Firearms News Volume 71, Issue 9

I have been in the firearms trade more than 40 years now, and it seems that about every 10 years, someone attempts to breathe new life into the 16-ga. shotgun. These attempts always result in a lot of furious scribbling by that small crew of writers who still specialize in shotgunning topics in a field dominated by pistols and black guns. The tenor of these pieces is always that there really is an unserved gap between the 12 and 20 gauges, and that we need to “take another look” at the good old 16. The material results have been less than overwhelming. As one insider at a large manufacturer told me when his employer introduced a 16, “we’ll sell the first 3,000 like hotcakes, then it’ll take years to sell…

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if this beholder is honest, the B17 FV is an ugly rifle. There I’ve said it. In my humble opinion Savage’s new B17 FV was absent when good looks where being handed out in the design department. Maybe it’s the cheesy looking integral polymer trigger guard. Perhaps it’s the cheap feel of the plastic stock or the faux recoil pad. Looks wise, the B17 FV just doesn’t spin my crank. But all of that was forgotten my first time shooting it. The stock may be a little on the chintzy side but man, does it shoot, for an out-of-the-box rimfire. Savage’s new B series consists of some five different models including a light barrel model, one with iron sights, a heavy…

Savage Arms has a rich, albeit turbulent, history. The company bears the name of its founder, Arthur Savage, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica on May 13, 1857. In 1893, Arthur moved to the United States where he became involved in the design and manufacture of firearms. Although he had no engineering background, after a short firearms apprenticeship, he went on to develop the rotary magazine and a side ejecting internal hammer lever-action rifle. His Model 1892/93 was developed for military use, but in the end it lost out to the Krag. This didn’t set very well with Arthur, who thought a bolt-action was chosen over his lever-action for political reasons. Undaunted, he made some minor changes and introduced his design to the sporting market as the Model 1895. As…

While at this year’s SHOT (Shooting Hunting Outdoor Trade) Show, I realized that it was my 10th consecutive show, and in that decade, I’ve seen a lot. Some years there are a lot of new product introductions, some not so many. While an amazing number of manufacturers seem to want to join the more than 300 already making ARs, the number of new handguns introduced at SHOT is usually somewhere between a few and not many. But the 2017 SHOT Show was different in many ways. A surprising number of completely new handguns were introduced, not to mention new versions of existing designs. Ammunition and firearms manufacturers talked about how they were looking forward to a “normal” business climate unaffected (at least for a few years) by hysterical calls for…

The SHOT show is organized chaos. You can plan, but it will be of little use. You can schedule meetings, but the prevailing principle at SHOT is “If you’re five minutes late, you’re early” and you’ve also used up a big part of the meeting time. In that spirit, I’m presenting the suppressors I saw at SHOT in a strictly chronological order, the order in which I encountered them. Do not read the order as anything but “Sweeney turned the corner and saw this” because otherwise you’re reading too much into this report. Inland Manufacturing You know Inland as the maker of new carbines, and new 1911A1s, but they showed off their rimfire suppressor at the show. Rimfire suppressors are the hottest item, and inland has figured a new twist:…

From what I saw at the 2017 SHOT Show in Las Vegas, this year will be the biggest one yet for new airguns. And when I say new, I mean really new designs—not re-skinned guns with different names. There is so much stuff that is really new this year that everything else will get overlooked. I was on the range with SIG on Sunday and out at Industry Day at the Range on Monday. Those are two events that allow gunwriters to try out various new products at a gun range. Actually, Industry Day is more than 50 ranges lined up, one after another, in a line that’s about a third of a mile long! A few years ago they started putting additional ranges on the other side of the…