Swole Savage

New from Savage is this upgrade of the Stance, called the Stance XR.

It's higher capacity than the original, shipping with a 10-round flush-fit mag and a 13-round 'stendo, and it has the most innovative quick-detach MRDS mount I've yet seen. It allows a lower-third co-witness (at least with this Riton dot), comes with night sights, adds a tabbed trigger for enhanced drop safety, and the dot mount seems to have true return-to-zero functionality.

A feature-length review is coming in Shooting Illustrated as soon as I've wrung it out some more. (I already put a bit more than half a case of ammo through it in a 2-day class with Chris Cerino at Range Ready earlier this year.)

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #254...

The Rost Martin RM1C and Swampfox Justice MRDS is a lot of capability for not a lot of dough. Look for a full review of the pistol in the July '24 issue of Shooting Illustrated.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #253...

Hotel room nightstand shot from TacCon: Taurus 856 T.O.R.O. with a Holosun 507k in a PHLster City Special, six rounds of Hornady Critical Defense 110gr +P in an eight round Tuff Strip, my trusty POM spicy treats dispenser, 500 lumen Surefire EDCL1-T, and a waved Spyderco Dragonfly.

Click the links to steal this look!

(Do I think the Hornady 110gr +P Critical Defense is the bestest load for the .38? Probably not, but it's easy to get the dot sighted in with, and reloads are speedy with those pointy bullets. Its performance is certainly adequate, especially if you're not particularly worried about needing to defeat vehicular barriers.)

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #252...

You know how I know that I've been living in plastic pistol land for a long, long time? The Walther PDP Steel Frame Compact test pistol arrived for a Shooting Illustrated review and I was like "Jeezis this thing is a boat anchor. How the hell is anyone supposed to carry this?"

I threw it on the scale and it weighed in at a hair over two pounds, six ounces. You know what else weighs a hair over two pounds, six ounces? The Smith & Wesson 5906, as do the various full-size steel 1911s that I carried every day for something like ten years. 

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #251...

The Walther PD380 isn't exactly a new model. In the auto industry, this is what would be called a "mid-cycle refresh" of the PK380. Not that there's anything wrong with that; Glock's been doing in for something like forty years now.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #249...

The Fabrique Nationale Five-SeveN with a Trijicon RM08G and a magazine full of very angry bees.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #248...

Currently underway are reviews of the Avidity Arms PD10 for RECOIL: Concealment and the Girsan MC-14 for Shooting Illustrated.

It's still pretty early in the process for both. I've got a hundred rounds of Hornady Critical Defense .380 through the Girsan and two hundred rounds of Remington 9mm 124gr FMJ through the PD10, all of it just blasting away at seven yards on the indoor range at Indy Arms Company.

Pocket Popper

Although there are definitely more pocketable options these days...

Everything in the photo is a smaller, lighter, more pocketable alternative to something bigger. 

Obviously there's the Beretta 3032 Tomcat, the subject of an upcoming review in RECOIL: Concealment.(The photo is an outtake from the shots I did for the article.)

Then there's the Surefire Sidekick, my little rechargeable 300-lumen key fob. There's also the always-handy POM pepper spray, with probably ninety percent of the capability of my trusty Sabre Mk.6 at a fraction of the size.

Finally is the svelte little Spyderco Roadie. It's got good-looking Italian style and was designed specifically to comply with the proposed (but, alas, withdrawn) TSA rules that would have allowed small penknives on planes again. It has a 2" non-locking slipjoint type blade that also features a finger choil forward of the pivot to prevent accidental closure should you have to put it to non-penknife type uses. Between the short blade and the lack of a mechanical lock, it should be legal in most any jurisdiction that allows any kind of knives at all.

(The watch is a Bertucci field watch, if you're into that sort of thing. I'm not really watch people but it's lightweight and looks cool.)

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #247...

Beretta 3032 Tomcat Inox, currently getting the snot shot out of it for an article in RECOIL: Concealment magazine.

By the way, the current issue of the mag, #34, should be on newsstands now, and I've got a few pieces in it, including a retrospective on the Springfield Armory Professional Model.

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #246...

FN's full-size autocannon in Best Millimeter, sporting a Holosun 508T to help you aim better and a Surefire X300U to help you see better (and to let you stuff it in a PHLster Floodlight, in case smuggling cannons is your jam).

The full-length review should be available on better newsstands near you in issue number 33 of CONCEALMENT.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #245...

Here's a personal favorite of mine: A 1955-vintage K-22 Combat Masterpiece.

This pre-Model 18 with Spegel stocks basically lived in my range bag for years. I have no idea how many rounds it had before I got it, but it's seen rather a large number since then.

It's safe to say that I've busted more caps in this revolver than any other single wheelgun I've owned. It's entirely possible I've put more rounds through it than all other revolvers I've owned, combined. 

I couldn't tell you the exact round count I've put on it, but it's definitely in excess of 10k. Maybe as much as half again that total. There was one leisurely afternoon in the bays at MCF&G where I shot up a whole 525-round carton in a sitting, having to punch the chambers every hunnert, hunnert-'n'-fitty rounds or so to keep them from getting too sticky. Had to brush the cylinder face & forcing cone, too.

That was when I'd been shooting enough to still have a pretty good callus on my trigger. That narrow, serrated trigger chews me up enough these days that I'm usually pretty much done after a hundred rounds of fast double action.

I need to get that front sight fixed from where some previous owner had filed it down because he thought the gun was shooting low and left. Now, even with the rear sight bottomed out and cranked way to the left, it still shoots high and right of the sights. I've shot it enough that I can automatically dial in Kentucky windage at seven yards, but on an 8" plate at 20 yards you gotta hold off the lower left edge of the plate to get a ding.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #244...

A suppressed M249 at CanCon '22 last November.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #243...

Springfield Armory Professional: Canon EOS 5D Mark II & EF 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro

Mechanix gloves, Bollé goggles, a black PASGT helmet, Winchester Ranger .45ACP, and a McCann Industries Puffin Magnum... I was going for a turn-of-the-millennium SWAT vibe.

For the first time in nearly a decade I found myself wishing I hadn't sold my Safariland 1911 gun bucket. Oh well...

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #240...

We're fixing to take a good look at slide-mounted mini red dots, and specifically the evolution of the little ones intended to be mounted on subcompacts and single stacks, which basically started with the Shield RMSc and evolved from there. We'll also examine the slow-but-accelerating trend toward a small set of industry standard footprints which is allowing a move away from adaptor plates and toward direct mounting right from the factory.

Pictured is an FN Reflex large-capacity micro compact with what is pretty near the industry standard subcompact dot at the moment, the Holosun 507k.

Stay tuned.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #239...

I normally do my chrono testing at Marion County Fish & Game by setting my chronograph on a table in one of the pistol bays. Alas, the pistol bays are closed for maintenance and I was despairing of getting the chrono work done for the Reflex article in time. There was just no way to set up a table out on the main range.

Then I remembered that the chrono I use, an old Shooting Chrony Beta, has a standard camera tripod socket on the bottom, and Bobbi got me a lovely portable tripod, a 3 Legged Thing Travis, for my birthday a few years ago. Problem solved, especially since nobody else was using the main range on Friday morning, so it was easy to trudge over to the chrony to scribble down the data after each string.

I really need to get one of these self-illuminated ones that are compatible with use on an indoor range.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #238...

A fairly early-production Smith & Wesson Model 639. The serial number prefix would seem to indicate that it's from the first year of production, 1984. It's old enough that it still has the round trigger guard, but not so early that it has the wide extractor.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #237...

Being hand-modeled here by Annette Evans of On Her Own (who has one to test), the Beretta 80X Cheetah is a super-slick little traditional double-action straight blowback .380 pistol with a 13-rd double-stack mag. It has a Picatinny-type accessory rail, and can be carried cocked and locked if that's your bag.

If they made a decock-only version, I'd be sorely tempted.

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #236...

I'd had a Smith & Wesson Model 469 before, but it wasn't the most handsome example and I unloaded it at an Indy 1500 some years back.

When I got a call from Indy Arms Company telling me that they'd gotten one in, I jumped on it. I didn't recollect having ever seen a matte nickel one before. When I got it home and went to look up the serial number in the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson to find the date of manufacture (1984, by the way), it turns out that's because the nickel ones were a distributor exclusive run of 1,500 pistols for Ashland Shooting Supplies back in the day.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #235...

Between the six-shooter, a sight with batteries, a Surefire handheld with only 500 lumens, and a pocket knife with a sub-3" blade, I was eliminated by ninjas thirty-seven times just while taking this photo.

A fellow victim of ninjas, Sherman House, has some thoughts on the 856 TORO here:

Thanks to a volatile gun industry, capacity restrictions, modern/effective defensive ammunition and more states granting either Constitutional Carry, or carry permits, there has been a big uptick in revolver sales and use. Some are calling this a REVOLVER RENAISSANCE. I think the proliferation of better/improved designs, and the simple utility of revolvers has recaptured the imagination of the shooting public, and the relatively small national firearms training community (Tom Givens estimates that the national training community that progresses past a permit class is approximately 10,000 members strong) who NEVER STOPPED using revolvers can now be public about it in ways that actually encourage revolver neophytes to join the dozens of us (literally DOZENS OF US) revolver users.

You should be reading his blog. He's a clueful dude.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #234...

Speaking of Best Millimeter, the latest test gun has arrived...

The FN 510 Tactical answers all your handheld autocannon needs! The pistol ships with the flush-fit 15-round magazine like the one in the photo, as well as a 22-round(!) 'stendo, just in case your position is about to be overrun by a fire team of mutant undead ninja grizzly bears.

If it can't be solved with 22+1 rounds of 10mm Auto, it's probably not the sort of problem that can be solved with a pistol in the first place.

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