James Bond should be rocking the FN REFLEX. It’s about the same size as the Walther PPK, holds more ammo, lighter, and in a more potent caliber… Much more potent than James’ .32 caliber Walther.
I’ve carried mine for about a year now, as my main Concealed Carry weapon, and I’ve shot it enough to solidify my opinion of it. It’s a Winner. The gun is reliable, accurate, not difficult to shoot, and thanks to the good sights and great trigger, not difficult to shoot well with. I’ve had no problems with it using 115 grain range ammo and 124 grain and 147 grain defensive loads. Currently loaded with 124 grain Sierra JHPs, it groups well without a hint of issue. Using a Vedder IWB hybrid type rig, it conceals extremely well. Like I said… It’s become my main CCW piece. The alternate carry gun I use is my HK VP9SK, which is also excellent, but doesn’t hide as well. And since I travel into less than permissive environments, printing would cause unwanted drama, legal or not. As winter approaches, I’ll carry it more and other larger guns for fun and variety… But everywhere else, the little Reflex is my Go-To.
FN has confirmed the rumors that had been going around that the SCAR series of rifles has been discontinued. This comes as a shock to many, since the SCAR has been so iconic for so long!
But here’s the deal… As popular as it is in video games and works of fiction, the reality is that the rifle just isn’t worth the price of admission. The SCAR 17 is about 4 grand. Add a good optic and now you’re at 5.2 grand. Add in an appropriate number of spare mags, and you’re at 5.5 grand. A case of good ammo, and you’re now sitting on a 6 Grand Kit. Not including Lights, Lasers, Slings, Case, or any other piece of kit you want to attach to the gun, assuming you don’t already have them already that you can transfer over from whatever Peasant Class rifle you’re migrating from. For 6 Grand, you can buy a whole lot of other gun, and a good used motorcycle to go with them. And what does this really get you? A .30 cal semi-auto rifle with average accuracy and a lot of snobbery.
Look, I like the SCAR series. I love them. But they are at least twice the price they should be. The design is very clever. It’s well engineered… But it isn’t the Excalibur of Rifles some folks make it out to be, and other folks fantasize about it being… it just isn’t. I could spend all day giving you other options for launching .308, or the 5.56 if that’s the version you fancy… But I won’t, because I don’t have that kind of time. But there are tons of options that will cost you about half or even less that are going to be just as reliable, just as accurate or BETTER, and take standard/common magazines that you can get in abundance for a fraction of FN’s cost. Seriously, I found a .308 Magpul mag for only 12 bucks locally. Of course, I snagged it. You’re never going to find that for the FN. Ever. Well, maybe now you might, with the platform being tossed to the side.
There is no word on a SCAR replacement. The fact FN has refered to the series being the “LEGACY SCAR”, makes one think that there is a SCAR 2.0 in the works. But rumor has it that there is no such thing in the pipeline. Another rumor has it that FN is going to release civilian versions of their military guns… But this is not substantiated and indicators point to that being just wishful thinking. The other rumor is that FN is washing its hands of the civilian rifle market. And that is probably the most sensible approach for FN right now.
Anyone else remember FN’s outstanding bolt action rifles? Yeah, I miss those… those were great.
Warmaster Hegseth: “You guys are Fat. Get in Shape, or Get Out.”
Last week we learned about Warmaster Hegseth calling for a Meeting of all the Top Brass. We didn’t know what the Warmaster was going to bring out for this Big Meeting. Some were very afraid he was going to lay out plans for War on three fronts. I had guessed it was going to be Administrative in nature. And I was right. But it was more than I expected!
A Snapline back to Standards? Sure… sure… But calling out his Generals and Admirals too? DANG! I did NOT expect that!
I listened to the entire message the Warmaster delivered, and found it to be most impressive. Looking at the potential conflicts ahead of us… This was NEEDED. And I don’t disagree with anything he said. The DEI agenda has severely weakened our Armed Forces. And the Politicians running things instead of the Actual Military… This was a change we witnessed starting back with Obama, during the whole 13 Hours event. Let me remind folks…
The US Marines have within their Charter, the Mission to React and Respond to Threats against our Embassies. No orders have to be given or waited for… The Marines GO. The General Order was given ages ago. Supporting Assets automatically move to assist and support the Marines in that Mission. When the Call for help went out, the Marines and the Navy started to spool up. Ships changed course. Helicopter Rotor Blades started turning. Jet Engines started warming up. The Machine that is the US Military was reacting.
And then another call came in. STAND DOWN.
A Decision had been made and an order given to STOP. Military Leaders who didn’t were immediately relieved of duty. Cuss words were uttered. Fists hit desks and tables. And turbine engines were shut off. To save the Embassador, nothing had to be said. To let the Ambassador die, many orders had to be given and repeated. And Americans DIED.
After that event… things changed. There was a PURGE of Patriotic Military Leaders who took their Oaths seriously. Instead of Patriots, we had Political Loyalists installed into key positions… and it all went downhill… Until Warmaster Hegseth was raised up into his new role.
What do you guys think? How do you feel about this change back to proper standards?
I was asked my opinion on Walthers. I don’t own a Walther at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got anything against them. Far from. It just means my Gun Budget is too low.
Walther’s PDP has quietly and not so quietly become the Gun Guy’s If you know, you know gun. My Mom even has one. Lots of my friends have one, and those that don’t, many are saying they too want one. The PDP is now coming in a number of different variants, and each one is an outstanding pistol. Universally, they come with stellar ergonomics, great sights, and what is considered to be one of the very best triggers in the market – if not the best trigger on the market. The accuracy is right up there, and the reliability has proven to be exceptional.
The PDP is an evolution of the Walther P99, a gun that Walther put all its chips into and it paid off. BIG TIME. Before the P99, Walther was in serious trouble. I even said at the time that they were “Struggling to find relevance.” They had no presence in the US Market except for their skinny Importation deal with S&W, which gave S&W permission to make their own version of the P99 for a while.
Then Walther got SERIOUS. There was a PDQ pistol and some effort was made there… and then they finally developed the PDP and they really hit on something. The PDP has been developed with more focused engineering than almost any other pistol on the market… and it shows. Do this… Go to your Local Gun Store – your LGS – and examine a PDP first hand. Hold it. Ask to dry fire it just once… and while you do that… Watch those sights very carefully as the trigger breaks. Notice how the sights don’t even twitch? Not even slightly? That’s what I look for in a handgun – right there. HK, CZ, Echelon, and few others can match.
What’s the downside to the Walther PDP? Well, being out of the Market’s Mainstream means you’re going to have a lot fewer options for Holsters. Most LGSs won’t even have a holster for the PDP in stock, and if they do, it probably won’t be a good one. Pricing has the PDP at the more expensive end of factory production duty guns… right next to HK, if not more, depending on the version of PDP you’re looking at. And that’s another happy little problem… Picking which version of the PDP. And that’s a personal question nobody else can help you with. The last Downside to the PDP, is that if you take it to the range… Everyone there is going to want to try it. Whatever you do… don’t rent one at the Range and actually shoot one. Because if you do, you will end up buying one. It becomes fate to do so… and admittedly, I am destined to do so myself.
Righteous Anger is righteous. The want for Justice is righteous. The call for Revenge and Reprisals however, is not. Sit on your hands and bite your tongue until you are rational again. Today is September 11th. Much to Remember today. Much to contemplate. My goal is to spend more time thinking than speaking.
It all started back in 1895 with Winchester releasing the first commercially available factory loaded cartridge using smokeless powder. It was, for the time period, a wicked fast and very accurate cartridge. It took the American Shooting World by storm! It has been used to hunt literally everything in North America and has been used to hunt most everything else, everywhere else. The gun industry has developed a whole lot of other cartridges, but the .30-30 Winchester kept trucking along. The only question is whether it is still a viable cartridge in 2025 and onward.
In most commercial loadings, the .30-30 Win (also called the .30 WCF originally) has moderate velocities compared to most modern calibers. Kind of like how 55 Miles per hour was blistering in the 30’s but in 2025 you had best not be in the far left lane doing that speed! Just between you and I, the far left lane is for blatant crime. .308 is typically around 2700 Feet Per Second, and the .30-30 is 2400. So it’s no longer the Speed King. The .30-30 is also hampered with high-drag, flat nosed projectiles. Hornady has given us soft nosed pointy boys that won’t chain-fire in a magazine tube, and that’s done very well to help things out, but it can only help so much.
A lot of Gun Guys have pontificated that the .30-30 is only good for White Tail Deer out to 100 yards at the Max. I’ve personally dropped a Cow Elk at 200 yards, and it fell like it was pole-axed. That range was verified by a Nikon laser rangefinder and the load was the Hornady LeveRevolution 160 grain load. It performed as advertised and delivered an ethically clean snuffing. If there is a downside to Hornady’s FTX projectile, it’s going to be that it was reluctant to feed smoothly out of the Marlin 336 I used to own. Though, to be fair, it does feed better out of my Mossy 464.
Hornady isn’t just a One Trick Pony when it comes to .30-30. They have some other great loads, including a 175 grain subsonic load that I’d love to test out if I had a .30-30 with a suppressor. If you’ve tried it out all Hushed and Quiet like – Let me know how you find it.
The longest range shot I’ve made with a .30-30 was 500 yards onto a steel plate. And it wasn’t the most precise of a shot. Then again, Lever Actions are not the most precise of a rifle. My 336 spent a lot of time with gunsmiths to get it tweaked to be 1 MOA. That involved barrel work, crowning, trigger, and firing pin modifications that cost me about triple what the rifle cost me. I do wish I still had that rifle. But the new owner did report back that he had harvested some fine big game animals with it in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming.
The cartridge and the rifles are no longer getting Magazine Covers, and Online Discussions had almost dropped completely off the radar… But it’s getting more attention lately thanks to the “Tactical Lever Action” Trend that is happening. Modern Lever Actions from Marlin and Henry are coming out with Rails, Giant Loops, Optic Mounts, and Threaded muzzles for the easy installation of the Gun Muffler of your choice. Pretty much every company that loads Rifle Ammunition is still rolling loads for this old Classic. But my favorite are the monolithic solid hollowpoints. They deliver excellent terminal performance, even at the moderate velocities the cartridge lives with. The .30-30 remains alive and well within the American Gun Culture.
Limbsaver has been well known in the archery community for making vibration-absorbing products that work very well. Recently, they came into the firearms industry with some very effective recoil pads. So effective that they are now standard on many new rifles, and just about everything from Remington.
Limbsaver has come out with something new for rifles, called a Barrel De-Resonator. This is a soft rubber grommet that slips over the barrel and gives the weapon a very George Jetson, almost Flash Gordon kind of look. The idea behind it is pretty simple, to pull the vibrations out of the barrel during firing to make each shot more consistent.
How it works is the same way these things work on bow limbs… it reduces vibration and shock by transferring the energy and motion into the soft rubber which resists the motion at first, then captures it and contains it. In a bow, it makes the bow smoother and quieter during the shot.
This should theoretically work on the barrel of a rifle. During firing the barrel of a rifle acts as a tuning fork. Vibrations travel back and forth across the length of the barrel and this can make shots inconsistent. To battle this, barrels are made free floating, where nothing touches the barrel. Or they are made heavy and fat, thus reducing these vibrations by shear mass and rigidity. Or they are full bedded or bedded with a pressure point near the end of the stock’s fore end. The idea is to let the barrel resonate as free as possible with the hope that it will resonate the same way every time.
The problem with barrel resonation is that it is effected by just about everything. Heat, humidity, air pressure, the way you are holding the rifle, where your sling is mounted and if you are pulling on it, the bullet weight and shot velocity will also play an important roll in resonation. So being able to pull some of that vibration out of the barrel would be a huge help in shooting.
The question is, does it work?
The test platform is my trusty Remington 700 Stainless BDL in 7MM Remington Magnum. For testing, I picked up a couple of boxes of some cheap 160 grain PMC ammo. Each box was only twelve bucks, so I thought, what the heck. It beats blowing through my good stuff that I use for killing things that cost more than twice that. The scope in a Nikon Buckmaster BDC which is zeroed for 300 yards. The target is 200 yards.
I first fired a clean group without the de-resonator on the gun. In the group above, you can see the three shots and at the top is a hole made by splintered wood, not a bullet hole. This is not a bad group for 200 yards for a guy who is on some pretty heavy painkillers and shooting through heat waves. I’ll take this sort of accuracy any day.
To start out testing the de-resonator, I slipped it on all the way back to within an inch of the stock. The shot group is actually slightly bigger. So far, I’m not impressed. If this was it, I would want my money back. But they say that you have to tune the de-resonator by putting it in different positions to find the sweet spot where it works the best. So we will do that.
Oh for the love of… I’m so not impressed. This is with the de-resonator placed roughly in the middle. Again, I’m about to ask for my money back. After this one I fire a couple more groups just to verify that this is what the gun is doing. I’d be better off having not have tried this out at all at this point.
Then I moved the de-resonator out further, to within 4 inches of the muzzle. And this is when something happened. Now, understand this… this is with cheap ammo that I have always considered to be crappy…
I shot several other groups after this to verify it… This is it. The Limbsaver Barrel De-Resonator actually works. In the above photo that is a three shot group with two shots through the same hole.. other groups were nice clover leaf patterns.
I’m pleased as can be. For a rifle to shoot this good with crappy ammo… I am not just pleased, but I am thrilled.
I love my Ruger SP101. I really do. My only issue with it though, has been the grips. I’ve gone through no less than 5 different sets of grips. I’m looking for a Unicorn. I want some nice, tight, compact grips that both conceal well and doesn’t punish me for pulling the trigger. Shown above are my current grips. They shoot well. While being a “Boot Grip” they don’t hurt my hand because they be THICC. This Shorty is FAT. So it fills the hand and distributes recoil very well. The problem is because of that girth, it prints like I’m pulling a billboard with me. And the grips are very grabby and any covering garment over it is going to start climbing. I’ve decided that these are terrible. I need new grips. I need to find that Unicorn. Leading Suggestion has been VZ Grips.
