By David E. Petzal

Having declared in 2008 (District of Columbia vs. Heller) that the federal government may not prohibit gun ownership, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear McDonald vs. Chicago, which will decide whether states and cities can just say no to guns. We should get a decision from the Supremes in June, and it appears right now that they will rule, 5-4, that Mr. McDonald may buy a handgun and keep it in his home. This will be good for all gun owners, because it will not only affect Chicago, but will enable challenges to other gun-strangling laws in other municipalities.

(Chicago is the city where, in October of last year, four high school students killed a teenager from a rival school with their feet, fists, and some boards that came to hand. Chicago’s Mayor Daley, who is a bitter foe of gun ownership, did not say what he planned to do about the city’s board-control problem.)

The really interesting part of the decision will regard whatever “reasonable” controls the Supreme Court may deem consistent with the right to bear arms. The Court may well come up with some kind of baseline as to what states can and cannot do to limit firearms ownership.

And... [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

While cruising the aisles at the SCI Convention and suffering from Fine Rifle Burnout, I spotted something truly different at Booth 744—the stopping rifles built by Ryan Breeding. African stopping rifles are used on buffalo and elephant, and are designed to either save your ass when you  are in bad trouble, or to keep you out of it. Mr. Breeding specializes in them. He will build you a rifle in any caliber you want, but his real forte is .40-caliber on up. Way up.

Ryan Breeding learned his craft from a gunmaker named Gil Van Horn, who specialized in big guns during the second half of the last century, and taught him that building a good one meant more than simply clapping a massive barrel into a massive action. The rifle you see here is a .505 Gibbs; 600-grain bullets at 2,350 fps and 93 foot pounds of recoil, which is nearly double the kick of a .458. When you subject a rifle to this kind of strain, terrible things happen to it, and Ryan Breeding goes to considerable pains to prevent them. And he does so with artistry.

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By David E. Petzal

There are only a few books on guns that are worth a damn, and to make matters worse they are rarely updated* and become less valuable over the years. Such is the case with Warren Page’s The Accurate Rifle (1973) or Jim Carmichel’s The Book of the Rifle (1985)--still eminently worth reading, but now quite dated.

Happily, this is not true of Terry Weiland’s Wieland's Dangerous-Game Rifles. It appeared in 2006, established itself as the definitive work on the subject, sold out its first printing, and then sold out a second printing. Now, Terry has done a complete revise, which is not only up-to-the minute, but more complete than the original.

Wieland is a writer of the first magnitude, and his book is an irresistible combination of nifty (and mostly very expensive) machinery, high adventure, gore, lots of excellent photos, and plenty of very sound advice which you can use even if you never hunt anything bigger or more dangerous than whitetail deer. He is careful, scientific, does not rely on hearsay, rumor, or innuendo, and lets you know if he does not know something, which is almost... [ Read Full Post ]

By Philip Bourjaily

For this, my last post of the 00s, I had been trying for a while – and failing --  to think of an end-of-the-decade blog post. My “Eureka” moment came while cleaning up after cooking our Christmas goose. I heard the “tink” of metal falling into the kitchen sink. When I fished the misshapen pellet pictured above out of the sink I realized Hevi Shot is the most significant invention in shotgunning of the past 10 years. [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau

If you were good enough to get a new Leupold Mark 4® riflescope for Christmas than you were better than a lot of us boys and girls. Still, you’d better take a close look at your new toy. According to the company, there are some hard-to-spot fakes hitting the market:

Leupold® is issuing a customer alert to purchasers of products, particularly via Internet sales, in regards to bogus Leupold products that are apparently being illegally imported from the People’s Republic of China. . . .

Leupold employs serial number tracking for all its riflescopes, so if a customer finds a scope that is suspect, he or she can simply write down the serial number and call 1-800-LEUPOLD to confirm if it is indeed authentic.

[Most counterfeits] have “Leupold Mark 4” laser engraved on the bottom of the turret in a silver etch, while the black ring on the objective is etched in white and does not include the name “Leupold.” An authentic Mark 4 riflescope will always be engraved black on black and have the name “Leupold” engraved on the black ring. [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

For years now I’ve been flying out of JFK and LaGuardia with guns.

In all that time and God knows how many trips I’ve never been given a hard time by the airlines, or the cops, or the TSA. But checking a rifle through either airport adds another half-hour. And then you have the airlines’ whimsical way of shipping you to one destination and your gun to another.

So on two occasions this year, I’ve sent my rifle ahead. I stick it in a steel case and slide the case inside what is known as a ski-shipping box—a two-piece carton that adjusts for length. Then, I take it to a gun dealer and ask him to insure it heavily and give me the tracking number. All this is not cheap, but your rifle will... [ Read Full Post ]