By David E. Petzal

As many of you requested, I walked the hallowed (and semi-ventilated) halls of the 2012 SHOT Show with your requests for inexpensive stuff ringing in my ears, instead of just the usual ringing. Riflescope-wise, the standout is Meopta, which I originally thought was an Asian firm, but turns out to be Czech. Meopta has been around for over 70 years and makes rifle scopes, spotting scopes, and binoculars. I’ve used only the rifle scopes, of which there are two lines. MeoStar (pictured here) is the more expensive, made and assembled in the Czech Republic, while MeoPro scopes have their components made abroad and assembled here. Cabela’s sells both MeoPro instruments and its own Euro brand, which is made by Meopta.

The first time I used a Meopta rifle scope I guessed its price was $300 higher than what it actually cost. Think of it this way: A MeoStar that goes for $650 is a $1,000 scope on which you’re getting a $350 discount. A MeoPro scope that sells for $450 is a $750 scope, ditto ditto. Don’t let the modest prices fool you; these are very, very high-grade instruments.

By Phil Bourjaily

To segue from my previous post about movies back to shotguns via paraphrase: “Patches? We don’t need no patches!”*

That would be the motto of Remington’s new Bore Squeeg-E. As you can see in the picture, it’s a rubber bore cleaner that attaches to a pull-through cable. According to Remington’s claims for it, the Squeeg-E does in one pass what it used to take several cloth patches to accomplish and it cuts down on the need for brushes, too.

I am all for anything that lets me clean guns less so I gave my Browning Cynergy and a couple of revolvers the one-pull Squeeg-E test. They came out literally (thing makes a squealing noise as it goes through the bore) squeaky clean. They Cynergy had been fairly dirty, the revolvers were not, but as far as I could tell the Squee-G got down into the rifling as advertised and left it shiny. The shotgun's bores were very clean, too.

By Phil Bourjaily

George Lucas isn’t content to tarnish the magic of the original Star Wars by making three boring, witless prequels (not to mention ruining the end of the original trilogy by filling it with Ewoks). Now he has to keep trying to ruin the first movie, too, with his weird insistence that Greedo shot first.

You remember the scene: we meet smuggler Han Solo in a dark bar full of aliens, one of whom, a bounty hunter who looks like the child of a pig and a green blowfish, stops him at blaster-point demanding the money Solo owes to crime boss Jabba the Hut. Solo, who knows Greedo is going to kill him, sneaks his blaster out its holster and shoots first. The scene perfectly establishes Solo as a cool, crafty survivor and a scoundrel.

Since then, Lucas has twice digitally altered the original. For the first rerelease, he made Greedo shoot first, missing wildly, before Han shot him. Since that raised the question, “why would a professional bounty hunter miss at three feet?” the second time Lucas digitally altered the move, he actually moved Solo’s head sideways to make him dodge the blast before shooting back. Why?

"We like to think of [Han Solo] as a murderer because that's hip -- I don't think that's a good thing for people. I mean, I don't see how you could redeem somebody who kills people in cold blood," said Lucas in one interview, defending the change.

His new line is, Greedo always shot first. Recently he said:

By David E. Petzal

The other night I had the pleasure of listening to a talk by Tony Sanchez-Arino who, at age 82, is about to begin his 60th season as an African professional hunter. In addition to countless safaris, he was also an ivory hunter and, I would guess, a game-control shooter. His numbers of animals taken are staggering: just under 1,300 elephant, 2,044 Cape buffalo, and 322 lion. His talk dealt with the three questions he is most often asked.

Which is better, a double rifle or a bolt action?

Answer: "They’re both good. You go with whatever is most familiar to you. Don’t go to Africa with a rifle that’s new and strange."

What’s the most dangerous animal?

"That’s impossible to answer, because a lot of it depends on the country in which you hunt them. For example, Cape buffalo in open country are as easy to kill as cattle, but in heavy cover they’re something else. I can tell you what is most likely to kill you if it gets hold of you, and those animals are, in order, elephant, Cape buffalo, and lion."