bucks less than some of the pump guns. Although the most popular and best-selling shotgun in North America is still the pump gun, the autoloader is not far behind, certainly ahead of the over-under and the side-by-side.
Interestingly, shortly after the introduction of the first successful autoloading shotguns in America, the Belgian Browning and the similar Remington Model 11, the autoloader outsold all other shotguns six to one in the northeast and about four to one in the rest of the country. However, with the appearance of increasing number of less-expensive pump guns, the pump gained on the autoloader, while the double continued to slide.
Remington Model 1100 12 gauge. Although a bit hefty at around 7-1/2 pounds, it was still very popular with upland gunners through the 1960s and 1970s. In the lighter 20 gauge at 6-1/2 pounds, it continues to be a popular upland gun.
There is no denying that a good double gun is truly a delight in the field. In the uplands where hunters log more miles than shots, a light, fast handling shotgun is what is needed. A quality side-by-side or an over/under, especially one that is made in the smaller gauges, tends to be light, fast-handling, and easy to carry. But please note that the key is a quality double, which translates to more money! A cheap, poorly constructed double gun is just that: a cheap, poorly constructed gun. It is far better to get a quality autoloader than to settle for a cheap double. But “just any autoloader” will not necessarily be a better choice. Most autoloaders, especially those made in this country, are better suited for ducks than upland gunning.
A typical 12-gauge 7-1/2-pound muzzle-heavy autoloader does not make for an ideal upland gun. Probably more upland game has been shot in the last 40 years in America with a 12-gauge Remington Model 1100 than with any other autoloader. Prior to that, it was the Browning A-5 and Remington 11 and 11-48. However, they were used in the uplands more often than not, because they were the only shotguns available to the hunter, not because the gun was selected specifically for upland gunning. If any of these guns was selected for upland gunning, it was usually chambered in one of the smaller bore sizes.
Ideally, for upland gunning an autoloader (or any other gun for that matter!) should be fairly light and have a balance that tends to be light up front. The arbitrary weight limit should be no more than 7-1/4 pounds, preferably closer to 7 or under, regardless of gauge. This eliminates some autoloaders, but at the same time, still provides adequate choice to upland hunters. Among modern gas operated autoloaders, the Beretta comes to mind in its various models. Going back to the earlier Models 302 and 303 to current models, Berettas always tend to be light, averaging around 7 pounds with a 26-inch barrel in 12 gauge. They are not exactly barrel light, but they are light overall and handle very well in the uplands. The latest Beretta, A400 XPLOR, is about as light a 12 gauge autoloader you will find today. It is listed at 6.6 pounds!
Browning A-5 Sweet Sixteen, a popular upland autoloader from its first appearance in 1936 through the 1960s.
Benelli, of course, leads the field in light autoloaders. Whether it is the Montefeltro, the M1 or M2, they are all not just light, but balance right with muzzle lightness. The Benelli Montefeltro, M1 and M2 weigh 7 pounds or less and the Ultra Light model weighs closer to 6 pounds. There are other makes that you might find, but the bottom line is to find one that is not just light, but is barrel light. Browning’s Maxus, although built for waterfowling with its 3-1/2 inch chamber and camouflage finish, can still be a very effective upland gun. It is surprisingly light and handles very well.
Among older autoloaders, there were quite a few that were very good if not superb for upland gunning. The old Browning Double Auto was originally designed for boxed pigeon shooting and balances like a double gun. The “Twentyweight” model weighs around 6-1/2 pounds and the “Twelvette” closer to 7 pounds. Both are superb upland guns. There is also the old Winchester Model 59 with its revolutionary fiberglass-wrapped barrel that weighed 6-1/2 pounds in 12 gauge. The Winchester was revolutionary not only because of its unusual barrel, but also because it was the first American made shotgun with screw-in choke tubes. The Franchi 48AL could weigh as little as 6-1/4 pounds in 12 gauge with a plain, short barrel. Perhaps the lightest of all was the futuristic Armalite AR-17 or the “Golden Gun” as it was called. The Armalite was made in 12 gauge only, and like the Browning Double Auto, it was a two-shooter and operated on the short recoil system.
