Table of contents for January/February 2023 #64 in Recoil

As we meander toward the end of the year, looking back over 2022 in a moment of self-reflection is never a bad thing. While it’s all too easy to riff on doom and gloom aspects of runaway inflation, supply chain disruptions, and rampant financial mismanagement at the federal level, when all is said and done, this year will probably go down as one of the better ones. As firearm owners and Second Amendment advocates, we may have been blessed with the most far-reaching Supreme Court decision of a generation, courtesy of Justice Clarence Thomas. 2A organizations were quick to capitalize on the Bruen decision, filing lawsuits on behalf of the community in California, New York, and Texas, in order to strike down some of the more egregious encroachments onto our…

The term “technical” is often used to describe a civilian vehicle — usually a 4x4 pickup like the venerable Toyota Hilux — that has been modified to carry an onboard weapon system such as a heavy machine gun, anti-aircraft cannon, or anti-tank rocket launcher. The underlying light, mobile weapon concept dates back far beyond the automobile to horse-drawn tachanka carts of the First World War and carroballistas (essentially huge crossbows mounted on carriages) of the Roman Empire. However, according to the book Technicals: Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles from the Great War to Modern Special Forces by Leigh Neville, this descriptor originated during the Somali Civil War in the early 1990s, where NGOs hired local gunmen in “Mad Max-style armed pickup trucks” for protection under the guise of being “technical advisers.” As…

HK’s tiny PDW achieved iconic status through a combination of ubiquity in first-person shooter video games, as well as unavailability on the civilian market. There’s a very real sense of wanting what you can’t have, and given the expense of converting the existing design to a semi auto version, the possibility that ATF wouldn’t allow it into the country anyway, and the limited number of units that could be sold, it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever see them on gun store shelves. Which doesn’t stop people (us included) jonesing for one. Tommy Built Tactical has by all accounts crafted a few clones from MP7 parts kits, but even if you can find the scratch to pick one up, as a practical matter 4.6 ammo is a little thin on the ground.…

If you can believe it, Federal Ammunition has been cranking out boom pills for exactly 100 years, nearly as long as our current president has been alive. The original 19,200-square-foot factory was located in Anoka, Minnesota, and after a shaky start with its previous owners, the company as it’s known today kicked off in 1922. Now in 2022, Federal is about to complete construction of a new rifle ammunition loading area that’ll boost the Minnesota plant to an eye-watering 1,000,000 square feet of manufacturing and operational space, cranking out millions of rounds of ammunition every day. To help celebrate their 100th anniversary, they invited us out to a long-range precision class in South Dakota to shoot as much of their ammo as we wanted. They didn’t have to ask…

The 2020s got off to a wild start, with pandemic lockdowns, runs on goods, medical equipment, and food, and a general feeling of unease. Gun purchases, particularly among first-time gun owners, reportedly surged as people discovered that their fellow man might not be as benevolent and well-wishing as they’d hoped, while law enforcement was forced to scale back their services. Among all this, reports of hate crimes against minorities, particularly in the Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, shot up to record levels. Driven partly by animosity against those perceived to be from China (which drew significant public ire, rightly or wrongly, due to its apparent role in being the birthplace of the pandemic), partly by generalized fear and anxiety over the blossoming global medical crisis, and entirely by ignorance…

At the height of the Cold War, the RKKA (Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army) was looking to replace the now 70-year-old Mosin Nagant as their standard marksmanship rifle. We use the term “marksmanship” because it was never really what a Western military would consider a “sniper” rifle. Even the celebrated Soviet sniper teams of WWII were rarely making kills beyond 300 meters and did much of their work in urban environments. Truthfully, the Mosin (and issued ammo) that was accurate enough to be useful beyond that distance was rare, let alone the rifleman who could employ it in such a role. Perhaps as a result of this, Soviet infantry doctrine, presented with the call for a new weapon to fill this role, decided to develop a new application as well.…

