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Ruger is one of the world’s premier firearms manufacturers, and certainly one of the USA’s – and it has been much in the news today. First, the allegations that Italy’s Beretta was trying to take over this quintessentially American company, and second, the sudden discontinuance of some of Ruger’s most classic models.As to the latter, […]The Second Amendment Foundation put all their infographics on a single web page: Just the Facts – Second Amendment Foundation
Government-run, tax-funded schools are the “standard” – even today, most people who home-school their children, or even who use private schools (including parochial ones) are looked on as being abnormal. While there are many problems with the GRTF schools, here … Continue reading →
I can’t say this without aging myself, but the MP5 started it all for me when I first saw Charlie Sheen’s portrayal of the insubordinate Lt. Dale Hawkins in the 1990 movie Navy SEALs . Nothing in the world seemed cooler at the time than waking up hungover on a beach, jumping out of a moving Jeep off a bridge into the waterway below, crashing through the doorway with a suppressed submachine gun, smoking a few bad guys, heading home to play a round of golf with the boys to the tune of The Boys Are Back in Town, and saving my vehicle from being impounded via a daring bicycle rescue from a moving tow truck.
Colin Chapman built Lotus around one stubborn rule: simplify, then add lightness. Somewhere in Herstal, Belgium, the engineers behind the FN EVOLYS clearly got the memo - just some 70 years later. Belt-fed firepower has always come with a bill, paid in kilograms and sore shoulders. The EVOLYS was developed to shrink it.
Savage’s hiatus from the lever gun scene lasted about 25 years. Their last model made in the 90s, the Model 99 , was hailed as both a commercial and technical success, with many calling it “The Jeep of the Gun World” or sometimes “The King of Lever Guns.” Now, more than 25 years later, the company is three models deep in its rimfire lever comeback, and the newest one is one I think has been long overdue in the rimfire industry. The Revel Tactical was announced on October 8th, and it replaces the walnut of the Revel Classic and DLX with an MDT synthetic stock, a factory Picatinny rail, and functional M-LOK slots. After a handful of range sessions and several bulk boxes of ammo through the rifle in this month alone, I can say Savage got most of the fundamentals, and the requests we’ve all had right. So let's dig into Savage’s new tiny tactical lever gun.
It was also the day of discovery for broken parts, fortunately none optical. The amount of force involved in the moving truck guillotine our dining room table. It is no surprise other parts experienced unreasonable forces.
The upper cage of Big Bertha has a diagonal mirror assembly that reflects the light from the primary mirror into the eyepiece focuser. There are four screws at the top of the cage. Three are collimation screws for making very subtle adjustments of diagonal mirror position. Like half a turn of a 32 threads per inch screw (.031" per turn). There is also a center screw that positions the whole diagonal mirror holder fore and after in the tube. This has an adjustment knurled nut. The screw was bent about 60 degrees. One I extracted it from the diagonal holder, I put it in the vise wrapped.in rubber and clamped it in two axes until straight again. To my surprise, it all worked perfectly.
At the stern, there were several weights to improve balance, held in a 1/4-20 thumbscrew which was hideously bent. If i had another of these unusually long brass thumbscrews, i would have just replaced it. It is a weird size and i picked brass to avoid chewing up thr aluminum mirror cell into which yhis screws.This time I both straightened it rethreaded it by first two axis squeezing in a vise wrapped in rubber sheeting, then holding it by the thumb end in the vise and turning a steel hex nut down its length until any thread discrepancies were turned out. (I thought i took a picture of this. )
Another disappointment was that the 5" refractor got banged hard enough through all the foam rubber for the diagonal and focus knob to get shoved into the tailpiece (thr human end of the tube) so hard that the thumb locking screw that prevents the diagonal from falling out was so hopelessly bent that the focus knobs would not move the focus tube out. When I tried to usei pliers to unscrew the locking screw it broke off where it turned into the focuse tube. Oh no
The tailpiece is held in the tube by three machine screws. I removed them expecting that the broken locking screw could be removed with a screw extractor, which I hate to use. To my pleasure, just enough of the thread body was proud of the tube to get my fingernails on and unscrew it. Now the focuser tube comes out. The hideously expensive and clever Ukrainian chromatic aberration corrector was not damaged; it cost more than the rest of the refractor and made it equivalent in optical quality to some that cost $3000
Problem solved, right? No. The rack and pinion assembly was also beaten up. Once I opened it, the shaft on which the pinion gear sits was bent as was the metal plate that holds the pinion gear at the right tension to the rack.