The Armalite tipped the scale at a wispy 5-1/2 pounds in 12 gauge! There were other imported autoloaders that were pretty light in 12 gauge. In the 1950s and 60s there was the Breda, a unique, exceptionally well-made long recoil-operated autoloader. The Breda normally weighed around 7 pounds in 12 gauge but could be had in the Superlight model that weighed 6-3/4 pounds. So there has never been a shortage of light, properly balanced autoloaders for the uplands.
In 16 gauge, the Browning Sweet Sixteen in the old A-5 configuration – and its licensed Remington and Savage humpback knockoffs – is just about all that was and is available. However, it is possible to locate an old Remington 11-48 16 with a receiver that was “shaved” to better suit the smaller gauge. Savage did make a rather bulbous-looking Model 775, a lightened version of the odel 755 that weighed around 7 pounds, but it was an ugly gun and did not sell well. Whatever the case may be, in the older models it is best to avoid ventilated ribbed barrels for upland gunning. Not only does the ventilated rib contribute significantly to overall gun weight (about a quarter of a pound) but it adds weight in a crucial area, up front.
A Browning Sweet Sixteen with a plain 26-inch barrel averages 6-3/4 pounds and handles beautifully. With a ventilated rib, the weight can increase to over 7 pounds. A 7 pound gun should be a 12, not a 16, if it is to be used in the uplands.
A Browning Gold Evolve in 12 gauge weighs around 6-3/4 pounds and should make a good upland gun.
The same thing can be said about the Remington 11-48. With a short plain barrel, the Remington could weigh as little as 6-1/2 pounds, while with a ventilated rib it tends to be closer to 7. The legendary Remington 1100 did come in 16, but as good as the 1100 is for a variety of shotgunning, it is not the best gun for the uplands in 12 or 16 gauges. Besides being somewhat heavy, it was always a bit nose-heavy, not the best thing for an upland gun. Yet, because it points so well, it has served as an upland gun for many a successful upland hunter.
In the 1980s Remington attempted to correct the nose-heavy tendency of the 1100 for the uplands and came out with their Special Field models with 21-inch barrels. But these guns, although lighter with their short barrels and shortened magazines, did not have a very good balance. Merely chopping the barrel shorter, as most manufacturers are prone to do, does not make an “upland” gun, it just makes it a shorter gun! Although there are upland gunners who swear by the Remington Special Field”models with their stubby barrels, they are not ideally suited and tend to have poor balance. The current Remington “contour” barrels are a much better solution, and the new Model 105 CTI made of lightweight materials makes for a dandy upland autoloader at around 7 pounds in 12 gauge.
The Winchester Model 59 was especially designed for the uplands at 6-1/2 pounds in 12 gauge but never really caught on with hunters. The gun was revolutionary in that it used a lightweight barrel that was a steel liner wrapped in fiberglass, and it was the first American-made gun to use screw-in choke tubes, later known as “Winchokes.”
In 20 gauge, the picture changes somewhat and even the nose-heavy Remington 1100 Lightweight 20 can make a good upland gun. Just about all the 20 gauge autoloaders are suitable for upland gunning provided that they are properly choked. Some are, of course, better suited for upland gunning than others. Perhaps the best way to separate the 20 gauges is by using three categories. The first category is “standard models” and includes those weighing between 6-1/2 and 7 pounds such as the Remington 1100 LT 20, Browning Gold, etc. These guns make good upland guns if they are choked properly.
The second category, the “lightweights” includes 20 gauge autoloaders such as the Berettas and Benellis, and even the old Browning A-5 “Twenty” (commonly referred to as “Light Twenty”) and the earlier-mentioned Breda. These are 20 gauges that all weigh somewhere between a few ounces under 6 pounds and 6-1/2 pounds. They are all balanced right for the uplands and their light overall weight makes them ideal for carrying over hill and dale.
The third category can be termed as “ultralight” autoloaders. Currently there are only two that qualify as ultralights. Although there are Benelli M-1s, M-2s and Montefeltros that dip under 6 pounds, to qualify as an ultralight the gun has to weigh closer to 5-1/2 pounds in 20 gauge.
