Most gun owners are lazy at the range. They pull out a fine double-action sixgun, immediately cock the hammer with their thumb, and gently squeeze a crisp two-pound trigger. The target shows a tight group. Smiles follow. Self-satisfaction reigns supreme.

Tragically, this habit builds false confidence.

Roy Huntington and I recently tackled this persistent range habit. Old shooters used to say single-action shooting makes you a marksman, while double-action shooting makes you a real shooter. Truth be told, thumb-cocking a defensive revolver in a tight spot is amateur hour and dangerously unsafe.

Consider the mechanical reality. A double-action trigger pull requires real hand strength, deliberate finger control, and smooth follow-through. Lazy shooters bypass this process by thumbing the hammer back. They reduce a twelve-pound deliberate trigger pull down to a hair-trigger stroke. Target shooting on a quiet Sunday afternoon forgives that crutch. Real life stress does not.

High-stress environments trigger sympathetic muscle contractions. Fingers tighten involuntarily. Walking down a dark hallway with a thumb-cocked revolver transforms a defensive firearm into a ticking time bomb. Two pounds of pressure separates complete safety from a catastrophic unintended discharge.

Courts hold people accountable for negligence. Saying ‘it went off by accident’ carries zero weight when prosecutor panels review hair-trigger mechanics. Roy recalled testifying in a homicide trial centered around this exact mistake. A defendant claimed his cocked revolver slipped and fired without a finger touching the trigger. Internal safety mechanisms proved otherwise. The transfer bar mechanism requires a full trigger hold to discharge. Fooling physics remains impossible.

Mastering the double-action trigger requires understanding staging. Smith & Wesson revolvers offer clear tactile feedback. Shooters feel the initial cylinder bolt drop. Continuous smooth pressure rotates the cylinder. The finger pad contacts the frame. A second click indicates the cylinder locking in place. Final pressure releases the sear. Mastering this sequence creates absolute precision.

Roy proved this recently to a veteran shooter of forty years. The experienced shooter claimed double-action revolvers were inherently inaccurate. Two minutes of dry-fire instruction on proper staging changed his mind. His very next live cylinder produced a teacup-sized group at ten yards. Smooth technique triumphs over brute speed every single time.

Dry-fire practice costs nothing. Clear your firearm completely and remove all live ammunition from the room. Then, practice pressing the trigger through its natural cycle. Learn where the pressure builds, identify the exact moment the cylinder locks and develop muscle memory. Ditch the thumb-cocking crutch forever. Becoming a true shooter demands working through the heavy pull.

Watch the episode:

I can remember the exact spot.

We were hiking the Boulevard Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains on one of those perfect September mornings that makes you wonder why anyone stays indoors. The sky was impossibly blue, the air carried that first hint of fall, and every breath felt like it had been filtered through the forest itself.

The park rangers had warned us before we started out.

“The bears are up high,” one of them said. “The berries are ripe.”

Good enough for me. I like bears, and I’d just as soon let them enjoy breakfast without my company. Then I rounded a bend.

The trail disappeared into shoulder-high berry bushes, and there it was — a steaming, unmistakable sign that breakfast had only recently been interrupted.

I’ve spent enough time outdoors to recognize animal sign, but this wasn’t exactly advanced woodsmanship. Even the greenest first-time hiker would have known a bear had been standing right there only moments before. This realization immediately led to another.

I was carrying a handgun for exactly this sort of situation...but not the kind that would help me if the next thing I saw was 300 pounds of irritated black bear emerging from the berry patch.

Wrong Choice

At the time, I thought I had engineered the perfect concealed-carry solution. My little AMT .380 Backup rode inside the water-bottle carrier on my backpack’s hip belt. I’d cut and arranged foam blocks to secure a nylon holster inside the pouch. It concealed the pistol completely, protected it from the weather, and drew surprisingly fast.

For dealing with a homicidal backcountry manic, it was actually a pretty clever setup. For dealing with a bear that might materialize five yards away...

I distinctly remember wondering whether I should open a possible encounter with the pistol or the stout sassafras walking stick I habitually carried in those days. It wasn’t a comforting choice.

It wasn’t that I suddenly believed I needed to shoot a bear. In fact, the overwhelming majority of black bear encounters end with everybody walking away. The point driven home was much simpler: if I’m going to carry a firearm for emergency use, it ought to be immediately accessible AND reasonably matched to the threat.

That hike permanently changed the way I carry a handgun outdoors.

A Surprise

Not long afterward, my friend Ken Campbell handed me a Hill People Gear Kit Bag as a gift. The first time I strapped it on, I wasn’t convinced. It felt different. Maybe even a little awkward. But, by the end of the first hike, I wondered why I’d waited so long.

Today I own several chest packs, and I freely admit I’ve become something of an evangelist for them. They keep the gun accessible, distribute the weight well, work with a backpack, and don’t advertise what’s inside to every person I meet on the trail.

When I’m hiking in black bear country these days, I can comfortably carry a full-size 10mm pistol, and nobody gives it a second look.

Well...almost nobody. There’s always someone on the internet ready to explain that anything smaller than a .454 Casull is an invitation to become woodland cuisine. I’ve learned to smile and keep hiking.

Lessons

The funny thing is, none of this started because I was shopping for a better holster. It started because I almost stepped into fresh bear sign on a quiet September morning in the Smokies, and suddenly realized my carefully engineered carry system solved the wrong problem.

Sometimes the woods have a way of giving us exactly the lesson we need.

And if you’re curious about the chest packs I’ve come to rely on over the years—including why I think they’ve become one of the best options for concealed carry outdoors—you can read the full story over at GUNS Magazine.

The bear, thankfully, never did make an appearance.

Thirty or forty years ago, if someone tried to put a measure on the ballot to ban hunting, fishing, and animal farming, it wouldn’t have even made the local paper. It would have been laughed out of the room as an absurd joke.

But welcome to our modern “don’t call anybody an idiot” culture—where even the most unhinged ideas get treated like valid public policy.

Case in point: Oregon’s Initiative Petition 28 (IP 28).

The Narrow Escape

The Oregon Secretary of State’s office recently announced that IP 28 failed to make the November ballot. Why? Not because the political establishment suddenly found common sense, but because the campaign failed a basic technical review—they couldn’t produce enough valid signatures to meet the state threshold.

We got lucky. But “lucky” should make your stomach turn.

If it had made the ballot, who knows what would have happened once the urban, granola-eating voters in Portland and along the coast stepped into the voting booth?

A Disney-fied View of Nature

Think about what this initiative actually proposed. It sought to classify any intentional killing of an animal in Oregon—outside of self-defense—as a Class A misdemeanor. That meant:

• No hunting.

• No fishing.

• No livestock ranching or processing.

• No pest control.

Losing the right to hunt and fish is devastating enough for outdoor heritage and wildlife conservation. But imagine outlawing all animal farming. No beef, no poultry, no pork, no dairy processing, no rod and reel, no youth deer season.

In what world does this seem like a good idea? In my view, to the leftist, tofu-eating urban dwellers who have never spent a day on a farm, set a hook, or tracked game through the woods. It’s the product of a generation that views nature like a Disney movie and thinks animals are noble spirits wandering around waiting for a song, completely disconnected from the realities of food systems, ecology, and land management.

The Trial Balloon

Make no mistake: Oregon was a test case.

The activists behind this were throwing a trial balloon into the sky to see how far it would fly. They raised money, gathered over 100,000 signatures, and pushed state leadership into a panic. Even if it failed on a technicality this time, the template has been created. They will refine the language, gather more money, and try again—in Oregon or in your home state.

When Theory Hits Reality

It’s easy to flirt with big-government control and nanny-state ideology when it’s all purely academic. But ideology looks very different when it shows up on your doorstep to take away your job, your weekend pastimes, and your family’s food supply.

It’s the exact same dynamic as the “Defund the Police” movement. It sounded real progressive on social media—until the same folks had their cars broken into or homes burglarized, and suddenly they were begging for an officer on the street.

When bad ideas stop being abstract debate topics and start threatening your actual way of life, the illusion shatters real fast.

Time to Wake Up

This bad idea should have never seen the light of day, let alone come within striking distance of becoming state law.