Back to the vise to straighten the shaft and bend the metal plate back to the original shape. It looks right but it does not turn as smooth as it should.
I had thought a while back of replacing the focuser with a dual speed focuser. These have different speeds on the ends of the shaft and are really nice for getting very sharp focus. Instead I replaced one of the focus knobs with one I turned in aluminum twice the diameter. This almost the same result because you can make very tiny movements of that bigger knob to get almost the same result.
I guess i now have a reason to do that upgrade. The GSO dual focus tailpiece has a 112.5mm outer diameter flange. The interior tube diameter is 125mm. I just need to turn a piece 112.6mm ID and 124.9mm OD to adapt it.
The final fun of the day was putting the 8" mirror back in its tube. This is hard for several reasons.
1. The cell is perhaps 1/8" smaller diameter than the tube ID. If you are not exactly square going in. It will get stuck.
2.The holes into which the machine screws turn that hold the cell in the tube are not easy to find once the cell is approximately the right position.
3. When I drilled these holes in the 1990s, I had no terribly precise way to get holes exactly 120 degrees apart. I used a tape measure and I am very close. You still need to remember not to tighten down any screws until all are started.
This is always a pain to do but Rhonda has the patience to help me do these hard tasks.
The day was not over. Big Berrha is a half-Surrier truss Dobsonian. There is an upper csge with eyepiece and diagonal and a lower cage holding thr mirror. They are held at the right distance by 6 1" diameter aluminum poles forming three triangles for light stiffness. Unless you are eight feet tall, putting the upper cage on top of those poles is difficult especially poo especially because those six poles look like you are wrestling a confused insect.
Rhonda has much better spatial reasoning than me so she figured out that it made more sense to put the upper cage on the poles and lower the poles into their lower cage receivers.
Big Bertha is reassembled; she collimated more easily than I expected. Tomorrow i will collimate the 8". I am hoping the concrete pad where the telescopes will roll in front of the shop will be done setting by Wednesday.
Best known as Pavel Chekov on the original Star Trek, Walter Koenig also did a stint as the sinister Bester, a Psi-Cop on Babylon 5. He was 90 years old.
The Vickers Machine Gun is one of the weapons we instantly associate with the World War One but did you know it was in service with the British Army for 56 years? Well, this was the recent focus of the Vickers MG Collection & Research Association’s first major exhibition.
At the beginning of 2026, the UK took a fresh approach to equipping its armed officers. The Metropolitan Police ran the Police Primary Carbine System Framework , which selected 6 carbines which could be procured directly by other UK police forces.
ZeroTech Optics USA has introduced the Thrive HD Reflex Sight 3 MOA, a compact 1x optic designed for compatible pistol, rifle and shotgun mounts. The sight uses an RMR mounting footprint and ships with both low and high Picatinny bases in the box.
In case ya aren’t familiar with the M&P FPC 22, Smith & Wesson brought it to market in the summer of 2025. It offers plenty of tactical features—it’s suppressor-ready, it has a forend covered with a generous slathering of MLOK slots as well as a Picatinny rail on top, it ships with three 20-round magazines—and it folds in half to make it compact for transportation or storage.
MDT has expanded its JAE-G5 for the right-hand Remington 700 long action CIP, bringing the chassis to magnum-length builds that run CIP-length magazines.
https://youtu.be/gnDE-3kEaVc The ZK-383 as it is known today is a side-magazine SMG with a bipod, but that is not how it began its life. The gun was originally designed for Czech military trials in 1938, [...]
The post First Version of the Czech ZK-383P Made For Bolivian Police first appeared on Forgotten Weapons.
Wowzahs! Take a look at Syren USA’s new YouTube channel, featuring pro-staffers Grace Callahan and Kate Ahnstrom. Syren also comes out of the box, both barrels blazing with an announcement about shooting clinics for 2027 across the nation.