The Benelli Ultra Light model in 20 gauge is claimed to weigh 5 pounds, 2 ounces. It is indeed a feathery, delightful autoloader, but not quite as light as claimed. Benelli achieved lighter weight by using a shorter magazine tube, shorter barrel, and a carbon fiber ventilated rib. But despite its shorter barrel, it balances very well because its receiver is longer by about an inch than the average autoloader’s, and the barrel is not seated as deeply, giving it another inch of length. Therefore, the Benelli with a 24-inch barrel is of same overall length as a Browning A-5 with a 26-inch barrel.
A sleeper in this group of ultralight autoloaders is the Franchi 48AL. The Franchi was always considered to be the lightest autoloader one could get. It used to be advertised as the world’s lightest autoloader and I suppose that is still true today.
Beretta AL391 Tekny’s Gold. Like all Berettas, it is fairly light at 7 pounds in 12 gauge.
The Benelli Ultra Light is indeed very light, but it is a few ounces heavier than the Franchi. The Franchi has excellent balance combined with feathery weight. A typical Franchi 48AL 20-gauge (the earlier model without screw-in chokes) with 26-inch ventilated rib barrel weighs 5 pounds, 4 ounces. With shorter barrel (Franchi made 24-inch barrels) it would weigh-in at the advertised 5 pounds 2 ounces. Today’s guns, because of the screw-in chokes, tend to weigh a few ounces more, although they are still feathery. The Benelli Ultra Light 20 gauge with 24-inch barrel averages around 5 pounds, 6 ounces, which is 4 ounces more than the advertised 5 pounds, 2 ounces. Perhaps Benelli’s advertising claims are a bit overly optimistic. Still, at less than 5-1/2 pounds, it is plenty light!
In 28 gauge, there is the Remington 1100 and the Franchi 48AL. The Remington tends to be heavier, but it still makes for an excellent upland gun, as does the discontinued Remington, 11-48 which is lighter than the 1100. The Franchi is one of the lightest 28 gauge autoloaders on the market today. It is built on the 20 gauge receiver and weighs about the same as the 20. It's a wonderful upland gun with an average weight of around 5-1/2 pounds. There’s also the now-defunct Charles Daly import, a gas-operated gun that appears to be pretty good, but the gun has not been around long enough to provide adequate assessment.
Smith & Wesson’s Model 1000 looks a lot like the Remington 1100 but is considerably lighter. At around 7 pounds in 12 gauge, it made for an excellent upland autoloader. The 20 gauge model weighed around 6-1/4 pounds. It is discontinued.
The latest addition in 28 gauge comes from Benelli. It is a scaled-receiver Legacy Model that weighs 5 pounds. There haven’t been enough of these Benellis in the field yet for them to have built a reputation. They seem to be great little autoloaders, but they are pricey. Benelli would have been better served putting out a Montefeltro or M2 model in 28 gauge rather than the more expensive, engraved Legacy model.
There are those who use the .410 on upland game. However, it should be confined to use on the smaller game birds such as quail and dove and not the larger birds. I know, many a game farm pheasant has been shot with a .410, but a game farm bird is a totally different animal from the tough wild ringneck. Also, shots should be kept to closer distances. For most gunners, 30 yards would be about the maximum distance that they should attempt to use the .410. There just aren’t enough shot pellets in the skinny little hull.
When it comes to the .410 autoloader, there is currently only the Remington 1100. It makes for a fine skeet gun as well as small bird shotgun, although it is a bit hefty at over 6-1/2 pounds. The older Model 11-48 is about a half a pound lighter but is extremely scarce on the used-gun market.
There are a number of inexpensive double guns on the market today that cost less than the pricier autoloaders. But as the old saying goes, “you get what you pay for.” The inexpensive doubles may very well be durable, but you can rest assured that they will more than likely be crudely finished or with a lot of glitz to cover up poor workmanship. Balance and handling qualities will not be something you will find in these cheaper doubles. It is far better to spend your money on a quality autoloader than on an inexpensive double gun.
This article appeared in the 2012 Edition of the Gun Digest book.
