Tabla de contenidos para July/August 2018 en Recoil

300 BLK has a lot going for it, right up to the point at which you try to take advantage of its subsonic prowess for tasks other than punching paper. Common subsonic loads, even if tipped with a fragile match bullet such as the ubiquitous 220-grain Sierra Matchking, plow 0.30-inch diameter holes straight through fleshy targets and keep on truckin’ right into the next inconveniently located piece of real estate. We’ve tried bullets that in other applications are positively explosive. Hornady’s 208-grain A-Max, for example, fragments violently when shoved out the muzzle at even .308 Win velocities, but from a Blackout you might as well be using a DeWalt. Getting a .30-cal to expand reliably at around 1,000 feet per second requires a specialized projectile, and they’re not exactly inexpensive.…

EDITOR'S NOTE: It may be surprising to hear, but 46 states have legalized some form of marijuana use — and one of the four remaining states decriminalized it. While medicinal use is not the free-for-all of California or Colorado, it effectively demonstrates that nearly every state disagrees with, and disregards, federal law pertaining to marijuana. You don’t have to like marijuana. You don’t have to like the people or the culture that surrounds marijuana. But if you love guns and freedom, you should support marijuana reform. Pot. Grass. Dope. Weed. Reefer. Ganja. Marijuana. Whatever you call it, Cannabis has been subject to regulation since the early 1900s. It wasn’t until the 1930s that marijuana was addressed at the federal level — around the same time the federal government imposed restrictions…

A lot of great shooting schools are out there. A lot of great martial arts and unarmed combat instructors are also out there. We’ve done our best to introduce you to as many of them as we can. But for all the ones we’ve covered, there are still some really fantastic hidden gems. We recently found one such gem in the mountains of Northern Nevada: Team TORN. Team TORN actually started as TMTORN: Tactical Mobility and Technical Off-Road Navigation. The facility was initially built to teach some very particular military and government organizations the niche skill of using off-road vehicles like side-by-sides and dirt bikes in hostile or non-permissive environments. While they continue to teach this “very unique set of skills” they’ve since expanded their curricula to include dismounted land…

We’ve come a long way from the 8-bit Atari 2600 games that were all the rage in the late 1970s. Home video game systems have evolved to the point that even arcades are now practically a thing of the past. Old favorites like Pac-Man or Spy Hunter have been succeeded by games with a level of sophistication in graphics, sound effects, and technical advisory that rivals a Hollywood studio. In other words, it’s like a movie you can star in and direct. But while droves of programmers and continued enhancements to player capabilities strive to make these games as real as possible, it still begs the question … how real is it? In this edition of GUNNERY, RECOIL teams up with Brownells to find a few creative ways to separate…

The Kriss Vector is a firearm born into the video game era. You don’t have to look far to find this distinctive submachine gun rendered in 4k. Depicted in games such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, and now PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the Vector is as a formidable weapon in close quarters. At 1,200 RPM, the Vector has a blistering rate of fire, meaning it likely outclasses your opponent’s weapons in close-quarters combat situations. To understand the Kriss Vector better, we’ll look at its Super V operating system, arguably one of the most radical changes to firearm design in the last 30 years. The Super V recoil mitigation system uses a nonlinear operating system that redirects or “re-vectors” the energy downward to reduce the effect of muzzle climb and recoil. This offers…

RECOIL takes pride in testing manufacturer claims. Whenever companies want to take a chance on us trying out their products, especially the four-wheel kind, there’s a ravenous anticipation among the staff akin to that of wolves finding stray deer. Given the chance to try out Yamaha’s new Wolverine X4 was something we welcomed with open arms and a heavy right foot. We were ready to treat it like the BATFE treats Branch Davidians, but our inability to snap, burn out, blow up, or otherwise return the vehicle to Yamaha in pieces with a heartfelt “oops” and shrugged shoulders earned this UTV some well-deserved respect. You may remember our coverage of the Minigun Motorcycle in Issue 30, which was built on a Yamaha R1 Superbike chassis. Since its builders chose the…

Back in the dark ages of the 1990s, when Will Smith was still a young comedic actor, Gemtech began working on a special-purpose suppressor. It had to be as small as possible, lightweight, and quiet. A lot of special and one-off items have been made for downed pilot survival kits — the Aurora would become one of them. Getting your grubbies on one of the originals was hard, but now there’s a newer and better one out there: The Gemtech Aurora II. The first suppressor to be made in-house by new Gemtech parent company Smith & Wesson, these Auroras will actually hit the larger open market. BETTER, FASTER, STRONGER Several changes and improvements went into the Aurora II. First and most obvious is the exterior sleeve. It’s slotted and then…

All loads were tested for velocity using both 16- and 9-inch barreled weapons. A Remington 700, equipped with a Nightforce ATACR 4-16x42 and SilencerCo Omega was employed as our longer rifle, and it was this combo that we also used for accuracy and gel testing. Five-shot groups were shot at 50, rather than 100, yards as we felt this was a realistic distance for subsonic use. The shorty gun was our budget hog hammer — a franken AR built on a Gibbz side charging upper and equipped with a Maxim Defense PDW pistol brace. Note that all loads except the Fort Scott and Gorilla offerings were supersonic from the 16-inch barrel. Velocity readings were taken using a Caldwell G2 chronograph, which has the useful ability to store data on your…

