Rifles

Deer rifle. Cowboy gun. Saddle carbine. The .30-30 lever-action rifle is well known, no matter what you call it. Whether you want a knock-about rifle for hanging in the back window of your pickup, slinging under your foot on a snowmobile, or to use for the serious work of knocking down your yearly supply of venison, the .30-caliber lever rifle is one handy tool.

Where does it shine? Actually, the lever-action rifle doesn't really shine for much of anything, truth be told. Normally, today's lever rifle isn't known as a tack driver, but there are exceptions. Neither is the .30-30 an overwhelming powerhouse. Lever rifles tend to be reliable and, above all, handy. They're slimmer by far than...

In spite of what some people may say or think, we feel a semiautomatic rifle is a worthwhile hunting arm. A bolt-action rifle may work just fine for most hunters, but manually-operated firearms are extremely difficult, if not impossible, for physically disadvantaged people to use. Also, a semiautomatic rifle's ability to deliver a fast follow-up shot can prevent wounded game animals from suffering needlessly.

There is, of course, a downside to the semiautomatic rifle. It typically weighs about 1/2-pound more than most bolt-action sporters, making the gun tiresome to carry around for any length of time. However, the .30-06 Springfield rifles in this test solve the weight problem. They are...

Autoloading .22's are lots of fun and can be lots of gun. They tend to run you broke on ammunition because of the lure of easily and quickly firing off the entire magazine. In fact, this might be one reason to own a semiauto .22 that has a limited number of rounds in the magazine, say five to seven rounds. This limitation tends to force the shooter to make every shot count, much as the fellow with a six-shot muzzle-loading revolver is reluctant to shoot quickly because of all the work needed to make the gun ready to go again.

Be that as it may, self-loading .22's offer lots of shooting fun, but unfortunately many of them are not all that accurate. They would be more fun if they could hit...

After many years of soaking in the think tank, the Scout Rifle is here. If you know nothing about Jeff Cooper and his Scout Rifle, it means you probably haven't read anything he has written in the last few years. When two gun enthusiasts get together, sooner or later the age-old question will pop up, "If you could have only one firearm, which one would it be?" Jeff Cooper has taken his answer to the next level by developing what he thinks is the only rifle you will ever need.

So, what is a Scout Rifle? In Mr. Cooper's own words, "its a general-purpose weapon suitable for any use to which a rifle may be put, with the exception of the pachyderms and the buffalo." The rifle's manufacturer,...

Those who already have a .270, .280, .308, .30-06, or about half a dozen others of that ilk, and want to buy a 7mm Magnum to get a hotter, flatter-shooting rifle are simply paying good money to essentially duplicate what theyve already got. In actual fact, theres not a great deal of performance difference between any of those above calibers and the 7mm Remington Magnum. Take your pick, and within reasonable game-shooting distances any one will do as well as any other one, with r...

With Cowboy Action Shooting the fastest growing segment of the shooting sports, Gun Tests continues its in-depth look at the hardware fueling this impressive growth. The lever-action rifle is the primary long gun used by Cowboy Action competitors.

The criteria for a Cowboy Action Shooting rifle is straightforward. It must be a lever action with a tubular magazine and an exposed hammer. It must have open sights and a barrel over 16 inches in length (the minimum BATF requirement). It must fire a centerfire "pistol" cartridge larger than .25 caliber. The bullets it fires must be made entirely of lead and have a muzzle velocity of less than 1,400 feet per second.

In the January 1998 issue...

Without question, there are more pre-owned .22 rifles, pistols and revolvers occupying table space at guns shows, rack and counter case space at dealers and house space than any other caliber firearm. Based on the popularity of the cartridge, the guns that shoot it and the number of years both have been around, such abundance isn't in the least surprising. Due in part to that abundance, the prices attached to other-than-collectable .22s can be irresistible to the uninformed. All too often, many of these "bargains" become nightmares of additional expense once its discovered they don't function very well or not at all. You can be reasonably certain of one thing. A used .22 rifle, revolver or p...

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Almost ten years ago, I purchased a North American Arms .22 Magnum Mini-Revolver. I carry it when I jog or rollerblade and as a backup to the .45 Colt Officers Model I routinely carry.

Three weeks ago, while disassembling the Magnum Mini-Revolver for cleaning I lost the $3 hand spring. Upon calling the factory, their representative (Mr. Wayne Martin) suggested I return the gun for replacement of the part and reassembly.

In less than three weeks, the gun was...

Lever rifles in the rimfire calibers can do many things for the avid shooter. Besides providing casual shooting fun for the lever-rifle fan, these guns can be serious hunting arms. If the nimrod has a centerfire lever gun for any serious purpose, the rimfire can provide meaningful and inexpensive practice. This practice can extend from the rifle range to the small game field, and to just about anywhere in between. In the Idaho back country, many landowners keep a .22 LR of some sort, many of the lever type, by the back door for garden or yard pests.

Our test here includes a pair of lever guns, the Winchester 9422 Walnut and the new Henry Model H001, out of Brooklyn, New York, of all plac...

Neck a .30-06 case down to 7mm and you have the .280 Remington, which is probably a more useful cartridge today than the .270 Winchester. Bullet diameter of the .280 is 0.284 inch, same as the 7x57 and 7mm Magnum. This cartridge concept actually goes back a long time. The .280 Ross, introduced in 1906, had essentially identical performance, though its case was a bit bigger. Cartridges Of The World gives the .280 Remington an introduction date of 1957 (chambered in, of all things, the Remington Model 740 autoloader), but many a handloader had experimented with the 7mm-06 long before that.

Right after World War II, Elmer Keith and his friends Charlie O'Neil and Don Hopkins did some histori...

For a number of years after its civilian introduction in 1964, the Colt AR-15 was essentially a semiautomatic version of the U.S. military's standard issue rifle, the M16. Today, however, a handful of manufacturers are producing AR-15-type firearms in a variety of configurations. We prefer to call these firearms sporting rifles.

Despite what some politicians may think, we feel that all law-abiding citizens of this country should have the opportunity to own a sporting rifle. They are suitable for many types of shooting activities, from small game and varmint hunting to target shooting and home protection. They are also just plain fun to shoot.

All of the rifles in this test are .223 se...

Winchester introduced the .243 Winchester cartridge in 1955 for their Model 70 rifle and for their Model 88 lever action. The cartridge was immediately adopted by Savage for their Model 99 lever action, and shortly thereafter by a host of rifle makers worldwide.

Common folklore has it that the .243 was a wildcat developed out of the .308. However, because the .308 came out in 1952, only three years prior, there was precious little time for any wildcatting to have made much of an influence on factory developments. The roots for the .243 actually go back a long, long way and involve other countries besides the USA. The Germans, for example, experimented with a .24-caliber cartridge nearly i...