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As the Los Angeles Times reported, “A cache of Los Angeles Police Department submachine guns and handguns was stolen…[recently] from a secured building used by the department's SWAT unit, raising fears that the weapons, which police had altered to fire only blanks, could be converted back to lethal use, police officials confirmed.”
SWAT Team members arrived at the building for training, only to discover their training firearms had been stolen. The guns included 21 MP-5 submachine guns and a dozen handguns. “To get to the weapons, the thieves cut through bolt locks on an outside door and two internal doors and forced their way through a metal roll gate…”
“I guess ‘secure' is all relative now,” said LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Downing. “It's embarrassing…. It's a lesson learned.”
The Times noted that, “As a rule, Downing said, officers are not supposed to leave weapons unattended at the building. He added that ‘appropriate measures’ had been taken in response to the gaffe but would not specify if anyone had been disciplined. He said officials are also reviewing SWAT's procedures for using the building to see if changes are needed.”
Downing admitted that it was possible to convert the firearms back to the firing of live ammunition.
The Stoeger Double Defense 20 Gauge. Also available in 12 Gauge, in 2 3/4 in. or 3 in.
The selection of double-barrel shotguns for tactical use is somewhat limited. However, the simple and reliable break-action of a side-by-side shotgun is still a top contender for home defense.
Here also is one area where, if the double is your weapon of choice, you have to purchase one that was made overseas, since there are no American makers that are making side-by-side guns.
Stoeger Double Defense Review
The Double Defense gun is outfitted with a green, fiber-optic front sight and comes standard with two Picatinny Rail accessory mounts: one on the receiver for red-dot sights and a second factory-installed rail under the barrels for attaching targeting lasers or tactical lights. All metal surfaces are finished in matte blue and come complete with non-reflective matte black hardwood stock and forearm.
Of tactical shotguns for home defense, the Stoeger (an importer, not a manufacturer) Double Defense shotgun is my top pick for several reasons. The Double Defense comes about as ready to set up tactically as you can for a double gun, with picatinny rails and Hi-Viz front sight installed, making it ready for lights and optics if you want them. The barrel is also ported to control recoil.
Since I wouldn’t be shooting slugs out of a double, I would probably dispense with an optical sight since the Hi-Viz pipe is very “vizible” as it is, and for what you want to use this gun for it is about ideal. As I said earlier, the Double Defense is so very popular that I could not get my hands on one for testing for this book, so obviously I’m not the only one out there who thinks that the old double still has merit as a defensive weapon.
What’s nice is that if you can’t get your hands on a real live Double Defense, and you want a side by side double usable for home defense, there are still other options available, one right in the Stoeger lineup itself, and it’s the same gun as the Double Defense, without the tactical upgrades and black paint job.
Stoeger Single Trigger Coach
The Brazilian-made Stoeger hammerless Single Trigger Coach Gun is my next choice, and one I actually got to test. It is listed as a specialty side-by-side on the Stoeger website, since the original Coach gun is a more historically accurate double trigger model. While the double trigger configuration may be more historically accurate for Cowboy Action Shooting where the steel targets are not attacking the shooter, double triggers are too complicated and slow for real live defensive use without a lot of practice.
The single trigger Coach Gun is available in 12 or 20 gauges with a 20-inch, un-ported barrel, in blue or nickel finishes. The nickel finish is stocked in black, and if you think a single barrel chromed 12 gauge is intimidating, imagine the effect of a side-by-side with moonlight glinting off that shiny finish.
On the standard Coach model, the barrels have fixed chokes, set up as Improved Cylinder and Modified, the first shot, right, being the Improved Cylinder-and the second shot the left Modified. This setup is designed for hunting. If I was going to build it from the ground up for defensive use, I would set it up with Improved Cylinder or Cylinder Bore chokes on both barrels. If you pay a few bucks more, you can get interchangeable screw-in chokes on the Supreme Coach Model, but for defensive use, I wouldn’t bother.
The gun, which has an MSRP of $399, is nicely blued with an American Walnut stock with what can be charitably described as checkering on the grip and forend. The wood itself is actually nicely figured, and they would have been better off just skipping the checkering. I purchased mine for $349.
The Stoeger Coach Single Trigger Supreme.