In 1895 Winchester shocked the world with the introduction of the Model 1894 in a new cartridge called the .30 Winchester Smokeless. It was later called the .30 WCF, and also known as the .30-30 Winchester. “Thuddy Thuddy” was using the then new Smokeless Powder, hence the original name, and offered wicked fast Velocity for the time. It took the shooting world by storm. It was commonly loaded with 150 grain and 170 grains, and it was used to hunt EVERYTHING in North America and most of the rest of the world. And for the guys hunting things a bit bigger and nastier than White Tails, Elk, and Outlaws… It did have some limitations. Enter Remington with something of an Upgrade to that caliber… The .35 Remington.
Remington loaded a Rimless case with a .35 caliber bullet with weights common in 200 and 220 grain loads, and while just a bit slower, offered more Energy and Momentum on Stubborn Targets. It became rather popular and has been known as a Brush Gun Cartridge, thanks to the heavier bullet’s ability to crash through the brush and still hit the target with enough grunt to put it down. Does a number on Bear Bones too. And remarkably, it does so with a similar ballistic trajectory as the .30-30 out to 300 yards. I’ve only done one hunt with a .35 Remington Marlin 336. But it was a successful hunt that did not require tracking of a wounded animal… It anchored it where it was standing. And that was with a Federal semi-jacketed Soft Point.
Below, we’ll compare the two cartridges in question with the same Hornady loading. The .35 Remington’s muzzle velocity of 2225, versus the .30-30’s of 2400 FPS. Now, this is with Hornady’s wonderful new powders and consistent loadings and high quality control… So these velocities might be a bit quicker than some older loadings… But they are safe to use in any lever action that’s in good condition.
Thirty Five Remington might be a bit old fashioned now, and out of favor with the Trade Publications these days. But for those that have used it, have all done so with great satisfaction when used within it’s envelope. More modern cartridges do surpass it, just as the .350 Legend… And Remington’s own .35 Magnum. But when you have a Winchester 94 or Marlin 336 loaded up with some good .35 Remington ammo… You don’t feel outdated. You feel like a Classic.
The .357 SIG cartridge offers some rather compelling advantages for serious use… particularly in law enforcement, self-defense, and other tactical applications. Here’s why:
1. Superior Ballistic Performance: The .357 SIG delivers outstanding muzzle velocity, typically between 1,350 to 1,450 fps with 125-grain loads, and energy around 500 ft-lbs. Which somewhat mimics the famous (for good reasons) .357 Magnum revolver round, but in a small-framed semi-automatic pistol. This provides excellent stopping power and penetration, critical for effective threat engagement.
2. Flat Trajectory and Accuracy: The high velocity results in a flatter trajectory compared to other handgun rounds like 9mm or .40 S&W, enhancing accuracy at longer ranges (up to 50 yards). This makes it ideal for scenarios where precision is crucial. And with a projectile that gets to the target in a hurry… It makes hitting a moving target so much easier.
3. Barrier Penetration: The .357 SIG performs very well against common barriers, such as windshields, Vehicle Doors, and such… And with a good projectile choice, and can still perform in an acceptable manner on Soft Targets after the barrier is defeated.
4. Getting One: I’m not sure if any gun company is currently producing anything in .357 SIG anymore, one might thing the cartridge is “Dead”. This is untrue. Since the cartridge is based on the .40 S&W, you can convert most any .40 cal pistol to a .357 with a simple barrel swap, and new and used .40s are out there in the wild on gun store shelves just waiting to be picked up. And you’re going to find these lonely pistols rather well discounted. MidwayUSA or Brownells, Inc. or Lone Wolf Distributors will probably have a barrel for that pistol, in .357, and they can mail that directly to your door.
5. Ammo can be found online as well, through reputable dealers, and that too can be shipped directly to your door. So there is no problem finding this stuff. Balance of Power and Capacity: While it carries slightly fewer rounds than 9mm in similar-sized magazines, the .357 SIG offers a better balance of power per shot compared to 9mm and similar capacity to .40 S&W, making it a practical choice for those prioritizing terminal performance over maximum round count.
Drawbacks: Higher recoil and cost are the downsides. However, modern training mitigates recoil management issues, and the cartridge’s performance justifies the cost for users prioritizing effectiveness over economy. It’s more expensive than 9mm to be sure. But that’s due to the Economy of Scale, it is the same as with .45. Fewer people are buying .357 SIG and that means factories are producing less of it. The upshot, in the last 3 Ammo Runs, where people are panic buying and emptying shelves… .357 SIG is one of the last pistol calibers to be snatched up. So you got that going for you. The other drawback to the .357 SIG is that it is a High Pressure Round. It’s loud. It’s going to hurt your ears. You want to put your Ear Pro with the Gun in your Go Bag or in your Night Stand Safe. It’s unpleasant to shoot. It’s not a FUN cartridge. It’s not one to pass around on Range Day. This is a cartridge to get things done with.