Hunters, anglers, farmers, ranchers, and everyday consumers need to stop assuming common sense will always prevail. The opposition is organized, funded, and patient. If you care about traditional pastimes, working lands, and basic individual freedoms, it’s time to wake up, stay alert, and pay attention to what’s coming down the pipe next.

A funny thing happened today while I was trying to take a completely different picture.

I was in the backyard posing for a photo to illustrate an upcoming article. My wife was behind the camera, patiently trying to get everything lined up, when I happened to glance over into the hosta bed.

There, peeking between the leaves, was our dog wearing an expression that can only be described as, “Oh... were you looking for me?”

I immediately grabbed the camera from my wife.

To her credit, she didn’t object. She merely gave me that look—the one that says, “Apparently the photos I haven’t even taken yet are already disappointing you.”

No, no. This wasn’t about her photography.

This was about the dog.

Our miniature Australian shepherd was perfectly framed by the hostas, looking like she’d spent the last twenty minutes studying composition and waiting for the light to hit just right. I snapped the picture and texted it to a few friends and family members.

Within minutes my brother replied.

“Add a jungle boonie hat to her.”

Of course.

Without another thought I uploaded the photo to an AI image generator, asked it to add the hat, and in seconds my innocent little backyard dog had been transformed into what looked like a seasoned jungle scout, albeit more precious.

Then curiosity got the better of me.

I asked AI to age the image—to make it look like a worn black-and-white photograph from the mid-1960s.

The result was incredible.

It nailed the faded film, the scratches, the soft contrast... and then, completely unprompted, it added a handwritten caption:

Private Barker, Vietnam, 1968.

Excuse me?

I never asked for the caption.

I never mentioned Vietnam.

I certainly never suggested a name.

Yet somehow AI wandered into the exact same joke my brother and I would have made over a beer at the American Legion.

Either artificial intelligence has become frighteningly good at understanding context, or it’s reading my mind through Bluetooth. I’m not ruling either possibility out.

The whole episode reminded me of three things.

First, my dog is adorable. Yours probably is too, but mine is objectively cuter.

Second, my brother and I apparently share the same warped sense of humor. After enough decades, siblings stop finishing each other’s sentences and start finishing each other’s bad ideas.

And third, whether you love AI or hate it, you have to admit this is astonishing technology. I uploaded a snapshot from my backyard and, in less than a minute, created something that genuinely looked like it had been tucked away in an old footlocker for sixty years.

I understand why people are nervous about artificial intelligence. I understand why massive data centers have become controversial. Those are legitimate conversations.

But every once in a while it’s worth putting all of that aside and simply appreciating the sheer sense of wonder. If watching a computer convincingly turn your dog into “Private Barker, Viet Nam, 1968” in under sixty seconds doesn’t make you stop and smile...

...you’ve forgotten how to be amazed.

People love to look down their noses at cheap pocket pistols. Walk into any modern indoor shooting range with a Charter Arms or a Taurus, and you will likely receive a few condescending smirks from the guys sporting higher-cost CCW pistols. Unfortunately, gun culture has developed a weird, elitist obsession with price tags. Somehow, spending a month’s mortgage payment on a five-shot revolver has become the baseline for “class.”

Roy Huntington and I recently sat down to dissect this phenomenon in the latest episode of Guns Podcast US - Stop Shaming ‘Budget’ Snubbies! #344 . He brought up a brilliant point that completely reframes the entire argument: we need to stop calling these affordable options “budget” or “cheap” guns. Calling something “budget” implies a compromise in safety or reliability. These are actually standard-price revolvers; utra-premium custom guns are the outliers. Regular unleaded gasoline gets you to the grocery store just as reliably as premium fuel. Your defensive firearm functions under the exact same principle.

Manufacturing technology has fundamentally changed the landscape of firearms production. Modern CNC machining allows makers like Taurus or Rock Island to churn out frames with microscopic consistency. Tolerances are tighter than they have ever been. The massive quality gap that existed thirty years ago has virtually evaporated. Ironically, some premium manufacturers have actually struggled with quality control lately because they try to eliminate human intervention entirely to maximize profit margins. You are often paying for a name brand and a high-polish finish rather than superior mechanical reliability.

Admittedly, a four-hundred-dollar revolver can feel a bit gritty straight out of the box. The internal parts might not have received the hand-polishing of a high-end Smith & Wesson but resolving this issue does not require an expensive trip to a gunsmith. You just need to dry fire the snot out of it!

Clear the revolver, verify it is completely empty, squirt some light oil into the action, and pull the trigger five hundred times while watching television. This simple process seats the internal components and smooths out the rough edges naturally. Also, do not immediately install a lighter aftermarket spring kit on a brand-new gun. Light springs on a rough, unbroken-in action will only cause ignition failures. Break the gun in first, then decide if you actually need to swap parts.

There is also a massive psychological benefit to carrying an inexpensive firearm. High-end custom guns make people timid. You worry about scratches, holster wear, sweat, and pocket lint. You end up babying a tool that is supposed to save your life. A well-worn Charter Arms Bulldog or a polymer-framed Taurus Judge can ride in a dusty tractor holster or a sweaty front pocket without causing a single moment of lost sleep. Guns, at least the CCW version, are supposed to be tools, not museum pieces.

Roy carried a Charter Arms Bulldog .44 Special in an ankle holster during his police days. A highly respected, world-famous shooting instructor we knew chose that exact same gun as his primary defensive piece. These guys could have carried literally any firearm on the planet. They chose standard-price, utilitarian tools because they worked.

Worry less about the logo stamped on the frame. Focus instead on whether the cylinder rotates, the firing pin strikes- and most importantly- you can hit your target when the adrenaline dumps. Having a reliable gun in your pocket beats leaving a thousand-dollar safe queen at home every single time

.

I try very hard not to be the guy who is always saying, “Back in my day...”

Every generation does it. Our parents thought we had it easy. Their parents thought they had it easy. Someday today’s kids will be rolling their eyes at whatever impossible luxury the next generation invents.

So I make a conscious effort to avoid that trap. In fact, for a writer, its almost a disqualifying trite meme.

-However-

I just stumbled across an Amazon listing for finger cots marketed specifically for mobile gamers.

Finger cots.

Not for handling chemicals.

Not for working in electronics.

Not for protecting a bandaged finger.

They’re tiny sleeves you wear on your fingertips so they glide across your phone screen while you’re playing games. Apparently sweaty thumbs have become a tactical disadvantage.

I just sat there staring at the screen.

Really?

Now, before anyone writes in, yes, I understand the technology. Capacitive touchscreens work better when your finger glides smoothly. Competitive mobile gamers want every possible advantage. Somewhere there’s probably a big-money tournament where milliseconds matter.

I get it.

But I still can’t believe we’re here.

The Obligatory ‘Back in my day…’ Stories

My generation wasn’t exactly raised in a sterile laboratory.

We rode in the rear window shelf of our parents cars because seat belts were only considered mild suggestions.

We launched steel-tipped lawn darts toward each other with a confidence that can only be described as reckless. Yeah, some of the accidents were spectacular.

If there was a water hose near the neighborhood Wiffle Ball field, everybody drank from it. Nobody asked where it came from. Nobody wondered if the neighbor had rinsed paint brushes with it ten minutes earlier. In fact, he probably had.

If your bike had working brakes, you were ahead of the game—not that it mattered when you landed badly off the makeshift jump ramp built from a filched piece of plywood and a cinderblock.

We came home when the streetlights came on, covered in dirt, mosquito bites and whatever mystery substances had accumulated during twelve hours of unsupervised adventure.

Again, I’m not claiming we were tougher.

Just...different.

Modern Problems

Every generation has its own version of hardship. Kids today deal with pressures we never imagined. Social media alone creates stresses we escaped entirely. I cannot imagine what younger people face today, completely smothered by a digital onslaught you can’t outrun.

But somewhere between legitimate technological progress and wrapping our fingertips in tiny gaming socks because Call of Duty Mobile is making our thumbs perspire...I feel like we’ve wandered into territory that deserves a raised eyebrow.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe these little finger sleeves are the greatest innovation since sliced bread.

Maybe next year they’ll come with cooling gel inserts and Bluetooth.