There is an automatic safety which needs to be disengaged after the action is opened and closed and which also cocks the internal hammers. There are extractors, not ejectors (I would prefer ejectors for rapid reloading of this gun, since it is no longer really a sporting model and you don’t have to worry about capturing your spent shells in the field).
The only sighting equipment on the solid rib is a simple and somewhat small silver bead. I would have a gunsmith install a Hi-Viz or a set of XS Express Sights in its place. Even though there is no railing, perhaps one could be installed by a competent gunsmith. If you wanted to attach a tactical light without the gunsmithing you could, very simply, put a light in the groove underneath and between both barrels and secure it with electrical tape. Take it out and shoot it and see if it holds for you. Actually it really only needs to hold in place for two shots.
The Coach Gun buttstock has no recoil pad, just a plastic buttplate. I test fired it using Remington Home Defense 2-3/4-inch loads, one shot BB, the other shot Duplex. Kids, don’t try this at home without a slip-on rubber recoil pad on the thing. Better yet, get a recoil pad fitted to it. Holy smokes did that hurt-and remember, I love shooting shotguns. I have just grown soft shooting gas guns with recoil pads. Two shots told me all I need to know about patterning and recoil pads, or lack thereof, and about wanting to shoot it off the shoulder again.
The chamber is a three-inch, and all I’ve got to say is “don’t” unless you upgrade to a recoil pad. Two and three-quarter-inch shells are plenty for this gun.
I held dead center on the fist of the aggressor target at seven yards average combat distance. As expected, each barrel patterned just slightly toward its side from the center, but both shots struck pretty much where they were needed.
With all that being said, even if I couldn’t afford the little add-ons (except the recoil pad), I could still pick this baby right up out of the box and use it do defend my home and property quite successfully. The add-ons are just niceties, not essentials. Overall I’m quite impressed with the fit and finish of the Coach Gun and the tightness of the action.
Savage/Stevens 612
Another option, which I was not able to test, is from Savage’s branch product line, Stevens. Stevens doesn’t have its own website, it is merely the trade name for the Savage line of shotguns.
The Stevens 612 Side by Side trail gun is blued steel wood stocked (not walnut apparently) with 20-inch barrels in 12 or 20 gauge. The MSRP is much higher than the Stoeger Coach gun, at $799.95. The gun is apparently made in Turkey. I checked on the 612 online at Shotgun World (www.shotgunworld.com) since I didn’t actually have one to examine. On the site, the 612 got very mixed reviews, actually mostly bad reviews.
There was one very positive review, and it could be a matter of some of the first guns that were imported were not up to proper standards, with later versions being improved. If you are interested in one, check with your local dealer or gunsmith and see what they are saying, and examine one for yourself. If they carry the line, ask them if they are coming back in for repairs. But I sure wouldn’t pay $400 more for one of these over the Stoeger in any event, as the Stoeger guns are very well executed examples of this type of shotgun.
This article is an excerpt from the Gun Digest Book of the Tactical Shotgun.
As you fire the Tingle, you're amazed at what can be accomplished with a surplus milling machine, a set of hand files, a drill press and raw talent. The enormous Tingle .44 revolver might not look like much, but it’s a shooter.
On the eve of the great American muzzleloading revival of the early 1960s, before Italy had emerged to dominate the traditional muzzleloader market, a handful of American gunmakers toiled away on designs.
Some, such as Royal Southgate and Hacker Martin, became famous in their sooty sphere; some did not. One of these unheralded craftsmen, Bob Tingle of Shelbyville, Ind., lays claim to several firsts, including the first 20th-century American percussion target pistol, the first American percussion arm using coil springs, and the first American percussion pistol featuring a frame-mounted firing pin. But Tingle’s most ambitious achievement was the mighty Tingle .44 Blackpowder Magnum Revolver.
Never heard of it? Welcome to the club.
Predating Ruger’s Old Army .44 by more than a decade, the Tingle .44 Blackpowder Magnum Revolver is all but forgotten today. Only 25 of these massive single-action revolvers were built. What is most odd about them, though, is not that so few were built, but that they were built at all.