Sale Price: $999.99
Quote of the Day Aside from such obvious risks and liabilities, the in-development Wi-Fi system raises all kinds of privacy and legal exposure concerns. Because the absence of metal detectors or visible cameras notwithstanding, this is hardly, as the report … Continue reading →
So the Cornell thing has completely fallen off the news cycle. The last we heard was that one person was taken off her lawsuit because he wasn’t the president of the frat at the time that the, from accounts from Jane et al, consensual group sex activity happened. The NY Times tried a last gasp […]
Even though I keep an accurate inventory of my cigars, things do get forgotten or overlooked. Recently, I added some additional Spanish cedar trays to my humidor in an effort to make organization easier. Doing so meant removing the cigars before placing them back in the trays. Not surprisingly, I picked up more than one cigar and thought, “I should smoke that.”
One such cigar was the Rocky Patel Grand Reserve. I still had a few Robustos left from a purchase back in August 2024.
The Grand Reserve was first released in 2018 for distribution in Europe. It proved to be very popular and was subsequently released in the U.S. in the summer of 2020. Rocky Patel does not officially disclose the tobaccos used in the blend, although the company does note that the cigars are manufactured in Honduras and incorporate aged tobaccos.
The cigar starts off with a creamy, leathery note. A mix of peanuts and toasted almonds joins in as the cigar warms. As I smoked, the flavor shifted toward an enjoyable blend of sweetness and spice, with caramel and cedar in the background. The medium-bodied smoke was never heavy or dark, maintaining a flavorful balance throughout.
I paired the Rocky Patel with an Old Fashioned made with J. H. Bards Skipper’s Select Toasted Barrel Bourbon. The bourbon has a very light toasted note when sipped neat, though that note was less apparent in the cocktail. The Old Fashioned proved to be a good complement to the cigar on a pleasant fall evening.
While enjoying the Rocky Patel Grand Reserve, I found myself thinking about other cigars I hadn’t smoked in a long time. Rearranging the humidor had brought some of them back to my attention. I may have trouble locating specific cigars in their new locations for a while, but I’ve also rediscovered plenty of overlooked cigars that I look forward to getting reacquainted with.
Cheers!
The unintended actions flagged by Anthropic included a model submitting a fake tip about an unsolved murder to the Philadelphia police department. The US state department also revealed this month that Anthropic model had filed 19 visa applications in August.
So did Claude also request naturalization for its agents? Or does birthright citizenship apply to clankers, too?
I am doing rebuttals of expert declarations again. One of the declarations make a claim about the absence of firearms in U.S. military hospitals in the Framing Era. This is not intrinsically absurd but the expert claims to have read James Thacher's Military Journal and found evidence contradicting her claim. It is 600 pages. I need to read it myself rather than rely on AI to characterize its contents.
Requiring a historian to read a contemporaneous, often eye-witness account of the American Revolution is rather like being paid to taste test every pizza joint in your town.
Judging by the wheels, windshield and lack of a CHMSL ("center high-mounted stop lamp", aka the third brake light) this Guards Red Porsche 944 is a 1985 model, I think.
Snapped with a Nikon Zfc and a Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8 zoom lens.
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At 10:25 a.m. in the 3100 block of West Cermak Road, a 23-year-old man was outside at the above l when two people approached on foot. Police said a fight ensued, at which time the 23-year-old male, who is a valid CCL and FOID cardholder, produced a firearm and fired shots toward the individuals. One of the individuals was shot in the body and was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital in critical condition.
Detectives said other surveillance video shows McIntosh returning and throwing a cup of hot coffee in West’s face before charging at him multiple times and punching him.
Police said the altercation escalated when McIntosh knocked West to the ground and used a firearm magazine that had fallen from the guard’s vest to repeatedly strike him in the head. McIntosh also threatened to kill West, according to police.
The two continued struggling around a car, along with a second security guard. McIntosh broke away from the altercation, with West then firing three shots at him.