Maybe there will be premium versions stitched from organic alpaca wool harvested under a full moon.

I don’t know.

What I do know is this:

If you develop chapped fingertips from playing games on your phone, it might be time to put the phone down for a little while.

Go outside.

Find a Wiffle Ball.

Play in the creek.

Drink from a garden hose.

But...maybe check first to make sure it doesn’t smell like weed killer.

We’ve learned a few things since then.

We’ve all seen him. If you’ve spent more than five minutes online or walked past the racks of AR's at a local gun show, you’ve run into “Sergeant Gonad.” He’s the guy with the custom-tailored uniform sleeves designed to squeeze his biceps into a permanent state of vascular display. His bicep size is classified, his posture is perpetually aggressive, and his YouTube channel is a masterclass in high-speed, low-drag fantasy gear.

He wants to sell you a tactical protein shake, a compensator that looks like a billet aluminum hood ornament and a red dot optic with more reticle options than a fifth generation fighter jet. And for a long time, the firearms industry has been more than happy to let the hyper-tactical crowd set the agenda.

But real life has a funny way of popping tactical balloons.

In this week’s episode of the Guns Podcast US, Roy Huntington and I discussed a letter from a listener named David, a retired 30-year law enforcement veteran. David actually had to pull the trigger in the line of duty. He was facing a barricaded suspect in an apartment doorway armed with a long gun, resulting in a tense, twenty-minute standoff.

When the suspect finally leveled the weapon, David fired. And at 16 yards, his first shot missed the suspect’s head by two and a half inches, chewing into the doorframe. Why? Because despite decades of training and range officers screaming “front sight focus,” David’s eyes didn’t track his front sight in that split second. His focus was locked in a biological vise-grip on the only thing that mattered in that millisecond: the threat.

David’s second shot connected after he forced his focus back to the sights, but his story highlights a massive, ongoing debate in the gun community: Red Dots vs. Iron Sights.

Disagreements

If you ask my illustrious co-host Roy, he will tell you he’s a staunch iron-sight guy. His philosophy makes a ton of sense: in a high-stress, close-range “get off me” situation, your brain’s primal response is to stare directly at the threat. To Roy, adding a miniature television screen to your slide just introduces a battery-operated variable you don’t need when pure gun-handling skills and threat-indexing are what save your life.

I look at it a bit differently. For me, a quality red dot (or green dot, my personal preference) is an incredible tool. It allows me to keep my target in sharp focus without fighting the blurry front-sight alignment that comes with age. If a piece of technology makes you faster, cleaner, and more confident on the glass, there is absolutely a place for it.

The truth is, both systems work. The key isn’t which piece of glass you bolt to your slide; it’s being entirely competent with whatever you choose to carry.

This same logic applies to the caliber of our carry guns. We are constantly told we need 10mm pocket rockets or .357 SIG hand-cannons because standard 9mm just doesn’t have the “stopping power.” But unless your name is Rob Leatham, full-house defensive loads in those heavy calibers usually just turn a controllable tool into a wrist-snapping flinch-generator. Power is a secondary variable; putting the bullet where it belongs is the only thing that punches your ticket home.

Takeaway

Whether you prefer the simplicity of classic iron sights like Roy, or the visual clarity of a modern red dot like me, technology will never replace basic, boring, repetitive gun-handling skills. David, who is now in a wheelchair, rightly noted that his primary concern these days is simply clearing his clothing and getting the gun out smoothly. If you fumble your draw, it doesn’t matter what kind of sights are on the gun.

So, next time you see Commander Gonad flexing his classified biceps on your screen, don’t rush out to buy more gear. Take your favorite carry gun—whatever sight configuration is on it—and go practice dry-firing (safely) in the living room. You don’t need more gadgets. You just need to be lethal with what you already have.

What’s your take on the great optics debate? Are you Team Iron Sights like Roy, or do you prefer a red dot? Let me know in the comments.

I have a confession to make: I once orchestrated a full military-style funeral for a beetle named Leroy.

And yes, this story is absolutely, 100% true.

Back in my police academy days—which was run with the kind of rigid, military boot-camp discipline that makes you sweat through your uniform even on a cold day—a drill instructor “discovered” a tiny insect carcass in the overhead light fixture of my dorm room. Despite suspecting it was planted by an instructor who took a special delight in tormenting recruits, my roommate and I were ordered to conduct a full homicide investigation and handle the victim’s remains with the utmost dignity.

Being the smartasses we were, we leaned into the bit entirely. My dad had been a funeral director, so I knew how these things were supposed to work. We built a tiny velvet-lined casket out of Popsicle sticks, set up a visitation in our dorm room complete with recorded organ music, and had a classmate who happened to be an ordained minister conduct a formal graveside service.

When the ceremony concluded, seven cadets stepped forward, each clenching a can of Raid insect spray. At my command, they rendered three perfectly timed volleys over Leroy’s final resting place.

The drill instructor showed up with off-duty staff just in time to witness the whole thing. Thankfully, he laughed, and for years, the videotape of “Leroy D. Bug’s” funeral was shown to incoming academy classes as an example of either teamwork or what happens when bored recruits have too much creative freedom.

If you want to read the full, unabridged saga of our investigation—complete with how we narrowly avoided getting court-martialed (or forced to sell paint at Walmart)—you can read the original story here in GUNS Magazine.

That ridiculous afternoon did something else, though: it sparked a lifelong curiosity.

As we were planning Leroy’s send-off, my roommate and I kept arguing about military protocol and what exactly constituted a “21-gun salute.” It turns out, that absurd prank led me down a historical rabbit hole about a military tradition that almost everyone gets wrong.

With our nation celebrating its massive 250th birthday this weekend, I figured it was the perfect time to unearth the history behind the noise. Let’s face it: a straight, dry breakdown of military gun salutes can read like a training manual. But when you anchor it to seven guys blasting bug spray into the wind, it gets a lot more interesting.

Here is what I learned when I dug into the history.

The Misconception: Three Volleys vs. 21 Guns

If you attend a military or law enforcement funeral, or watch a Memorial Day ceremony, you will inevitably hear someone in the crowd whisper, “They’re giving him a 21-gun salute.”

Usually, they aren’t.

What you are actually witnessing is a three-volley salute. It is performed by a ceremonial rifle detail (traditionally seven service members). Each fires one round on command, three times, producing 21 total shots. It’s easy to see where the math confuses people, but in strict military terminology, a “gun” refers to artillery and cannons—never shoulder-fired rifles.

The origins of the three-volley salute date back hundreds of years to European battlefields. Opposing armies would call a temporary cease-fire to clear and identify their dead. Once the field was cleared and the burial details finished, three rifle volleys were fired into the air to signal, “The dead are honored, and we are ready to resume fighting.”

What is a True 21-Gun Salute?

A true 21-gun salute doesn’t involve rifles at all; it requires a battery of artillery pieces or cannons. It is the highest ceremonial honor a nation can bestow.

Its roots lie in the Age of Sail. When a warship entered a friendly foreign port, it would fire its cannons into the open water to empty them. This was a literal demonstration of peaceful intentions—proving to the shore batteries that the ship was temporarily unable to attack.

Because shipboard gunpowder was limited, ships originally fired seven rounds. The shore batteries, with plenty of gunpowder to spare on land, would echo back three shots for every one fired by the ship. 7 x 3 = 21. Eventually, 21 guns became the international standard of diplomatic respect.

Today, a true 21-gun salute is strictly reserved for historic national occasions, the inauguration or funeral of a U.S. President, or welcoming foreign heads of state.

Why the Noise Matters This Weekend

As we celebrate the United States Semiquincentennial—250 years of a wild, enduring experiment in liberty—you’re going to hear a lot of explosions. The skies will be filled with fireworks, and at military installations across the country at noon, you might hear the measured boom of a 50-gun Salute to the Union (one round for every state).

Those reports are far more than noise. They are echoes of centuries-old customs designed to honor sacrifice and celebrate freedom.

As for Leroy D. Bug, his popsicle-stick casket has long since returned to the dust of the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy lawn, and I have no idea what became of that old VHS tape. But every time the Fourth of July rolls around and the ceremonial artillery starts to thunder, I can’t help but smile.

