Category: American Handgunner

Wilson CQB: A serious five-inch for those who demand a battle-tough .45 Dave Anderson More than two decades ago, in the Jan/Feb 1979 issue of Handgunner, a little one-eighth page advertisement appeared. Under a bold heading “Combat Shooters,” the ad announced “Custom combat handguns built… Specializing in tuning Colt .45 ACPs for practical pistol shooting… […]

The manual safety factor Massad Ayoob March, 2005: A rape suspect on trial overpowers a petite female Fulton County deputy in an Atlanta courthouse, gains control of her sidearm, and uses it to murder his judge, the court reporter, another deputy and later an off-duty Federal officer. A nation drops its collective jaw in shock. […]

P345: extreme makeover: Ruger’s 2×4 grip days are gone! John Taffin In spite of all the dozens of articles written over the past several decades concerning the age-old debate of 9mm vs. .45 ACP vs. .40 vs. .357 Sig and now with the new player thrown into the argument, the .45 GAP the fact still […]

The .45 Colt sucks! Heresy? Listen-up before you blow a gasket! Mike Venturino When our exalted editorship was telling me Smith & Wesson asked what caliber they might consider as a follow-up to the very successful return of the Model 21 .44 Special we unveiled on the cover of Handgunner (Nov/Dec 2004), he said his […]

MEU 1911. 45: the legend lives in the hands of today’s marines R.E. Brown This pistol is the same one some friend/acquaintance/annoyance has probably told you he knows most certainly, positively, and absolutely does not exist–a current issue US military single stack 1911.45 ACP automatic pistol. But it does exist. The Marines issue a 45 […]

Silly manufacturers – Taffin Tests John Taffin Ammunition companies loaded the .44 Special to the same level as the .44 Russian. And the .44 Special’s true capability would not be discovered until the late 1920s. Elmer Keith and others experimented with the .44 Special for the next 30 years. Many sixgunners tried to get ammunition […]

Redding six-pack problem solver – Handloading Charles E. Petty If you’re like me you’ve got dozens of shell holders scattered around your loading bench and I always have to pick up every dog-gone one before I find the right one. Funny, how it’s always the last one. Redding has come up with a nifty kit […]

It’s time for some Gun-Rich Zones Connor John I’ve just about had it with this “Gun-Free Zone” crap, you know? True, I live in a fairly sissy-rich environment but, usually, the only visible effects are too many restaurants with “Chez” in their names, dogs with designer haircuts and guys wearing magenta polo shirts. I’m not […]

The Rise Of The House Of Kahr Massad Ayoob KAHR ARMS CAME OUT OF NOWHERE TO DOMINATE THE ULTRA-COMPACT PISTOL MARKET. WHY DID THE KAHR DESIGN FLOURISH WHERE OTHERS HAVE FAILED? They had a small booth in an out-of-the-way corner of the massive firearms trade exhibit known as the SHOT Show, yet nothing so trivial […]

Violence and nonviolence: Part 4 Jeff Snyder I am examining philosophies of non-violence to see what we might learn from them about the strengths or weaknesses of the theory that underlies the Second Amendment–that an armed people may deter, and may reign-in, a tyrannical government if all else fails. In this article I turn to […]