I had an unusual experience on my afternoon walk today. Let me set the stage… I live in a very upscale outer suburb of Austin, Texas. There are tons of city and neighborhood parks nearby. The area is extremely safe with a responsive police force and a really low crime rate. Violent crime […]The Dayattherange rimfire suppressor accuracy database continues to grow. Rather than starting over every time another suppressor becomes available, I want to continue putting new suppressors through the same Vudoo 360/Lapua Midas+ accuracy test and adding those results to the existing data. This time we added three more: the Anechoic Pip Squeak, Thunder Beast Takedown […]
Quote of the Day I have another couple of problems with progressive America. It was your great idea that we were going to change all human behavior by changing dictionaries. How did that work out? How is that doing? How … Continue reading →
It's been a long time coming. Suppressors, as well as short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and AOWs are (at least for now) over-the-counter purchases from an FFL in Indiana. Walk into Indy Arms Co., do a NICS check*, and walk out with an AAC Ti-Rant 9S to screw on an FN 509 Tactical.
*Technically if I had an Indiana LTCH issued in the last five years rather than the lifetime permit I got back in '08, I wouldn't even have had to do the NICS check.
It appears that the only sector of the economy seeing big gains from AI are AI companies. If you took the "Mag 7" AI companies out of the S&P 500, then the resulting S&P 493 isn't looking so hot.
Needless to say, some people are getting increasingly worried that things are getting kinda tulip bulb-y out there.
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I started posting straight up classical music on Sunday back in 2011 or so. I had run down by late in that decade - how many times can you post Beethoven, no matter how great a composer he was? But The Queen Of The World suggested that I start posting music from Hollywood films because there is so much great music there. And modern compositions, not reaching back into dusty historical archives.
And it's been fun doing this, precisely because there is so much great "classical" music at the cinema. But what I've never talked about is how truly great music can fuse with truly great acting to make something extraordinary. Something where 2 + 2 = 400. That's what we have here, with an Oscar-nominated performance by Kenneth Brannaugh and what really should have been Oscar-nominated musical scoring by Patrick Doyle is what was his first film score.
You see, today is the feast of Crispian.
The fusion of Shakespeare's timeless script, Branaugh's magnificent performce, and Doyle's amazing score results if one of the top ten scenes from any Hollywood film. Remove any of those three components and you have something forgettable.
But not this. Patrick Boyle showed how it's done.
Welcome back to Front Line Friday. This week we're reviewing the T.REX Arms Titan Level 2 OWB duty holster, tried on two different pistols. Front Line Friday is brought to you by Dead Air Silencers , whose support keeps this column going every week.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to TFB’s Silencer Saturday, brought to you by Yankee Hill Machine, manufacturer of the new Victra 20-gauge shotgun suppressor . This week we are looking at an uncommon but clever method of suppressing firearms. Captive piston ammunition suppresses the shot by containing the sound inside the cartridge. For regulatory reasons, this has never caught on in the United States, but with the recent changes to the NFA, there's no reason now why it couldn't. Let's discuss.
I am in Ockelbo Sweden for this year’s Viking Brutality match, presented by Semper Paratus Consulting. This is the second year that Viking Brutality has been run, but my first time attending. In the tradition [...]
The post Viking Brutality 2026 Day 2: Trench, Medical, and More Berserker! first appeared on Forgotten Weapons.
Quote of the Day Liberals are now calling to put conservatives into re-education camps and if that doesn’t work then to kiII us for supporting ICE Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktokPosted on X February 6, 2026 From the same thread via … Continue reading →
It happened around 5 p.m. outside of a beauty supply store near 43rd Avenue and Bethany Home Road.
Police say a 32-year-old man was working as loss prevention at the store when he confronted Edgar Perez Lopez, 33, and Lopez’s girlfriend, who were reportedly smoking pills.
The employee told the couple to leave, leading to a confrontation between the three. Investigators believe Lopez reached for a firearm, and the employee shot him. Lopez was rushed to the hospital and later died.
Texarkana, Texas, police are searching for an 18-year-old man accused of shooting a man multiple times during an armed robbery early Friday at River Crossing Apartments on College Drive. The 17-year-old accused of taking part in the robbery was shot when the victim returned fire, police said.