After all, not everyone gets full honors—and very few get their three volleys from a can of Raid.

Happy 250th, America! What’s the most creative way you’ve ever seen someone follow a rigid rule while completely twisting the spirit of it? Let me know in the comments!

Tomorrow, the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary. Two and a half centuries of freedom, history, and a deeply rooted culture of marksmanship. To celebrate this milestone, Roy Huntington and I sat down for a special edition of the Guns Podcast US to hash out a question that has no right answer, but guarantees a million and one opinions: What is the single most “American” gun ever made?

We did zero show prepcand went straight into full “corner of the gun store on a hot July afternoon” debate mode.

Here is how the battlefield shaped up.

The Contenders

To keep ourselves honest, we set a couple of loose rules: the gun had to be designed or built in America, and thoroughly popularized here. Right out of the gate, we realized we were going to be wrong according to half our listeners. But we threw some legendary steel onto the table anyway.

Making The Case for…

Colt Single Action Army

Roy’s top pick. If America had a firearm on its coat of arms, this is it. Hold a picture of it up anywhere from Tibet to Texas, and people instantly think “Cowboy,” “Colt,” and the American West.

Pennsylvania / Kentucky Long Rifle

My historical pre-date. While the core concept crossed the ocean, early Americans perfected it to survive a rugged wilderness continent. It represents the first century and a half of our national identity before metallic cartridges took over.

Winchester Model 94 / The Lever Action

The quintessential American rifle platform. Built on massive sales figures and iconic frontier history, it’s the rifle that defined generations of American hunters and woodsmen.

The 1911 & The Tommy Gun

Two absolute titans of the 20th century. The 1911 carried our military through two World Wars, while the Thompson Model 1927 became an instantly recognizable cultural icon of the gangster era and WWII alike.

The AR-15 Platform

The modern sporting rifle. Mechanically brilliant and arguably the most popular singular weapon platform in modern American hands today.

Celebrating the Golden Age

While it’s easy to look back through a lens of nostalgia—missing the distinct smell of Hoppe’s No. 9, leather holsters, and the creak of the floorboards in an old neighborhood gun shop—Roy and I agreed on a major takeaway: We are living in the golden age of firearms right now.

The technology, selection, quality, and sheer availability of gear are the best they have ever been in human history. Freedom is always under assault, but our rich firearms culture remains a direct reflection of our unique liberty. Unlike parts of Europe where manufacturers tell you what you’re allowed to like, the American market thrives on pure, unfiltered freedom of choice.

As we cross the 250-year mark, it’s a perfect reminder to stop sitting on our laurels, pick up the Second Amendment flag, and keep fighting the good fight to ensure this legacy lasts for the next 250 years.

A Final Note on Keepin’ It Real

Before we wrapped up, Roy brought up a fantastic point about the sudden influx of AI-generated articles flooding the firearms space lately. You know the ones—soulless “Top 10 Reasons to Buy an XYZ” lists written by an algorithm that has never actually pulled a trigger or felt the recoil of a .45.

We pride ourselves on the fact that everything we do across GUNS Magazine, our newsletters, and this podcast is handled by real, flesh-and-blood human beings who live and breathe this stuff. (And yes, the irony of using a digital platform to tell you this isn’t lost on us, but we promise there’s a real guy typing behind the screen!)

Join the Debate

Head over to the comments and tell us exactly where we went wrong. Did we leave out your favorite historic wheelgun, or completely blank on a military classic? Let us hear it.

Support the show & check out our newsletters: GUNS Magazine

Have a safe, happy, and freedom-filled Fourth of July!

If you’ve spent any time looking at older, imported firearms, you know they occupy a strange space in the gun world. Some are masterpieces; others look like they were machined using a dull butter knife and a prayer.

But every now and then, you run across a piece of hardware that is just too historic—and too cheap—to pass up.

That’s exactly what happened when I picked up a battered, unloved Star PD. For those who aren’t familiar, the Star PD was a trailblazing, Basque-born, aluminum-framed micro-.45 ACP released in 1975. Long before every manufacturer under the sun offered a subcompact 1911, this little gun kicked off the trend. Even Colonel Jeff Cooper famously loved it, calling it a gun to be “carried much, shot little” (mostly because shooting a 25-ounce .45 can feel like catching a fast ball with your bare hand).

My particular Star PD didn’t look like a trendsetter. It looked like a survivor of a pawnshop riot. It had rust pitting on the slide from decades of resting against sweaty bodies, dead bluing, and a severe case of generalized neglect.

I decided it was time to turn this ugly duckling into a swan. I recently chronicled the full build over at GUNS Magazine in my piece, “Resurrecting the Star PD”, but I wanted to give you all the unfiltered, behind-the-scenes look at how it actually went down in the shop.

Lesson One: Respect the Springs

Before I even made it out to Roy Huntington’s shop in Missouri, the project kicked off with a classic gunsmithing lesson in humility.

I was detail-stripping the slide in my office to fix a sticky thumb safety. I broke the cardinal rule: always keep your finger over the plunger hole. Zing. The safety plunger and spring instantly launched themselves into low Earth orbit. I spent an hour scanning the carpet inch by inch before hanging my head in shame and placing an order with Numrich Gun Parts. With my replacement parts secured, I packed up the pitted frame, the slide, and the remaining shreds of my dignity, and headed to Roy’s place.

Workshop Alchemy

The moment we got into the shop, Roy took immediate defensive measures. Having heard about my disappearing plunger incident, he field-stripped the gun with extreme prejudice, dropping every single microscopic component into a secure plastic box. No rogue parts were escaping into his rafters.

We split the labor: Roy handled the internal triage, and I took over the cosmetic heavy lifting.

• The Frame: I fired up the bead blaster and stripped the factory blue anodizing right off the aluminum frame. Underneath, the bare aluminum looked incredibly sharp, so we decided to leave it entirely “in the white.” Not only does it give the gun a striking, modern two-tone look, but it makes it much easier to inspect the frame for cracks (a known issue with hard-shot Star PDs).

• The Slide & Steel Parts: Eradicating every rust pit on the slide would have compromised its dimensions, so I used emery cloth to smooth out what I could. Then came the magic: Brownells Oxpho-Blue Creme formula. After four hand-rubbed coats, the deep, rich blue-black finish looked like it came straight out of a professional hot-dip tank.

• The Grips: The original unfinished walnut slab grips were looking pretty drab. A quick application of Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil instantly woke up the wood grain and sealed it against future hand sweat and solvents.

There was, however, one minor side effect to our chemical wizardry. When I later pulled the finished pistol out of its sealed polymer case, the aroma was unmistakable. It didn’t smell like gunpowder or gun oil. It smelled exactly like a $6.99 drugstore “box perm.” Hey, beauty always has a scent.

Fixing “Bubba’s” Trigger Job

While I was busy making things shiny, Roy discovered a mechanical landmine left by a previous owner. Someone had tried to “smooth” the feed ramp but got a little too aggressive, leaving a distinct lip right where the aluminum frame met the steel barrel ramp—a perfect recipe for nose-dive malfunctions. Roy went to work with his files and stones, masterfully blending the transition back into a smooth, reliable ramp.

When we finally reassembled the gun and stepped back, we couldn’t believe it. In the span of a single afternoon, a $400 swap-meet beater had been transformed into a remarkably classy, eye-catching, and easy-to-carry piece of working art.

As Roy so eloquently put it when I asked him for a comment: “With a few simple tools and supplies (and the loan of a blasting cabinet), even Brent can do this!”

Thanks, Roy.

If you want to see the full photo gallery of the transformation, check out the article on GUNS Magazine. And if you ever find a beat-up Star PD sitting unloved in a display case, grab it. It’s a fantastic, low-budget custom project with a whole lot more soul than today’s standard “plastic fantastic” carry guns.

Just remember to keep your thumb over that darn plunger spring.

Since roughly the Carter administration, the firearms industry has been trying to murder the .30-30 Winchester.