An Unpredictable Genius
Born Sept. 18, 1925, in Decatur County, Ind., Robert G. Tingle was a cranky World War II veteran who set up an all-purpose blacksmith and welding shop just outside the smallish town of Shelbyville in east central Indiana. According to Jim Guy, Tingle’s sole full-time paid worker, Tingle was an unpredictable eccentric with a knack for shaping metal.
“Bob was a mechanical genius,” Guy said, “and he could out-cuss anyone I ever met. When he got in a bad mood, which was fairly often, he’d lock himself in his shop and yell at anybody who tried to get in. I never really figured him out.”
In 1959, Tingle decided to put his talents to use manufacturing black-powder guns. According to Erwin Fagel, one of his shooting buddies, it seemed the thing to do at the time.
“Bob and I were shooting black powder in the early 50s, long before it became popular,” Erwin said. “We’d go out to Brady Meltzer’s farm and shoot all day long. We shot original guns because they didn’t make replicas back then. Pretty soon, Bob decided he could probably make a decent gun himself. And he could. He could make anything.”
Machined mostly from scrap metal and surplus barrels acquired by sorting patiently through scrap piles, Tingle’s first gun debuted in late 1959 as the Tingle Blackpowder Magnum, a single-shot .40-caliber percussion pistol with a center-mounted hammer. John Amber, editor of Gun Digest, wrote admiringly of Tingle’s pistol, and it was a big hit at the National Muzzleloading Rifle Association’s annual shoot the next year. Tingle was inspired to enter the gun business full-time as the Tingle Manufacturing Co.
The Next Step
What next? A revolver, of course. It would be called the Tingle .44 Blackpowder Magnum Revolver, and production of the resulting handgun began with a 25-unit test run. The enormous six-shooter was the first American percussion revolver to be manufactured in almost a century.
As it happened, the first run of 25 was destined to be the last. According to Fagel, Tingle decided that building them was too labor-intensive to be practical, and one day he simply stopped the project and never resumed it.
If you get a chance to examine a Tingle .44 Blackpowder Magnum Revolver — such as the one in the NMLRA Museum in Friendship, Ind., for example — your first reaction will probably be an awed, murmured expletive. The gun is a strikingly eclectic mixture of features. If a Colt Walker and an 1858 Remington sneaked out of their holsters and had children, this is what the offspring would look like.
The massive Tingle .44 dwarfs a .45 Ruger Vaquero.
Proven Performance
Unloaded, it weighs almost 4 3/4 pounds. Lacking investment casting or heavy forging equipment, Tingle resorted to a three-layer laminated steel frame that is pinned and bolted together. Silver-soldered to the frame are two bulky recoil shields. The topstrap is joined to the rear of the frame with a 3/16-inch slotted machine bolt. The 7-inch octagonal barrel, a Winchester cut-down, is threaded into the frame for a full inch, prefiguring the Ruger Super Redhawk by a quarter-century. The gun is topped with a ventilated rib bearing the simple, hand-stamped attribution: “TINGLE MFG. CO. SHELBYVILLE IND. U.S.A.”
The hammer nose is flat, and the rebounding firing pin is frame-mounted. A blade front sight is slotted lengthwise into the barrel rib, and the rear sight is a simple U-notched blade mortised into the frame. The hammer and loading lever are case-hardened, and the rest of the gun is rather casually finished in a thin blue-black.
The big Tingle .44 revolver won’t win a beauty contest, but it shoots like a barn on fire. Each chamber can accommodate 60 grains of FFG black powder, which is just about redline for a revolver. But when loaded with a modest charge of 25 grains of triple-F and a 124-grain .435-inch roundball, the Tingle will shoot 3-inch groups at 25 yards off sandbags. Firing for groups isn’t particularly challenging; the massive, brooding handgun sits squarely in your hand with all the solidity of a pool table in a basement. The trigger pull is fairly light and crisp at about 3 pounds.
As you fire the gun, you’re amazed at what can be accomplished with a surplus milling machine, a set of hand files, a drill press and raw talent. Granted, some of the gun’s eccentricities would make Sam Colt come roaring out of his grave. The edges of the frame are sharp enough to peel the hide off an unwary knuckle. The chamber mouths mike at anywhere from .427-inch and .431-inch. The grips are a bland species of cast-off walnut. Still, the darn thing shoots well.
