Guns & Gear

Sturm Ruger & Company has announced a new 250th Anniversary Series of firearms, marking the United States semiquincentennial with a range of limited-production models. Each firearm in the series is marked “Made in the 250th Year of American Liberty,” echoing Ruger’s earlier Bicentennial commemorative releases from 1976. The lineup spans multiple product families, including the 10/22 rifle, LCP MAX pistol, Ruger American Gen II rifle, Mark IV 22/45 pistol, Super Wrangler revolver, and an AR-pattern lower receiver.

Last summer, I had a chance to head out to Smith & Wesson’s Maryville, TN, facility to check out a bunch of new guns, including an at-the-time prototype version of the  M&P 22X. To be frank, I wasn’t that impressed with the prototype version, and to be fair, it was in pretty rough, fast-prototyped condition (read, 3D printed). What has come out on the other side of that, since the official release of the 22X, is probably one of the best new entries into this specific genre of 22LR pistol I’ve seen since SIG released the P322. I’ve recently been able to acquire a copy of the new Smith & Wesson plinker and have been able to put about 1,000 rounds of various ammo through it over two range sessions over the last week. Today, I’ll be giving you guys my thoughts so far on Smith & Wesson’s newest semi-auto rimfire pistol.

Recently, a US company called Royal Tiger Imports announced that it will start importing AK parts kits… from Ethiopia. That might sound weird to you, but for me, it was like hearing about an old friend that you once lost contact with.

For as long as I’ve been reading gun magazines, the Ruger 10/22 has been the king of the rimfire scene. Lots of other manufacturers sell a lot of other guns, but any rimfire semi-auto under the $500 mark is invariably compared with the 10/22. The aftermarket supports the 10/22 to an extent that no other rimfire rifle has ever seen. And yet, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that things would work out like this; the Marlin Model 60 competed alongside the Ruger 10/22 for decades, and still compares well today—as long as you can find one.

Rock River Arms has introduced a new Retro A1 Carbine SBR, a short-barreled rifle built around a classic AR-15 configuration with modern manufacturing. The new model features a 10.5-inch chrome moly barrel with a CAR-length gas system and is chambered in 5.56 NATO/.223 Remington. It is built on the company’s forged LAR-15M lower receiver and paired with an A1-style carry handle upper, maintaining a traditional fixed-sight setup.

This article is based on one of the only publicly available reports I could find on U.S. testing of the Soviet PKM. In July 1975, an Army engineering team published an attribute analysis that examined a slate of off-the-shelf 7.62mm machine guns as candidates to replace the troublesome General Electric M219 coaxial weapon. The report, titled Attribute Analysis of the Armor Machine Gun Candidates (ADA018625), was authored by James B. Beeson and Thomas N. Mazza, drew together test data to rate nine weapons across 23 attributes grouped under Technical Performance, Physical Characteristics, and RAM-D (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, Durability). Though this report is about a tank coaxial machine gun, I will focus more on the aspects of the PKM in an infantry role.

The modern shooter can be relegated into two primary categories: the professional and sports shooter. There is a bifurcation between the two groupings based on effectiveness in combat vs functionality for competition. The Forward Operating Grip (FOG) by Contour Tactics looks to blur the lines of both with a product that has a place in both worlds.

A recent post by Kalashnikov.ru shed light on the work of a young engineering student on a proposed light machine gun design. It was an interesting design recently submitted at the M. T. Kalashnikov Izhevsk State Technical University (ISTU), where the annual exchange between academic training and practical weapons development continues to produce promising concepts. The certification committee was chaired by Sergei Urzhumtsev, Chief Designer of Small Arms at Kalashnikov Concern, and included leading designers from the company. The review reflected the close cooperation between the university and the concern, a partnership that gives senior students the chance to work on real engineering tasks before graduation.

This week in The Rimfire Report, we’re taking a look at another budget-friendly load from one of the world’s best .22LR ammunition manufacturers, ELEY. The last time we featured ELEY, we tested their remarkably consistent and accurate Target 40-grain round nose load. Fired through our Angstadt Vanquish-22 equipped Ruger Precision Rimfire, that round maintained reliable subsonic performance while delivering excellent accuracy. This time, I wanted to try something that would make even better use of the Vanquish-22’s ported barrel, the ELEY Subsonic 38-grain Hollow Point. So let's get right into it.

Steen Defense introduced its long‑requested MCRC (Multicaliber Combat Rifle Compact), a compact 5.56×45mm NATO carbine developed as a reinforcement weapon for users who do not primarily serve in front‑line combat roles. Intended for police and military personnel who need more capability than a service pistol or submachine gun can provide, the MCRC is said to fill a niche few manufacturers address in this caliber and size category - at least within Europe.

The belt-fed M240B features a cold hammer-forged, hard-chromed MIL-SPEC barrel designed for extended service life and improved durability. It uses a machined steel receiver with a top-mounted MIL-STD-1913 rail for optics and accessories. The system has a maximum range of approximately 3,725 meters.

Much like other rifle pairings, the Ruger 10/22 and CCI’s high velocity Mini-Mag ammunition is one that almost everyone out there has experience with. While the 10/22 can often be picky with ammo, CCI’s Mini-Mags are often offered up as a flat-out cure for almost any stubborn .22LR autoloader. While this isn’t true in a lot of specific cases, in my decades of shooting rimfire, I’ve found that Mini-Mags do indeed help get a lot of stubborn, dirty, or finicky guns up and running.