Every decade, a new marketing savior arrives, heralded by a chorus of gun writers declaring that the old, blunt-nosed cartridge from 1895 is finally, officially dead. In 1975, they said the .308 would make it obsolete. In 1985, it was the 7mm-08. In 1995, we entered the great Magnum craze, where we slapped the word ‘Magnum’ on everything short of a starter pistol to sell more rifles. By 2005, the short magnums were going to bury it. Ten years later, the 6.5 Creedmoor was the designated killer. And today, we’re told the .350 Legend is the final nail in the coffin.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, the humble .30-30 lever gun quietly continues to kill white-tailed deer by the trainload every single autumn.

My affable co-host, Roy Huntington, likes to call the .30-30 the ‘adjustable wrench’ of the gun world. It’s a perfect analogy. You don’t pull an adjustable wrench out of your toolbox to show off your sophisticated mechanical taste. You don’t admire its aerodynamic lines. You use it because it’s the tool that handles 99 percent of the jobs you actually need to do on any given Tuesday.

Yet, the ballistic snobs look down their noses at it. They compare a $1,500 precision bolt-action rifle shooting from a sandbag rest at a laser-ranged target to a century-old lever-action rifle shot over the hood of a dusty pickup truck. ‘Look,’ they sneer, ‘your lever-action only shoots a four-inch group at a hundred yards.’

To which I say: so what?

First of all, that accuracy myth is mostly dead anyway. I recently tested one of the new Marlin 336s built on Ruger’s brand-new machinery. Paired with modern polymer-tipped ammo like Hornady’s LEVERevolution, that lever gun was consistently punching sub-one-inch, sub-MOA groups at a hundred yards. The gun is accurate enough. The cartridge is accurate enough.

But more importantly, let’s talk about how hunting actually happens.

I was on a hunt in Oklahoma a while back with a Benelli Lupo—a magnificent, incredibly accurate European bolt-action rifle. The guides set me up in a blind where the closest realistic shot was a laser-verified 452 yards away. I saw deer, but I didn’t feel comfortable taking a shot at that distance with an unfamiliar rifle. I didn’t want to be the guy who wounds an animal just to prove a point.

So, on the final afternoon, with a massive weather front rolling in, I ignored the guides. I hiked around the perimeter of the field, figured out where the deer were actually moving, and set up in the brush. I took a beautiful buck at exactly 35 yards. One shot, one clean kill.

When I wrote the review of that high-tech bolt rifle, I had to admit it was the most under-tested cover gun in history. Because the truth is, a 130-year-old Model 94 Winchester lever gun in .30-30 would have done the exact same job, just as cleanly. Nothing against the Lupo, but it was a sports car when all I needed was a pickup truck.

Most deer hunting in America—especially east of the Mississippi—happens at double-digit yardage. If you can get within a hundred yards of a deer, you don’t need a hyper-velocity cartridge designed to cross mountain valleys in Wyoming. You need a fast-handling, lightweight rifle that points naturally and puts a chunk of lead exactly where it belongs.

We’ve all met the guy who lives on a farm in Pennsylvania or Indiana. He carries an old Model 94 he bought in 1961. He has a box of ammo in his drawer that he bought twenty years ago. There are nineteen empty spaces in that box because he’s shot nineteen deer with nineteen single shots. If you ask him why he doesn’t upgrade to a modern short magnum, he’ll look at you like you’ve lost your mind.

He doesn’t need a marketing department to tell him what works.

So, let the ballistic purists scoff. Let them chase the latest, flattest-shooting, barrel-burning cartridge of the month. There’s nothing wrong with new technology, and we certainly don’t begrudge anyone their shiny new toys. But don’t let the marketing machine shame you into thinking your grandfather’s rifle is obsolete.

The .30-30 might be the Rodney Dangerfield of cartridges—it don’t get no respect from the internet experts. But in the deep woods where the leaves are damp and the deer are close, it’s still the king.

If you caught our latest episode of The Guns Podcast, you know it didn’t start with a multi-page script or a list of highly researched talking points. Instead, it came from a thought that hit me while lying in bed, right before we pressed record.

A couple of weeks ago, Roy and I did an “opposite day” episode where we swapped sides on the great pistol red dot debate. It was a fun mental exercise that lasted about 12 minutes before evolving into a genuinely great, balanced discussion on pistol optics. But when we posted about it on Instagram—where the demographic skewing toward the comment section is a bit younger—the reception was... let’s just say, not entirely supportive.

There was a lot of finger-pointing, calling us “Fudds,” and a general wave of online callousness. It got me thinking: in the firearms world, we frequently talk about the mechanics of getting older. We joke about how we can’t see the front sight anymore, how much our feet and knees hurt, and the fact that we can’t hear a darn thing. But we almost never talk about what it actually feels like to be an older shooter.

The transition from a young, testosterone-fueled hotshot to a seasoned, wiser marksman comes with a profound shift in perspective—and it’s a journey we wouldn’t trade for anything.

The Three Stages of the Shooting Journey

As we discussed on the show, there seems to be a natural progression most shooters go through if they stay in the game long enough:

1. The Youth: You think you know everything, but in reality, you don’t know anything. You’re driven by an intense need to prove yourself to everyone else on the range.

2. Middle Age: You become genuinely competent. The focus shifts from trying to prove yourself to trying to improve yourself.

3. The Older Shooter: You never stop trying to improve, but your ultimate goal shifts toward becoming wiser.

Roy made an incredible point during our chat. He recalled his younger days training in Chula Vista and traveling down to Mexico for shoot-offs. Even back then, amidst the high-speed, exciting environments, he never bought into his own hype. He always recognized there was someone better and looked at every match, and every single cartridge reloaded, as an incremental step in knowledge.

When you’re young, it’s easy to get caught up in the “testosterone clouds” that dominate so much of modern gun culture and social media. But that level of arrogance is just misdirected energy.

The Ultimate Perk: Losing the Burden of Ego

Perhaps the single greatest benefit of reaching our age as shooters is that criticism and self-doubt completely lose their teeth.

When we were younger, if someone called us out or told us we were terrible shots, it would get right under our skin. Today? We don’t care. Your opinion doesn’t move the needle for us.

Motorcyclists have a saying: “Ride your ride.” Backpackers say, “Hike your hike.” For older shooters, the mantra becomes “Shoot your shoot.” We stop worrying about what we look like to the guy in the lane next to us and we stop pretending to be the toughest, fastest, or strongest guy in the room. Putting up that kind of facade takes an immense amount of energy—energy we’d much rather spend actually enjoying the sport.

When people resort to personal attacks or online name-calling, it’s almost always because they lack a foundation of real experience, information, or knowledge to work from.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Now, we don’t want to sound like we’re just sitting on the porch shaking our fists at the younger generation. The toxic internet commenters represent a very small, loud sample size.

In reality, some of our favorite experiences lately have been interacting with the overwhelming majority of young shooters who are respectful, open-minded and eager to learn. There is nothing more refreshing than a young shooter who has the quick reflexes, sharp eyesight, and physical health we miss, but still says, “I want to take advantage of your decades of experience.”

Looking back, I realized that’s exactly how I built my own career. I was never going to shoot like Jerry Miculek or Robbie Leatham, and I was never Delta Force. But because I approached those masters with respect rather than trying to “puff up” and pretend I knew everything, they treated me like a human being and shared their wisdom. I got to hang out with legends like Jim Cirillo and serve as a “tackling dummy” for the Navy SEALs simply because I was willing to sit at the feet of the masters and absorb.

Would We Trade the Wisdom to Get Our Knees Back?

I think it was summarized perfectly: “I wouldn’t give you a million dollars for the experiences I’ve had, but I wouldn’t give you a nickel to go back and do it again.”

Sure, it would be nice to stand up from the ground without making a series of involuntary grunting noises. But trading the wisdom, the decades of incremental knowledge, the paid-for house, and the quiet comfort of being entirely secure in our own skin just to be an 18-year-old testosterone-filled goofball again? No thanks.

Being a mentor, appreciating the journey, and enjoying the firearms community without the burden of ego is a beautiful place to be.

What about you? Where are you at on your shooting journey? Do you find your mindset changing as the years roll by? Let me know in the comments below!

If you spend enough time around the tactical side of the internet, you’ll notice a distinct trend. Everyone is utterly obsessed with speed. We track first-shot delivery down to the hundredth of a second on electronic timers. We practice lightning-fast reloads until our thumbs bleed.