End of the Magnum
Abandoning the concept of his mammoth .44 revolver after the first run of 25, Tingle concentrated on building his single-shot .40-caliber target pistol, a single-barrel mules-ear, or “sideslapper,” shotgun, and a side-hammer .45 percussion rifle with a concave cheekpiece.
Many of Tingle’s early guns are marked “Tingle Blackpowder Magnum.” One day in 1965, however, Tingle found a letter in his mailbox. It was from Smith & Wesson, and it politely informed Tingle that Magnum was an S&W trademark dating back to 1935.
Not wanting to tangle with a 900-pound gorilla, Tingle cease-and-desisted. The single-shot target pistol became the Model of 1960, the .45 percussion rifle the Model of 1962 and the mule’s-ear shotgun the Model of 1965. Of these, the most successful was the 40-caliber single-shot Model of 1960. Unpatented, it likely inspired Thompson-Center’s later Scout pistol and carbine. Examples of the Model of 1960 occasionally appear on firearms auction Web sites, where they rarely fail to attract a winning bid.
The unpredictable Tingle died unpredictably Jan. 26, 1978, during a whiteout Hoosiers still call “The Big Blizzard.” Leaving his house in the early morning, he slogged through thigh-deep snowdrifts to his shop at Shelbyville’s Smithland Pike. Halfway there, he sat on a tree stump to catch his breath and died of a crushing heart attack at 52. The Tingle Manufacturing Co. died there with him in the swirling, indifferent snow.
Conclusion
In the two-and-a-half decades since Tingle’s death, time has provided perspective on his work. Some of it is ungainly and rough around the edges. But still, you somehow get the impression that Tingle’s guns will still be banging away when other contemporary muzzleloaders have rotted into clumps of red rust.
As for Tingle, his fame endures only among the relatively few folks who have owned or read about his firearms, the most intriguing of which was the mighty Tingle .44 Blackpowder Magnum Revolver.
Our company Agilite Tactical is going to be giving away several brand new plate carriers to US combat troops currently serving in Afghanistan to put the product through it's final paces before the product hits retailer shelves. The lucky few will be the first to receive The new Deflector US modular plate carrier free of charge, in exchange for feedback on its performance. Soldiers who fit the bill should send their details to [email protected]
U.S. Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Jim Webb (D-VA), along with 10 other cosponsors, have introduced legislation to end the process through which, critics contend, the federal government arbitrarily strips veterans and other Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) beneficiaries of their Second Amendment rights.
According to a press release from Burr’s office, “Currently, veterans who have a fiduciary appointed to act on their behalf are deemed ‘mentally defective’ and are reported to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), a system which prevents them from being able to purchase firearms in the United States. The Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act would require a judicial authority to determine that VA beneficiaries pose a danger to themselves or others before they can be added to the FBI’s NICS.”
“Taking away a Constitutional right is a serious action, and veterans should be afforded the same due process under the law as all other American citizens,” Burr said. “This legislation would protect the rights of veterans and their families by ensuring that only a proper judicial authority is able to determine who is referred to NICS. Our veterans took an oath to uphold the Constitution and they deserve to enjoy the rights they fought so hard to protect.”
Webb added, “This bipartisan bill ensures consistent guidelines are used for reporting citizens to the FBI, and that no veteran is needlessly stripped of their Second Amendment rights.”
The Federal Gun Control Act prohibits certain individuals who have been deemed a “mental defective” from purchasing a firearm. Currently, around 114,000 people who are receiving VA benefits have been reported to NICS.
As the Burr release noted, “A fiduciary is assigned to handle disability compensation, pensions, survivors’ compensation, and other VA payments on behalf of a veteran, surviving spouse, dependent child, or dependent parent. VA's review process for assigning a fiduciary is meant to determine one's ability to manage VA-provided cash assistance. The process does not determine whether they are a danger to themselves or others.”
Looking to go armed, but are stuck in the weeds as to what to arm yourself with? Here are 20 excellent concealed carry gun options that will keep you on the defensive.
Inside this issue:
