Tabla de contenidos para July/August 2016 en Recoil

Cigar smoking is special. Some of us do it every day, others never at all, but even part-time smokers will fire up a stogie on a special occasion. That may be to celebrate the birth of a child, a promotion at work, or your last night as a bachelor. Other activities just naturally lead to cigar smoking, like playing poker or shooting a machinegun for the first or even the 1,001st time. In a way, cigar culture is a bit like gun culture (and if you keep on reading you’ll see the two intersect in more ways than one). There are protocols, special tools, and a subculture attached to it. We took the liberty of providing an overview of some of our favorite cigars out there. SOME ETIQUETTE We mentioned…

Hospitality. From the Latin, hospitalitas. It’s not the first thing you consider when deciding where to go train, but maybe it should be. There are many great ranges and training facilities out there, but these days when attending a class is the closest thing many of us come to taking a vacation, hospitality ought to be right there alongside the capabilities of the facility and the quality of instruction. Thankfully, 88 Tactical of Takemah, Nebraska, has all three in full measure. It’s not quite a 160-acre bed and breakfast with guns, steel targets, and an apocalypse bunker, but it’s damn close. Listen—training should be hard and realistic, but it should also be enjoyable. Comfortable lodging, good chow, the opportunity to interact informally with the instructor cadre and, of course, the…

1911s are a divisive subject, at least in the RECOIL offices. While we recognize the enduring qualities of the prophet John Moses Browning (peace be upon him) and his iconic design, there are those who feel its time in the sun has passed. Despite owning at least five of them, I’m inclined to agree, as gun store shelves are packed with cheaper, lighter, higher-capacity alternatives that are simpler to operate and generally more reliable — in stock form anyway. That’s the left-brain argument. The other part of our cognitive functions recognizes that there’s just something about a sidearm that’s been relied upon by Americans in every conflict since the First World War and has handed out generous quantities of whoop ass, 230 grains at a time. It’s a manly chunk…

Loading 55 pounds of bolt gun, ammo, food, water, medical supplies, and miscellaneous kit in an organized manner isn’t doable for every pack on the market. Carrying that load over 25 miles in high desert mountainous terrain, comfortably, is feasible for even fewer. Using the same pack to carry everyday gear without setting off tactical detectors, thins out the field a bit more. Being sizable enough to fit in an overhead bin cuts the list again. Changing organizational layout options from urban bug-out to backcountry survival and anything in between, all in a matter of minutes, narrows the field to one. Simply put, the Hill People Gear Aston House is a pack for quiet professionals. THE SPECS At its core the Aston House is built for ruggedness and adaptability. The…

When you’re offered the first look at a new version of America’s most popular rifle, it’s hard to say no, but with a slew of new models introduced every few months by the biggest names in the industry, sometimes you have to draw a line for the sake of variety. Which is why for the next couple of issues, there won’t be a single AR-15 featured in the pages of RECOIL. Sure, we’ll come back to them in due course, so long as you guys keep buying them, and we’ll continue using ARs in various competitions and matches across this fair nation. It’s just that, after a few weeks of eating steak, you hanker for a pizza. So the menu for Issue 25 consists of a starter of Colt’s latest…

FULL METAL JACKET/ CAL 50 JEEP 2014 JEEP WRANGLER SUPERCHARGED 3.6L V-6 FIVE-SPEED AUTOMATIC WWW.STARWOODMOTORS.COM It’s been said that everything’s bigger in Texas. Sometimes the Lone Star State seems like the last refuge for true freedom. You won’t find the tyrannical firearms regulations there like the ones many of us face elsewhere in the country. Its residents are blissfully beyond the reach of rules that blame misspelled words on one’s pencil. Do you car buffs also get emails from SEMA tipping you off to proposed legislation under the pretense of safety and environmental protection that limits the modifications you’ll be able to make to your vehicles? Try making those same ideas fly in Texas. You’ll quickly be told not to let the door hit you where the good lord split…

In terms of its overall effect on small arms design, the StG 44 had more influence than any other single 20th century firearm. There, we said it. Despite an almost fanatical loyalty to the United States and a love of the guns it has produced, we’re going to insist that this is the one model that changed everything. And it almost never happened. As is usual when a revolutionary design comes along, its major components were already in use in other applications. The iPhone wasn’t groundbreaking in the technologies it employed, but putting them all together in a way that solved the prob lems of many users ensured its place in technological history. The StG 44 was the iPhone of the German Wermacht, and it solved problems with 125 grains…

Sitting in an elevated hide filled with rat bones and owl feathers for three hours put our intrepid hunter in the perfect mood to kill something. As the light faded from afterglow to moonrise, RECOIL Feature Editor Rob Curtis clamped the pre-zeroed Insight LWTS clip-on thermal weapon sight to the rail of his 300 BLK-chambered AR just ahead of the EOTech Vudu 1-6x optic. He powered up the Insight, and the blackness turned to an inky gray world of lightly swaying grass in a 20-acre, lightly rolling, west Texas clearing. Rolling through the LWTS viewing options, he settled on black-hot and watched a handful of deer-shaped blobs graze about 50 yards away. Black bird shapes slid across the sky, and black rabbit shapes hopped through the field. Coyotes yelped and…

Three-hundred AAC in a bolt gun. Do we need the accuracy of a bolt gun when 300 BLK is more of a 300 yardsand-in punch in the solar plexus than a 1,000-yard nasal cavity cleaner? That was the second thing we considered when we fondled the Grey Ghost Precision Dagger. The first was, “This is frickin’ cool.” Like so many things in the world, practicality doesn’t always square up to performance … or popularity. Nose piercing, we don’t get it. Nipples on men, totally don’t need them, but we’ve all got them. Inhaling the smoke from burning leaves, who thought of that one? Shaving, commercial air travel, ballpoint pens … all these things were once thought absurd, but are now commonplace. With that in mind, we were willing to give…

STORY AND PHOTOS BY MIKE SEARSON As apprentice gunsmiths many years ago, we used to look forward to the big Brownells book showing up in the mail every spring. To us, that was the Sears catalog of gun parts. We would ogle the new 1911 components and dream up custom Wildcats for different rifles to see if we could find the perfect barrel at Brownells. If we were restoring an old rifle we picked up on the cheap, we knew we could find replacement parts at Brownells. Over the years we saw more accessories make their way into the big book (and now the website). Not surprisingly there has been a lot of crossover from competitive shooting sphere to the tactical and defensive sides, too. For a personal protection firearm,…

1 Want to add a little more texturing and beavertail to your Glock? All you’ll need is a Glock Armorers Tool or 3/32-inch pin punch and a small armorers hammer. Instructions on Grip Force Products’ website walk you through the easy installation that’ll fit standard and compact Gen 1, 2, or 3 series Glock frames. According to their site, it’ll also fit the new Gen 4 pistol over the top of the factory-supplied medium grip panel. If used on the Gen 4 SF frame with no factorysupplied grip panel, you’ll need to use some RTV silicone to secure the grip. Available in Flat Dark Earth or black. MAKE: Grip Force Products MODEL: Gen 123SC Grip Force Adapters MSRP: $27 URL: www.gripforceproducts.com 2 Along with an included 3V-CR2032 battery and two…

Who doesn’t like automation? Technology has given us ATMs, motion-sensor doors, and belt-felt full-auto M240 Bravos. Naturally, we love automatic knives, too. Sadly, they’re highly regulated in the United States and around the world. Many politicians fear this genre for the same reason they fear guns: ignorance. So let’s drop some knowledge. Automatic blades open, well, automatically when you push a switch, lever, or button. While there are variations, they can be lumped into two categories: folding and out-the-front (OTF). The former looks and works similarly to a common pocket knife. The latter has a sliding blade that shoots out the top of the handle. A double-action OTF can both eject and retract the blade using a switch or lever. A single-action OTF will only automatically eject the blade and…

Kevin Brittingham doesn’t care if you read this. He doesn’t care if he comes off as a saint or an a**hole. He’s going to do his own thing. He’ll be the first one to tell you he’s a mixture of both of those attributes. No matter what, he’s always motivated by two primal urges: love and a deeply primitive sense of competitiveness. The 42-year-old multimillionaire started selling guns when he was in high school, opened an NFA shop selling silencers, and then incorporated Advanced Armament Corporation when he was 19. His marketing prowess mated with an uncanny sense of innovation alone would get him going in the right direction. But, his nose for talent and a relentless drive to prove everyone who may have doubted him wrong all combined to…

In November 1989, the fortified wall separating East and West Germany would officially come down and no longer divide a city, families, cultures, or even ideology. The Cold War was officially over, and a new reunified Germany was born. Similarly, Project 32 was also born, but it would take 26 long years to complete. Born of a little-known Heckler & Koch variant, the concept would never see the light of day for decades, until a little company from South Carolina with a welldeveloped reputation for producing HK clones made the decision to resurrect the secretive HK-32. The history of Project 32 began in 1943. During World War II, the Soviets initiated development of a new intermediate military cartridge, the 7.62x39, after encountering the German 7.92x33 Kurz. This development continued through…

To a Force Recon Marine, the term “cross-training” means more than just adding a day of Zumba to his weight-training regimen. For the Marine Corps’ “jack-of-all-trades,” it means being prepared for the various ways he might show up to work. Whether arriving on a beach after a 1-mile surface swim off a sub, a free-fall jump out of a C130, or conducting deep reconnaissance patrols, his training must prepare him for the mission — by air, land, or sea. Life doesn’t require the average civilian to train to those kinds of extremes, but the idea of being a well-rounded athlete with strong muscular and cardiovascular capacity is something we can all benefit from and aspire to. When I think back to my training in the corps, the times I was…