We convince ourselves that if we ever find ourselves standing under the buzzing fluorescent lights of a late-night gas station, facing a guy with a bad attitude and a cheap Saturday Night Special, our sub-second draw stroke is going to punch our ticket to safety.

But after 25 years in uniform, I’m going to let you in on a secret: the most critical factor in surviving a convenience store stick-up happens long before your hand ever gets near a grip.

It starts with situational awareness, a few basic tactical rules of thumb, and knowing when to keep your blaster exactly where it is.

The late-night convenience store—or the “Stop ’N’ Rob,” as we affectionately called them on the midnight shift—is a statistically high-hazard environment. They are bright oases of cash and quick exits, usually sitting right off a highway or a main drag.

They attract two things in abundance: graveyard-shift workers just trying to make a living, and desperate predators looking for an easy score.

If you are a concealed carrier, walking into one of these establishments requires a complete mental shift. You aren’t just popping in for a giant fountain soda or a bag of beef jerky; you are entering a high-probability conflict zone.

Over on the main site, I’ve broken down a complete survival guide for handling these specific environments. It’s built on a mix of police experience and hard-earned street logic. We dive into the big rules that can actually keep you out of the morgue, including:

• The Pre-Flight Check: Why you need to look through the plate glass windows before your boots ever hit the pavement. If you don’t see a clerk, or if something feels off, your feet should be moving back to your truck.

• The “Target Indicators”: How to spot a robbery in progress or an ambush waiting to happen in the parking lot.

• The “Not Your Circus” Dilemma: The absolute hardest pill for most armed citizens to swallow. If a robbery kicks off while you’re standing by the coolers, drawing your gun might be the absolute worst thing you can do. If the bad guy just wants the twenties out of the till, letting him take the money and leave is a massive win for everyone involved. Cash can be replaced; your life can’t.

• The Counter-Ambush: If the situation turns violent and you must fight, how to use the tight, cluttered geometry of store aisles to your advantage instead of getting caught out in the open.

Look, practicing your draw at home is great. It builds essential muscle memory. But carrying a gun is a thinking-person’s game. Having the wisdom to avoid the fight entirely—or the restraint to let a low-level property crime play out without triggering a shootout—is what separates a truly prepared citizen from a statistic.

I put together the full tactical blueprint over at GUNS Magazine to help you audit your late-night habits.

Click here to read the full article on Surviving the Stop ’N’ Rob over at Gunsmagazine.com.

How about you? Do you have a strict set of personal rules for stopping at gas stations after dark, or do you just wing it and trust your gear? Let’s swap notes in the comments.

Summer is officially here, and depending on where you live, the weather has transitioned into that special kind of miserable where the humidity is thick enough to chew.

If you’re spending hours outdoors right now—whether you’re working a match, running a multi-day shooting class, mowing the back forty, or rucking a heavy pack—you already know that heat is a genuine safety issue. It doesn’t take much to go from “man, it’s sticky out here” to looking like someone pulled your plug.

For decades, the standard, well-meaning advice was simple: just pound more water.

But if you’ve ever spent an August at a place like Gunsite Academy, sweating through your shirt by 9:00 AM, you probably learned the hard way that water is only half the equation. If you just dump gallons of plain water into your system without replacing what you’re actually losing, you run out of gas, get nauseous, and hit the wall hard.

Naturally, this problem has spawned a massive, $6.7 billion “Big Hydration” industry.

Walk down any drink aisle and you’ll find shelves lined with brightly colored powders and neon bottles promising rapid hydration, cellular absorption, and “proprietary matrices” developed by scientists in lab coats. The labels boast about added B-vitamins for “energy,” exotic antioxidants, and rare trace minerals harvested from remote mountain peaks.

It’s marketing hype at its absolute finest.

I recently decided to bypass the marketing copy and look at the actual science of oral rehydration. Guess what? The premier medical rehydration formulas used globally to save millions of lives don’t contain rubidium or Tahitian swordfish extract. They contain three basic things: water, salt, and sugar.

When you sweat, the primary electrolyte you dump is plain old sodium chloride. Salt. And that little bit of sugar? It’s not just for flavor; human physiology absorbs water and sodium much more efficiently when glucose is present. It “greases the on-ramp” to get the good stuff out of your gut and into your system.

The trouble is, commercial sports drinks are formulated for consumers, not pure performance. A truly high-sodium drink tastes salty, so big brands compromise on the science to make it taste like fruit punch.

So, being a cynical gun writer with a pantry full of baking supplies, I decided to mix up my own five-cent range elixir based on standard rehydration science:

• 1 quart of water

• 1/2 teaspoon of standard table salt (for the sodium)

• 1/8 teaspoon of Morton “Lite” Salt (to catch the potassium)

• 1 tablespoon of sugar (to activate the absorption)

Now, I’m not going to lie to you—the sports drink military-industrial complex is not shaking in its boots over the flavor profile. Out of the pitcher, it tastes exactly like what it is: slightly salty water. It is not a delightful beverage to sip while reading light poetry.

But out on a hot trail or a blistering range day? It works exponentially better than plain water or the sugary, bright-blue stuff. To make it palatable, I just toss in a small packet of sugar-free pink lemonade mix.

It’s cheap, it’s unglamorous, and it completely strips away the marketing nonsense. If you want to impress your buddies on the range, just tell them you’re drinking a bespoke, proprietary solution of salinated dihydrogen monoxide with an added sucrose blend. They’ll probably try to buy a cup off you.

I wrote a full breakdown over at GUNS Magazine detailing the exact science behind fluid loss, why piling on extra vitamins is like overfilling the engine oil in your truck, and how to mix this up for your next range trip.

Head over to Gunsmagazine.com to read the full article and stop paying a premium for salty marketing.

What’s your go-to play for surviving a brutal summer range day? Are you mixing up your own concoctions, or are you still paying five bucks a bottle for neon-colored marketing? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

A five-gallon bucket of rotting beaver meat, a cement mixer full of oats, used cooking oil, stale pastries, and, of all things, red Twizzlers.

That is the recipe for bringing a seven-foot black bear within fifty yards of an elevated tree stand in Northern Alberta. It is nasty, sticky, smelly business. It is also the reality of predator management in the deep woods—a world miles away from the sanitized, plastic-wrapped existence of modern suburbia.

My friend Suzi Huntington, wife of my regular podcast co-host Roy Huntington, recently went north to sample this reality and joined me on the podcast (Link: @FMGPUBS) She didn’t go with a custom, high-dollar rig or a camera crew trailing her every move. She went with a Ruger American chambered in plain-jane .308, a Meopta scope, a mosquito net, and some flannel-lined jeans. Two hours into her first afternoon in the stand, she was tagged out on two massive bears—a beautiful cinnamon phase and a heavy-bodied black bear that made the other woods-critters clear the area like cartoon characters dodging a dynamite blast.

It was a clean, text-book, highly successful conservation hunt.

Then she came home, posted a couple of pictures on her personal Facebook page, and the modern digital outrage machine fired up its engines.

People Suzi grew up with—folks who haven’t seen a predator outside of a nature documentary or a city zoo—felt the burning, sanctimonious need to leave nasty comments. They didn’t stop there. They tracked down the family-run guide service’s business page to leave venomous reviews. They screamed about cruelty, they wept for the poor beasts, and they demanded to know if she was going to eat the meat.

Let’s address the last part first, because it’s where the ignorant always try to claim the moral high ground. The “eat what you kill” rule is a fine baseline for a whitetail hunter in Indiana, but nature doesn’t care about our simple rules. Susie asked the guides—men who have lived in those woods for decades—if they were going to cook up some bear steaks. The answer was a flat, disgusted NO!

These were spring bears, freshly emerged from hibernation. They had spent months living off their own fat reserves. Their meat is greasy, unpalatable and stringy. On top of that, spring black bears are notorious carriers of trichinosis. To make the meat even remotely safe, you have to cook it into dry, leathery oblivion. As the guides put it, “Even the coyotes won’t eat it.”

Yet, the keyboard warriors wanted a lecture on culinary ethics. They wanted to impose their suburban, Disney-fied morality onto a rugged, northern landscape that operates on biology, not feelings.