You’ve probably heard cannabis is stronger these days than it was in the ’70s, and while the breathless media attention makes one wonder if there might be a standard-capacity magazine hidden in every bud, they don’t have it entirely wrong: It turns out selective breeding still works on plants, even if the government doesn’t like them. The major subspecies of weed available today are indica, sativa, hybrids of both, and CBD-heavy strains. They have differing ranges of effect, which can generally be characterized by subspecies. Growing conditions, weather, genetics, and random chance can significantly alter the perceived effects of buds from plant to plant, so these characterizations are more like well-defined guidelines, than hard and fast rules. Indica: Gives a “Jeff Spicoli” high, with effects like couchlock, munchies, and “Wait,…

Usually in our “Zeroed” column we feature competitors, trainers, personalities, and businessmen who are already well known in their respective fields. What’s unique about Neal Hunt is that you’ve probably never heard of him, but you likely share some of his dreams. You can’t pick your passions, but you can cultivate them once you catch the bug. Hunt discovered at an early age he had a great love for pigeon hunting, a sport that hasn’t been popular in the United States since the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon more than 100 years ago. This much-maligned winged game has more derogatory names than official ones, though the scene is changing — arguably directly due to Hunt and his company, Soar No More Decoys. We’ll talk about hunting in general and birding…

Almost to the next bunker, running in the open, low on ammo for this 1911, tracers snapping by my head. Holy crap, no way, is that a Thompson sub-gun laying on the ground? As I snatch it up, I tac reload as my online mates cheer. Approaching the bunker, my enemies are coming into view as I strafe the trench right to left with my trench sweeper. They never had a chance. I drop down into the trench headed for the bunker, push the drum release simultaneously flipping out the old drum and inserting a new one in its place like the smooth operator I am. Once I break that threshold I’ll simply strafe my sights across the room at chest height and anyone inside will be cut in half.…

1 Carrying tourniquets on armor carriers and packs presents a trade-off between access speed and protection from the elements. TQs mounted in the most accessible places suffer damage from basic abrasion to the slow deterioration caused by exposure to sunlight and rain. We all know that seconds count when that arterial bleed is gushing. So, Imminent Threat Solutions invented a device that decreases the time it takes to deploy a TQ while protecting it. The TourniQuick pouch’s cover is actually a breakaway Velcro panel that connects to the free end of the TQ and tears off from the pouch. Instead of pulling a pouch open and removing a TQ, once you pull the TourniQuick’s top, you’re actually holding the free end of a TQ that’s now ready for life-saving action.…

It took us five years to make this Damascus blade buyer’s guide happen. Why so long? Was it insane amounts of procrastination? Nope. That’s just how long it took for the price of this specialized steel to go down enough for companies to offer them at quantity. While some custom knifemakers still charge “unobtainium” prices for them, most production knife companies now have at least one Damascus model that fits in the more reachable “limited edition” range. Why so expensive? Damascus is a combination of at least two different types of steel that — after many time-consuming and expensive processes known as pattern welding — forms a single piece with distinctive wavy layers. Named after the Syrian city where it gained a worldwide reputation, Damascus steel is actually a modern…

The best suggested practice for replacing the wipes in your Aurora II is to send it in to Gemtech. For $30, they’ll put in brand-new factory wipes, grease it up properly, and send it on back. However, if you’re a type 02/07 Special Occupational Taxpayer (SOT) FFL, you can legally make new wipes without any questions or hassle. Legal stuff aside and without further ado: TOOLS & MATERIALS 15⁄16-inch hammer driven arch punch (McMaster-Carr #3427A23) Craft knife Petroleum jelly (premium synthetic grease is a viable, yet unpreferred, alternative) BFH Gloves 12x12-inch sheet of 1⁄8-inch-thick polyurethane (PU) rubber, 80A hardness (McMaster Carr #8789K21); enough for well over 100 wipes, but you can buy in any quantity Notes: OEM Gemtech wipes are water-jet cut. However, these instructions closely follow Gemtech-founder Dr. Phil…

Our cover gun this issue was born from a miscommunication. Allegedly. According to company lore, a SIG representative, on a business trip to the place where Great Britain used to be, was asked by a certain Army unit what the shortest-barrel option was for the MCX, as they wanted something small enough to fit inside the glovebox of a BMW, while still chambered in a rifle caliber. Due to a combination of jetlag, a strong British accent, and, no doubt, the Brit military propensity for attempting to drink everyone under the table, the rep believed his interlocutor to have referred to the 9mm MPX, which he said can indeed ship with a 4.5-inch tube in its most truncated form. “Alrighty then!” proclaimed our transatlantic brother. “We’ll take a bunch of…

FNH’s iconic P90 has seen a lot of action on television, in movies, and in first-person shooter (FPS) video games, no doubt thanks to its futuristic appearance. It’s probably the most desirable gun in the Call of Duty franchise and current listings on the Internet Movie Firearms Database website show the P90 has more media appearances than agencies using it. The Stargate TV series (SG-1 and Atlantis) didn’t just utilize P90s, they made the gun into a plot point — noting it as being more capable of penetrating alien hides and armor than the MP5s previously used on the series. In real life, the P90 was designed in the late 1980s as a personal defense weapon for military personnel whose primary duty was something other than carrying a full-size rifle…