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| From NRA 2010 |
DPMS AR15 with wood furniture. For those of you that don’t like plastic rifles, now your AR can have wood furniture that is easily damaged by the weather just like your hunting rifle!
Meet the cast of Top Shot
Top Shot premieres on June 6th at 10pm on the History channel (SET YOUR DVRS) but before it does I want to introduce you to the cast of characters that you’ll be meeting on the show. Now, since this is my blog, I’m going to go first. This is a huge post, so all the pictures are under the jump. CLICK IT.
ParaUSA Century of 1911
New from ParaUSA late this year will be their Century of 1911 guns – two 1911 pistols that celebrate the design and advancements that have happened over the century since God first handed John Moses Browning the stone tablets on which were carved the instructions for the Chosen Pistol. The first of these pistols is the Para Hi-Cap 1911-2011 Limited, which features many of the advancements and enhancements that been added to the timeless 1911 design. 
The Hi-Cap version features Para’s high capacity 1911 frame which holds 14 rounds of .45 ACP ammo. The main features of the gun are the Trijicon night sights, an integrated rail for lights and accessories, ambidextrous thumb safety, match grade barrel, match grade trigger which is adjustable for over travel, and hey it says “1911-2011” on the slide!
The second entry in the 1911-2011 Limited series is the Para GI45 1911-2011 Limited series gun. Built on Para’s popular GI Expert platform, this gun hearkens back to the classic 1911 platform that was the standard service sidearm of the US Military in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. That being sad, the Para gun features some modern touches, such as dovetailed sights, which will allow the user to replace the 3-dot style sights with different models of their choosing if they so desire.
The guys at ParaUSA were kind enough to let me haul their Hi-Cap Centennial gun at the recent NRA show, and I have to say that I think it’s a pretty cool idea. The gun looks pretty cool, and if you’re a collector of 1911s 
you could definitely do worse than this particular model and its partner.
No word yet from Para on the MSRP of the guns, but I’ll keep you posted as soon as I find out.
More specialized Taurus Judge ammo
The whole specialized ammo thing for the Taurus Judge has OFFICIALLY jumped the shark. That’s easily the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in terms of ammo.
Sig 522 Rifle
I don’t have a lot of commentary today because I’m I’m really busy but after the NRA show where I got to handle the Sig 522? DO WANT RIGHT NOW.
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| From NRA 2010 |
It just felt GOOD in the hands, much like the S&W M&P15-22 rifle does. Balances well, super light, begging to be SBR’d, I just want one!
Sig Sauer P226 E2
Quite simply put, this gun fits the hand well. Whatever the evil wizards at Sig did to make the P226, which was kind of bulky in my opinion fit as well as this gun was clearly worth the toll.
It is impossible of course to say how well a gun will shoot just from holding it at a convention, but my goodness I was literally blown away by the ergonomics of the grip. Your hand just hits the gun in the right places and then it just points at the target. It’s insane. I really want one of these!
Gen4 Glock 22
Surprise surprise, it’s a Glock. I know I’m supposed to be all excited for it and everything because they’ve changed up the recoil spring, but I just can’t muster the “WOO-HOO” factor for, well, another Glock. 
Stoeger Cougar
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| From NRA 2010 |
Why am I holding a Stoeger Cougar in my hands? Well, to be perfectly honest, I was in the Stoeger booth checking out the Double Defense shotguns and the two tone Beretta Stoeger Cougar caught my eye. I figured I’d grab a throwaway picture of the Cougar and move on, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that the Cougar is actually a GREAT buy for a self defense gun. First, a little bit of history on the gun: Beretta introduced the Cougar in the mid 90s to give law enforcement agencies another option to the Beretta 92 series guns which were starting to fall out of vogue in the wake of the LAPD North Hollywood bank shootout. Despite being the gun of choice in Tom Clancy’s Rainbox Six book for the elite multi-national counter-terrorist team, the Cougar never really caught on, and eventually Beretta discontinued the Cougar in favor the Px4 Storm…which uses the exact same action as the Cougar but on a polymer frame.
After a while, Beretta which owns Stoeger decided that Stoeger needed to make some Cougars. The gun was re-introduced and manufacturing was moved to Turkey on all the original Beretta equipment, and the price point of the pistol was reduced.
That’s what makes the Stoeger Cougar a good buy in my opinion. You’re essentially getting a Beretta pistol for $350/$400ish for a brand new gun, and because there are glut of used Cougars out there you can also get parts and magazines for them relatively easily. Honestly, you could do a lot worse for a self-defense firearm than a brand spanking new .40 S&W for around $400. Sure, it’s not an HK or even a Glock, but for people on a budget that also want a new gun, it makes sense to buy. Plus, it also looks cool. But that’s just me.
Beretta/Stoeger provided no promotional consideration for this post.
Smith & Wesson M&P VTAC Pistols
On display at the NRA show floor (but nowhere to be found on S&W’s website) were the M&P VTAC pistols. These are a partner to the M&P15 VTAC rifle, and while for the most part they’re a pretty standard M&P they do have some very interesting features.
Click any picture to make it larger, as usual. The guns right now are being offered in .40 S&W and 9mm (when they become available) with the flat dark earth or coyote tan or whatever color that is that you see on them. Aside: why do gun manufacturers insist on doing all these variations of the same color with different names? Don’t they know that it’s all “tan” to us dudes?
Apparently, sights like these have a name, but I cannot recall for the life of me what it is. The sight features a “stacked” set of dots; fiber optic dots on top for daytime shooting, and tritium inserts for night sights. I think it’s a pretty interesting design and it does make a certain amount of sense. You want high visibility sights under all conditions, and the stacked fiber/tritium certainly offers that, I just wonder if it’s worth the trade off in how distracting that sight image would be. It seems to me that when you’re trying to snap the gun up, take a flash sight picture and shoot that you want your eye to be drawn to a natural sight alignment as quickly as possible. I would have to spend a lot of time shooting a gun with sights like that before I felt confident that under stress my brain would correctly align the sights.
No word on when the M&P VTAC pistol will be available or what the MSRP is, but it’s nice to see the M&P line continue to go strong for S&W.
Citadel Wounded Warrior 1911
Buy a gun, help a good cause. 
$25.00 from the proceeds from the Citadel Wounded Warrior special edition 1911 will be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project.
Gun companies giving back to the heroes that we owe our freedom to is an excellent cause. And not only are you supporting our veterans, you’re getting a pretty cool gun out of it as well. If you get the opportunity, don’t pass one of these up. I don’t really care if you’re not a 1911 guy, or don’t like Citadel firearms – but if that’s the reason you wouldn’t buy one of these, you could just write the Wounded Warrior Project a check instead. But with a street price around $700, why not get one of these? And don’t just let it sit on a shelf – any gun that is dedicated to our nation’s warriors had better be shot, and shot a lot.