What these critics fail to realize—or simply choose to ignore—is that hunters are the ones writing the checks for conservation. The money spent on licenses, guides, gear, and travel feeds the local economies and directly funds the fish and game agencies that keep these wildlife populations healthy. Your weekend bird-watching trip doesn’t pay to protect the habitat; the hunter’s check does.

But the online mob doesn’t want a conversation. They want to perform moral superiority for their own peer group.

I’m tired of the entitlement of the ignorant. If you don’t like hunting, don’t do it. Keep scrolling. But don’t pretend you understand the delicate balance of game management from the safety of your air-conditioned living room while typing on a smartphone made with minerals mined by children on the other side of the world.

There’s another lesson here, and it has nothing to do with bears or bait piles. Suzi’s trip was a bucket-list adventure. It took time, coordination and hard-earned cash. A lot of people stare at those trips online for years, whispering to themselves, “Maybe next year, when the car is paid off, when I have more time, when things are perfect.”

I went to a funeral last week for one of my best fishing buddies. It was a stark, cold reminder that the clock is ticking for all of us. “Next year” is a luxury none of us are promised. If you have a dream—whether it’s hunting bears in Alberta, chasing plains game in Namibia, or just taking that cross-country road trip—stop waiting. Cut out the extra Starbucks runs, put the money aside, and make the plan.

Do it before you run out of road. And when you do have your adventure, don’t worry about what the keyboard warriors have to say about it. They’ll still be sitting on the couch, complaining about the world, while you’re out there actually living in it.

We shooters are an obsessive bunch. We will sit on the internet and spend three solid weeks arguing about the ballistic coefficient of a 6.5 Creedmoor bullet, or spend a small fortune on carbon-fiber tripods and custom bipods.

Then, we head out to a match, a prairie dog town, or a rural range, spend four hours laying belly-down in the grass to break a clean shot, and willingly serve ourselves up as a stationary, all-you-can-eat buffet for the local tick and chigger population.

It makes no sense. We obsess over “time on target” but completely ignore the fact that it is physically impossible to read the wind or pull off a crisp trigger press when a giant, blood-sucking mosquito is actively drilling into the side of your neck.

For years, rifle culture has been moving off concrete benches and into the field. Whether you’re shooting NRL Hunter, practicing field positions, or just stretching the legs on a precision rig, you are spending time on the ground. And let me tell you, the local insect population appreciates a prone shooter. You aren’t moving, you aren’t swatting—you are just a giant lump of warm blood.

That’s why my absolute favorite, unglamorous piece of summer range gear has zero M-LOK slots, no tactical laser-engravings, and costs about fifteen bucks a bottle.

I’m talking about Permethrin.

If you aren’t using this stuff yet, you are volunteering for a special kind of misery. Unlike DEET, which you slather all over your skin until you smell like a chemical plant and melt the plastic on your safety glasses, Permethrin is a chemical weapon designed strictly for your clothing and gear.

You spray your pants, socks, boots, and shooting mats until they’re damp, let them dry completely, and the microscopic molecules bond directly to the fabric. Once it’s dry, you can’t see it or smell it. But to a bug? It’s Death Row.

I became an absolute apostle for the stuff while hiking through Southern Indiana’s Hoosier National Forest—a place I affectionately refer to as “The National Tick Refuge.” More than once, I’ve looked down to see dozens of deer ticks scaling my boots. But the second they hit the treated fabric, they suddenly lose all enthusiasm for the project. They get a foothold, start climbing, and then dramatically swoon off my pants legs like they just realized they made a catastrophic life choice.

And don’t even get me started on chiggers. Those little demons operate on a delayed-action misery schedule. You leave the range thinking you got away clean, only to wake up 24 hours later discovering your waistline and sock tops have been turned into a science experiment in itching. Treated socks stop them dead before they ever get established.

With tick populations booming across the country, it’s not just about the itch anymore. Between Lyme disease and that bizarre Alpha-gal “red meat allergy” syndrome—where a single Lone Star tick bite can literally turn a cheeseburger into a life-threatening medical emergency—protecting yourself on the ground isn’t optional.

I just finished up a brutal, wet turkey season down here. Two weeks of crawling through damp woods and sitting against trees in prime bug weather. The final score? Nimrod: 1, Ticks: 0. (We won’t discuss the turkey’s score).

I wrote a full breakdown over at GUNS Magazine on exactly how to apply it, the gear you should be treating right now (hint: do your shooting mat), and a couple of safety rules you need to know—especially if you have barn cats running around, because wet permethrin and felines do not mix.

Head over to Gunsmagazine.com to read the full article and get your summer gear sorted.

How about you? Are you already a member of the Permethrin fan club, or are you still out there donating blood to science every time you shoot prone? Let me know in the comments.

I am, by nature, a cynical creature. Decades in law enforcement and the gun-writing racket will do that to a man.

So, when the folks at Remora Holsters first claimed they had a line of inside-the-waistband (IWB) gear that stayed perfectly in place without clips, loops, harnesses, rivets, heavy-duty welds, or an act of Congress, my immediate response was a deeply profound, Hoosier-grade snort of derision.

How, pray tell, is a piece of gear supposed to anchor a chunk of lethal machinery inside your waistband using nothing but gravity and good intentions? It felt like a blatant disregard for the laws of both physics and sensible gun carriage. Naturally, I had to prove them wrong.

To set up the ultimate failure test, I donned a pair of old, loose-fitting drawstring workout shorts. No belt, no structure—just flimsy nylon and disbelief. I shoved my trusty .38 Special snubby into the Remora holster, tucked the whole package inside my waistband, and whistled for Ivy, my miniature Australian Shepherd.

We set out for a brisk one-mile march. For the first two blocks, I engaged in what I call “the furtive touch”—the subtle, but highly noticeable to observant bystanders, paranoid pat-down every concealed carrier does when they’re convinced their blaster is slipping down their pant leg.

Yet, it wasn’t slipping. By block four, I had mostly stopped touching it. By the time we crossed the one-mile mark, my pants were still up, the .38 was exactly where I left it, and the dog was entirely unimpressed by my brewing crisis of punctured assumptions.

The Remora simply refused to budge.

The secret turns out to be a highly tactile, rubberized polymer outer skin. It acts like a microscopic non-slip mesh, grabbing hold of fabric or skin the second it’s compressed inside your waistband.

To really push my luck, I wore it through a full day of real-world “migration tests”:

• The Clinic Test: Sitting on paper-lined exam tables and getting jabbed with a round of vaccinations ahead of a brand-new, pending grandchild.

• The Muck Market: Navigating the crowded, humid aisles of a local plant nursery, lifting flats of petunias and buttercups to fix up my water garden.

• The Marshmallow Couch: The only time the rig shifted even half an inch was when I sank into my living room couch—a piece of furniture so soft it practically requires a winch to escape from. I don’t blame the holster for that one.

I even threw their matching accessory sleeve into the mix for a spare speed strip, and it pulled off the exact same friction-lock sorcery. The mag/speed strip pulls out smoothly, but the sleeve stays put.

Look, everything has limits. I wouldn’t try to pack a six-inch Colt Python this way, and it’s probably not the rig you want to wear to a Navy SEAL PT test. But for a lightweight snubby or a small automatic? It completely cracked the code. As it turns out, sometimes the best piece of carry hardware is no hardware at all.

I wrote up a detailed breakdown of the testing, the physics behind the grip, and how it stacks up against my old favorite DeSantis pocket holsters over at GUNS Magazine.

Drop by Gunsmagazine.com to read the full article and see the rig in action!

What say you? Have you ever trusted a clipless friction holster, or do you strictly stick to steel and kydex? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

“Brent, you ignorant slut.”

That classic Dan Aykroyd line was how my co-host, Roy Huntington, kicked off what was supposed to be our ‘Opposite Day’ experiment on the podcast. The premise was simple: Roy, a certified iron-sight purist who refuses to put glass on his carry guns, would argue in favor of red dots. I, a guy who routinely carries a compact 9mm with a miniature television screen screwed to the slide, would defend the old-school front post.

We lasted about twelve minutes before the charade collapsed. You just can’t fake the truth when it comes to the cold reality of life-and-death marksmanship.

