RIFLES

A Compendium of Tantalizing Rifles

Range Testing a Pair of
Winchester Model 1892 Rifles

The svelte Winchester '92 boasts perfect balance and graceful lines. It points quite naturally and, given quality ammunition, is amazingly accurate given that it is chambered in pistol cartridges. - more -

Range Testing Uberti 1866 Levergun in .45-70 Government

Craftsman at Pedersoli (Pedersoli makes the 1886 for Uberti) have created an old-world masterpiece of color case-hardened steel on the receiver, a beautiful blued 25.5-inch octagonal barrel and a precisely fitted, Grade A, checkered walnut stock and forearm. - more -

Range Testing the Ruger Precision and Long Range Target Rifles

When Ruger released its Precision Rifle several years ago, it was an instant hit. Frankly, it is no surprise. It was a one-stop-shopping long range competitor right out of the box. Anyone could walk into a gun shop and walk out with a sub MOA, detachable box magazine rifle that could ring steel at 1000 yards with compatible ammo, quality glass and the help of a seasoned spotter. This level of accuracy had historically been reserved to the realm of custom rifle makers. Ruger presented the world with the Model T of super accurate precision rifles and the public responded by buying them up as fast as they could make them. - more -

SIG Sauer 716 Upgrades:
How We Made a Good Rifle Great!

Having squeezed some incredible 3-shot groups from a SIG716 Patrol with a Leupold 1.25-4x Patrol scope,and a light R.R.A. Varmint trigger that sometimes caused a delayed-ignition with hard foreign military primers, I thought I needed to change up the scope and the trigger on the 716 and reach out a bit further. I set out to tap into all the capability inherent in the little SIG 7.62 NATO carbine. - more -

M-14 Torture Test: 1,000 Rounds

Through 1,000 rounds never failed to feed, extract or fire a single round: even when covered in hay and dust on a recent South Dakota prairie dog hunt. I make no apologies for my love of the M-14 (or Springfield Inc.'s version, the M-lA rifle). It is as near perfection in a military rifle as I've encountered. Once I got to play with an honest-to-goodness M-14. As it happened, one of my friends shot competitively for the Army and they gave him a NM M-14 to take home and practice with. Along with several thousand rounds of ammunition and the promise that there was always more where they came from. That rifle was a thing of beauty, like nothing else I've ever played with. - more -

SIG SAUER's 516 Patrol On the Firing Line

Earlier in the year I put the SIG716 Patrol through its paces. It lived up to its rock-star reputation by exhibiting 100 percent reliability and bolt gun accuracy. To say I was impressed would be something of an understatement. That said, I wanted to see if the 716's smaller brother, the 516 Patrol, was just as good albeit in a lighter package and a smaller caliber. What I discovered was all the desirable SIG family traits are shared by these rifles. The SIG516 proved to be reliable and even more accurate than it's bigger brother! - m o r e -

SIG SAUER's 716 Patrol and the Quest for the Holy Grail of Tactical Rifles -

The cynic might also conclude that there is simply no one-size-fits-all rifle. I understand this cynicism. It's mostly accurate. In my experience, the most hyper-accurate rifles are bolt guns. So if I set off to find the Holy Grail of rifles I should probably avoid the road sign that says "Semis" if hyper-accuracy is requirement numero uno. And while accuracy is important to me, so is the ability of my idyllic Uber-rifle to fill a tactical role. The demands of a tactical rifle--to operate in close proximity to people who intend to kill me--would leave a bolt action target rifle off my short list of considerations. As with most things in life, the perfect rifle is . . . - m o r e -

AK-12 Assault Rifle (Avtomat Kalashnikova 2012):

Photo by Cslava2003, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The Kalashnikova AK-47, the world's most popular rifle, has an understudy waiting in the wings. The new AK-12 is intended to replace Cold War era AK-47 and AKM rifles. And with this fifth generation of AK engineers kept what worked (simplicity, reliability and low production cost), eliminated the deficiencies and adapted its design to the modern battlefield. The weapon's general designer, Vladimir Zlobin says, "The main goal in development of the Kalashnikov AK-12 assault rifle was to improve ergonomics and tactical flexibility of the weapon, while maintaining traditional high reliability and enviable simplicity of the original weapon." At first blush it looks like mission accomplished. - more -

StG-44 Sturm Gewehr 44:

Photo Armémuseum (The Swedish Army Museum), licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

The StG 44 is considered by many historians to be the first modern assault rifle. Jargon buster: the StG acronym stands for Sturmgewehr, which when translated from German means (storm (assault) rifle. The StG-44 was chambered for a intermediate-power cartridge with case length and bullet weight rather neatly poised between that of a full-power rifle cartridge and pistol ammunition. - more -