Editorial

The overwhelming tone of reader mail we get is gratitude for telling it like it is. As you’ll see when you read about 4-inch revolvers, custom .45 ACPs, turkey shotguns, and .22 rifles, hardnosed critiques are our exclusive franchise. You won’t read critical buy-this, don’t-buy-that comparisons of firearms products anywhere else.

We’re glad this approach is unique, but it’s always a little surprising to many shooters. If you go onto any shooting range anywhere in this country (or the world, I suppose), you’ll hear frank discussions of firearms performance. One shooter will say, “This gun is a sack of hooey [or words to that effect].” Another will add, “That gun shoots like a house afire.”...

I received an email on March 23 at 5:26:48 p.m. from Phil and Sandy Harpine of Leesville, South Carolina. The email header read only this: “S&W sell out.” The body of the email message was nearly as short. It read: “Please do not use one cent of my subscription to test, write about or reference any S&W product!!!!!!”

And that wasn’t the first communication I’d had on the subject. Two days earlier, the Gun Owners of America group had issued an email alert whose header read: “Smith & Wesson Sell-out: Boycott!” The headline on the email read, “GOA Announces Boycott of Clinton & Wesson—Sell-out worse than originally reported.”

As you might expect, I’ve gotten nearly 100 pieces of email, fa...

Readers who wrote me about Gun Tests’s decision to continue testing Smith & Wesson products in light of the company’s deal with the Clinton administration has elicited a steady stream of comments pro and con. To recap, we believe our subscribers are adult enough to read our articles and make their own decisions about buying or boycotting Smith products. It’s not the magazine’s place to black-out information on a company simply because we don’t like a business decision its executives have made.

However, not everyone agreed. An email from Alan Bint of Pensacola, Florida, said, “I will not renew. I just received my May issue. I was and am very disappointed in your reaction to the Smith & Wes...

Gary Anderson, a gold-medal smallbore shooter, former Atlanta Olympic shooting venue manager, and now director of the Civilian Marksmanship Program in Port Clinton, Ohio, wrote recently to say, I noted a comment in your July Gun Tests editorial about the shut-down of the U. S. Army Reserves Pistol and Rifle Teams. When the USAR Pistol Team left the National Matches, they thought they were turning in their equipment for the last time. By the time the Service Rifle Team was ready to leave, the decision had been reversed and USAR Teams were back in business.

Anderson said the proposed shutdown of the teams was done strictly as a cost-cutting move and was not driven by any higher political...

Though some shooters might not agree, there is other news happening on the gun front besides the latest goings-on at S&W. Here’s a sampling of informational nuggets for your careful consideration:

Army Reserve Programs Standing Down? An email from Helmut J. Hein Lynn Belcher, assistant branch chief, Individual Training Branch, U.S. Army Reserve Command, started in classic military form: “It is my sad duty to inform you that the USAR is the first military organization to cancel competitive marksmanship activities. Hopefully, the USAR will be the only one to do so.”

To those of us who have been in awe of Reserve shooters at the Camp Perry national matches or in international comp...

I get lots of mail from readers with interesting stories to tell, and occasionally, one is so compelling that I want to share it with the rest of the Gun Tests family. The following is from Charles Lakaytis, chief engineer for KBRW AM/FM in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost broadcast station in North America. Its located at 72 degrees north and 155 degrees west. Chuck shares his insights on guns he thinks are right for living at the top of the world:

First of all I want to congratulate you on a wonderful magazine. I have nearly given up on the other gun magazines. All the other writers seem to be testing products when guests of the manufacturer at some fancy game ranch or...

One of the most important firearms-ownership court cases in 60 years is currently before a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The panel will decide whether to uphold a lower court ruling that said gun ownership is an individual, and not a collective, right under the Second Amendment.This may come as a surprise to Gun Tests readers who thought they were buying guns for their personal use all along, but many gun confiscators have advanced the argument that our ability to own guns is modified and controlled by this part of the Second Amendment: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state….

This is a crucial distinction in terms of...