The internet will tell you the red dot vs. iron sights debate is a holy war. On one side, you have the flat-bill-cap gaming crowd who think you’re a caveman if you don’t have a lithium battery powering your sighting system. On the other, you have the self-proclaimed ‘lethal Fudds’ who claim optics are just a high-tech gimmick destined to fail when the mud starts flying.

The truth, as it usually does, lies in the boring middle. And it starts with a biological betrayal: presbyopia.

If you’ve crossed the fifty-year mile marker, you know the feeling. Your arm’s length has become a blurry no-man’s land. If I don’t have my reading glasses on, pointing a pistol with iron sights feels like trying to aim with a fuzzy tennis ball. For older shooters, the red dot is a legitimate prosthetic miracle. It projects the aiming point onto the exact same focal plane as the threat. You look at the bad guy, the dot appears, and you press the trigger. Simple.

Except it isn’t.

It took me over at least 50 hours of dry-fire presentation drills and training to transition to a red dot and feel instinctively competent. A weeks of lifting the gun, searching for that tiny glowing speck, and realizing my wrist angle was off. If your draw stroke and presentation aren’t perfectly consistent, you will end up ‘bobble-heading’ under stress—pigeon-necking your head around trying to find the dot while the target is actively closing the distance.

Roy brought up a sobering statistic during our talk. Many law enforcement agencies transitioning to red dots have reported a slight bump in qualification scores. But look closer at the data: the average number of rounds fired in an officer-involved shooting has climbed to eight. Are they hitting because the red dot made them better marksmen, or are they just dumping magazines to compensate for the split-second hesitation it takes to find the dot under adrenaline?

And then there’s the failure factor. Roy loves to tell the story of a factory event we attended. A bunch of young hotshots were talking about how indestructible modern optics are. Roy walked over, scooped up a handful of dry Missouri dirt, sprinkled it right onto the lens of a $600 red dot, and told the shooter to target a plate facing into the setting sun. The shooter brought the gun up, stared into a glowing, opaque wall of mud, and froze.

‘You’re dead,’ Roy told him.

I still carry my red-dot-equipped nine-millimeter when I’m out fishing or walking in areas where a twenty-five-yard shot might be required. But my pocket gun—the snubby .38 I actually carry every single day—has a big, simple tritium front sight. It’s my ‘get-off-me’ gun, designed for toe-to-toe distance where muscle memory and instinct override technology.

Think of iron sights like a stick shift. You might drive an automatic transmission as your daily driver, but if you don’t know how to run three pedals and a gearbox, you’re missing a fundamental baseline skill. Buy the dot if your eyes need it, but don’t use a piece of glass as a possible shortcut to avoid doing the hard work of learning how to index a pistol naturally.

Well, life comes at you fast, and the podcast production schedule apparently comes at you faster. Oops—I completely forgot to post this write-up, and it is already almost time for a brand-new episode to drop!

But our mailbag was absolutely overflowing after our recent episodes, and the letters Roy and I received from all of you are far too important to leave sitting in the drafts folder. Before we roll into the next show, we wanted to pull back the curtain on the inbox and talk about a recurring theme you all keep bringing up: how the right to self-defense is quietly being turned into a luxury sport.

Our listeners are pointing out a quiet, insidious gatekeeping in the modern gun ownership landscape that has nothing to do with background checks and everything to do with your bank account. As several of you noted, politicians love to preach safety from their gated communities while passing laws requiring state-approved, high-dollar gun safes and mandating expensive training courses. When you factor in heavily taxed ammunition, a few folks wrote in to say that a simple practice session at the local range now costs them as much as a decent steak dinner. You hit the nail on the head: this isn’t safety, it’s class warfare disguised as public health.

The letters we get from folks living in different parts of the country really highlight this economic divide. Wealthy gun owners can easily absorb these regulatory costs—a thousand-dollar biometric safe is just a rounding error for someone in a manicured suburb with private security. But we heard from listeners who see a completely different reality on the ground: single mothers in high-crime neighborhoods who simply cannot afford a DOJ-approved steel vault just to secure a budget revolver. As your letters rightly argue, requiring high-end, high-dollar gear effectively disarms the very people who need protection the most.

We also received plenty of mail defending the budget-friendly tools that keep families safe. Cheap guns often get a bad rap in elite shooting circles, and many of you expressed frustration with the internet gear snobs who mock entry-level Taurus pistols, Heritage Rough Riders, or Hi-Points. You reminded us of the core truth of the Second Amendment: an ugly, heavy, blocky pistol that goes bang every single time is infinitely better than a two-thousand-dollar custom 1911 that sits in a display case because the owner can’t afford the ammo. We agree with our audience on this one—we should be celebrating reliable, low-cost self-defense options, not looking down on them.

Another major grievance running through the inbox involves indoor shooting ranges compounding this financial strain. Several listeners reached out to complain about private facilities banning shooters from bringing their own reloads under the guise of “liability issues.” Instead, you’re being forced to buy premium, house-branded factory ammunition at inflated prices. One retiree wrote to tell us that after local taxes and background check fees, a box of simple practice ammo runs him fifty bucks, forcing folks on fixed Social Security incomes to choose between groceries and staying proficient.

True safety comes from proficiency, not price tags. Roy and I talk about this constantly, and your letters confirm that parts of the shooting industry overlook the average guy. Interestingly, a few younger listeners wrote in to share that they are rediscovering the snub-nose revolver, abandoning flashy, high-capacity semi-autos because a simple double-action wheelgun just works. It doesn’t jam if it’s limp-wristed, and it doesn’t require an expensive red dot to be effective at realistic defensive distances. It’s a working-class tool.

The consensus in our mailbag is clear: legislators need to stop pretending these financial barriers save lives. Forcing citizens to jump through expensive regulatory hoops only ensures that criminals—who disregard safe-storage laws anyway—have soft targets. Self-defense is a natural right. As your letters so eloquently put it, it belongs to the guy working the graveyard shift at the gas station just as much as it belongs to the politician signing the bill.

Keep the letters coming, folks. We read every single one.

I spent a lot of years chasing “new.” New guns, new packs, new optics, new miracle gear allegedly engineered by retired ninjas in a volcano somewhere. Reviewing products for magazines has a way of feeding that cycle. Boxes arrive. You test things. You write the story then the next shiny object lands on the porch.

However, every now and then, something survives the review process and quietly earns permanent status.

This is the idea behind my recent piece for GUNS Magazine — not the newest gear, but the stuff I kept reaching for long after the articles were finished.

The funny thing about durable gear is it usually doesn’t announce itself immediately. A lot of products make a spectacular first impression. Fewer survive a year of real life. Fewer still survive travel, weather, hunting season, range trips and being treated like actual equipment instead of display pieces.

The gear that lasts tends to share a few traits:

• It solves real problems instead of marketing problems.

• It becomes part of your routine without demanding attention.

• It keeps working after the novelty wears off.

That’s why the list ended up being oddly practical. Here’s some of the gear I chose for this piece:

1. The Buck Range Elite knife earned its spot because it disappears into your pocket until you need it, then simply does the job. No drama. No “artisan tactical lifestyle” nonsense. Just a smart design backed by steel that actually holds an edge.

2. The 5.11 Founder’s Jacket surprised me because it became less of a “travel jacket” and more of a default answer for meetings, events and days where I needed to look halfway respectable while still carrying the normal loadout of modern life. It’s one of those rare pieces of clothing that quietly makes your day easier.

3. The Vortex Razor UHD 10x32 binoculars may be the best example of the entire concept. Expensive? Absolutely. Painfully so. But once you spend enough time behind mediocre optics in bad light, premium glass starts making uncomfortable amounts of sense. There’s a difference between “good enough” and “this actually improves the experience.”

4. And then there are the Viktos Range Trainer shoes, which looked too lightweight to survive serious use and responded by stubbornly refusing to die. Those kinds of surprises are rare.

I think most shooters and outdoorsmen eventually go through a shift. Early on, you chase features while later, you chase reliability. Eventually, you just want gear that earns trust and stays out of the way.

That’s the long game: Not trendy. Not flashy. Just proven.

You can read the full article here:

The Long Game: Gear That Actually Held Up