01 REFINED SAVAGES G-SPOT FIRE-STARTING KIT MSRP: $50 URL: refinedsavages.com As much as shooters like to debate the merits of Glocks versus other handguns, they also like to argue about the gap between the back-strap and magazine. While Glock grip plugs have been available for many years, Refined Savages found a way to fill that void — literally — with its G-Spot Fire-Starting Kit. It contains a ferro rod, a metal striker, flame-wicking cotton, and accelerant gel packs — all neatly tucked into a polymer wedge, which then inserts into the Glock’s grip. Turning your Austrian handgun into a survival tool in more than one way, the kit serves as a backup if your lighter dies or you’re unexpectedly stranded in the middle of nowhere this winter and need to get…

When you’re first introduced to knives and even later on down the road from then, you’ll realize that there’s a lot of bad information out there. Some of this may involve legislation, yet sometimes it rears its ugly head on the finer points of knife construction regarding materials, length, or what we’ll look at today — balance. Many fixed blade knives, from 11-cent flea market blades to ABS Mastersmith blades worth tens of thousands of dollars, will balance perfectly in the center of the knife. This can be tested by setting the bolster or hilt on your finger and balancing it. This went from being “perfect balance” to “perfect knife” in some circles. This seems rational and sensible. Yet, it can be a falsehood for many different types of working…

As they say, the definition of insanity is doing things the same but expecting different results. Just ask anyone who works for a living and votes. The crazy political roller coaster of the last decade has created a mad dash to buy firearms. These days just about anyone in free America who wanted an AR-15 has one, seemingly solidifying the AR-15 as mundane. The firearm industry was left trying to figure out where the next best thing would be. Pistol caliber carbines (PCCs) have filled this space for some, creating a niche for themselves somewhere between rifles and pistols. As a result, they’ve cemented their place as a viable option to fill that empty spot in the safe. THE TASK AT HAND POF-USA has a reputation for making guns that…

Cameras and imaging equipment are ubiquitous in the modern world, where anything and everything seems capable of recording an image. However, this wasn’t always the case, largely due to the nonexistence or limitations of cameras themselves. While there have been methods of projecting images onto surfaces with something called the camera obscura for more than 2,000 years, the first camera and film combination that could successfully capture an image wouldn’t come about until the early 19th century. With results that were rudimentary, combined with images sometimes taking hours to imprint themselves, they mostly existed in the realms of early scientists and affluent artists. In fact, the ability to capture an image wasn’t even publicly known or mentioned until the mid to late 1830s. The usefulness of capturing an image wasn’t…

The great AR versus AK debate will seemingly continue until the end of time, or at least until we can all get phased plasma rifles in the 40-watt range. So what better gun-guy pursuit than to combine them? Back in RECOIL Issue 38, we built an AR in 7.62x39 that takes AK magazines, based on the clever BRS-47 receiver set from Billet Rifle Systems. One of the characteristics of Stoner’s design that AK fans like to mock is its overall length. When the action cycles, the AR’s bolt carrier group extends rearward into the receiver extension, against the buffer and compressing the action spring. As a result, while an AR’s buttstock can telescope, it can’t fold or get any shorter than the buffer tube. With our BRS-47 build, we installed…

After several years of toiling away at this column, we’re finally able to cover what is perhaps the apex vice in most of our daily lives: sweets. Southern Vet Sweets was started by Jason Autry, a former artilleryman from the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division, who enlisted in 2002, but was medically discharged two years later after being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Following his time in the military, he spent 15 years in the heavy equipment industry. His career there was also cut short by a serious industrial accident that cost him a full 2 inches of shin bone in one leg. During his subsequent road to recovery and search for a new direction, his wife suggested he try making a batch of cinnamon sugar pecans they remembered having…

Down in southern Alabama on the Gulf of Mexico sits the city of Mobile, which boasts a long history of ship building. During World War II, Mobile employed thousands of workers who built liberty ships and tankers for the war effort. That’s why it’s so fitting that the USS Alabama (BB-60) sits in Mobile Bay at the Battleship Memorial Park. On January 9, 1965, Battleship Memorial Park opened to the public. Since then, over 15 million visitors have passed through the gates. The first 75 acres of the 155-acre park was created from 2.9 million cubic yards of dredge material pulled from Mobile Bay. Located throughout the park are the South Dakota class battleship USS Alabama, the Gato class submarine USS Drum, and wonderful collections of aircraft, tanks, helicopters, as…

If you’ve spent much time on Instagram lately, you may have seen in certain circles a trend away from barreled ARs to the original long boys. short-With velocities being what they are and that long-standing thing called physics, longer barrels are appealing, particularly in a caliber such as 5.56x45mm. With 55-grain being the most common projectile for the platform, muzzle velocity from an 18-inch barrel could hover around 3,000-plus fps while a 10-inch(ish) barrel could be closer to 2,400 fps. While actual velocities will differ depending on various factors, the increase in velocity from a longer barrel will remain the same. THE UPPER PARTS LIST This build, like many others, starts with the barrel, a Criterion Core Series 18-inch with rifle-length gas. It’s chrome-lined and continuously tapers to help with…

“Aluminum? On a rifle silencer? Like a real one?” I said over the phone, the incredulity apparent and impossible to hide in the voice because it seemed so ludicrous. “Yes,” JK Armament founder and namesake Jake Kunsky stated with the confidence of someone who did his own research and design, “Come see for yourself.” After growing up on the farm, Kunsky got his start with weapons in the U.S. Military, and in fact hit his 20th year of service shortly before we touched down in Idaho. Kunsky was active duty for a decade before he went active reserve to start designing and engineering in the firearms industry. He ultimately did four tours in Iraq, was the head armorer for a special forces group, and worked and produced patents (a dozen…

The company itself started with a simple idea. Back in the day, U.S. service-members came up with all kinds of field-expedient solutions to make it simpler to fish reloads out of clumsy USGI magazine pouches — everything from elaborate arrangements of parachute cord and 100-mph tape to simple knotted loops of 550 cord (unfortunately) clogging the drain hole in the magazine floor plate. Richard Fitzpatrick, a former Recon Marine, came up with an idea to make a simple rubber loop that could be slipped onto the magazines that would serve the same purpose without using kludgy tape or clogging the drain hole — and thus Magpul was born. (MAGazine PULl … get it?) The gizmo went into production around the turn of the millennium in what was essentially a garage…

Sometimes a pistol design comes around that changes the way we look at handguns, becoming a trailblazer in influence and design. Other times, a good design may come and go as an “also ran,” making sentimental shooters wonder, “Whatever happened to it?” Then, there are the ones that fly under the radar and never seem to truly go away. Such could be said for the pistols of Lionheart Industries, a U.S. company that manufactures a line of precision-crafted, aluminum-framed handguns with a unique trigger system that old timers might remember as being made by Daewoo in the waning days of the “Wondernines.” HISTORY Back in the early ’90s, the world was introduced to a pistol manufactured by Daewoo Industries of South Korea called the DP-51; its military designation in the…

We’d love to say that Enrique “Ric” Prado is a man who needs no introduction. But that’s not true. To the contrary, Ric has dedicated his life to secrecy and security. A life-long veteran of America’s clandestine fight to suppress oppression, Ric has never actively sought fame or glory. The fruits of his labor remain, by and large, entombed in a casket of red tape and rubber stamps marked “Classified” or “Top Secret.” The scourge of Communism — real Communism, not the white-washed ideal praised in coffee shops and collegiate lecture halls — stained his life at a young age and set him on a five-decade mission that carried him literally around the world. From the streets of Miami during the dawn of the Cocaine Cowboys, to the jungles of…