The U.S. Army has approved the M111 Offensive Hand Grenade for service, marking the first new lethal hand grenade cleared for military use since 1968. The system was developed at Picatinny Arsenal through the Capabilities Program Executive Office for Ammunition and Energetics in cooperation with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM).

What you carry every shift, what you actually use, and what the cumulative cost looks like after a decade on the job.

In late 2024, Vietnam’s defense industry publicly revealed a locally produced light machine gun (LMG) based on Israel Weapon Industries’ (IWI) Negev design. The 7.62x39mm-chambered variant, commonly referred to in Vietnamese sources as the STrL-7.62 or STrL-7,62VN, represents a further deliberate effort by the country’s armaments sector to modernize squad automatic weapons while preserving logistical commonality with the large stocks of ammunition, AK magazines, and RPD belts that remain in service. “STrL” translates to “medium automatic gun,” as it is intermediately chambered. The new weapon is built at Factory Z111, a state-owned small-arms factory located in Thanh Hoá, south of Hanoi. It produces Vietnam’s licensed and unlicensed production and indigenous derivatives of foreign designs.

What sets the Omni Buster apart from some competitors is that the gas mitigation is truly ambidextrous. Breek Arms specifically calls out that it works "without relying on unidirectional features that favor a single shooting orientation." A lot of suppressor-ready charging handles on the market redirect gas effectively for right-handed shooters, but leave lefties dealing with the same problem from the other side. If Breek's design actually delivers symmetric gas management, that's a meaningful differentiator.

Welcome back to TFB's Small Business Spotlight! In this series, we take a look at small firearm-related businesses. Today we have a red dot optic brand, Osight.

It's tough to argue these days that we don't have a serious issue in the domestic rimfire market. We just can't seem to crank out truly consistent match-grade .22LR here in the States. Sure, stuff like CCI Green Tag and Federal AutoMatch can hit solid A-tier status in my book, but the undisputed kings of .22LR still hail from just two shops: the UK's ELEY and Finland's Lapua. Today, we're checking out one of ELEY's more wallet-friendly and accessible options - ELEY Target .22LR 40gr.

Radio discipline, earpro compliance, and the gap between "we have a plan" and "that plan survived contact with an actual call."

In the early 1960s, the Soviet military found itself at a crossroads. The recently adopted Kalashnikov PK general-purpose machine gun (GPMG) has solved many problems by easing logistics and supporting a single machine gun type. Still, its adoption also revealed new tactical expectations: a single GPMG was now supposed to fill a variety of roles, such as mounted roles, and be light enough to be carried by every infantry squad. The PK was accepted into service in 1961 and went into full production in 1962. Still, the weight and role tradeoffs of a universal design prompted a fresh round of experimentation aimed at a lighter, more squad-oriented automatic weapon. Simply put, the 19.84 lbs (9 kg) weight of a GPMG was too high for the Soviets, as it was also envisioned at the time to be carried by every infantry squad.

Strike Industries has just announced the release of their new aluminum chassis for the ever-popular Ruger 10/22 family of rimfire firearms. The new Strike Modular Chassis comes with a handguard extension to tailor its length to different 10/22 configurations and builds, and can accept both AR-15 buffer tubes and Picatinny rail stocks. Let’s go over other features of this new Strike 10/22 chassis.

Shortly after the adoption of the Kalashnikov design in 1949, Soviet small-arms development found itself at a doctrinal crossroads. The AK emerged as the final survivor of a rigorous postwar rifle competition, and, in an odd twist, it was accepted despite not fully meeting the full-auto accuracy or, better described as dispersion requirements, the trials had set, as, at the time, this was prized over semi-auto accuracy. The choice reflected a broader attitude in the immediate post-World War II period, an emphasis on reliability and the capacity for effective automatic fire rather than the single-shot precision prized by some Western armies. The bloody lessons of the Eastern Front had impressed on Soviet planners that volume of fire and simplicity under battlefield stress were often more valuable than semi-automatic accuracy.

If you want to add Picatinny or M-LOK accessories to your Ruger Mini-14 without making any permanent changes to the gun, you may want to take a look at the new Hardpoint and Bomb Rack Mini-14/Mini-30 accessory mounts by Catalyst Arms. Both the Hardpoint, a 1913 rail section, and the Bomb Rack, an M-LOK extension, are attached to the gas block of the rifle, providing accessory mounting points in front of the handguard. Let’s take a quick look at each of these new Mini-14 accessories.

In my ongoing ammunition testing series here on The Rimfire Report, a lot of you have said that you’d rather see me test most of this ammo out of a more normal gun, like a plain old Ruger 10/22. For 2026, we’re going to be doing exactly that. In the upcoming months, we’ll be going back through our already tested ammunition, but this time put it through a setup that is far more accessible for most firearm owners. While I would have loved to do this long ago, most of my 10/22s were held up in other builds, but I’ve finally been able to acquire a bone-stock Ruger 10/22 Sporter, which MSRPs these days for a very reasonable $359. We’ll get into the build specifics below, but for now, let me know what budget-oriented or reasonably priced ammo you’d like to see run through this new setup next.

Folding stocks on rifles have been both misused and misunderstood for decades. While the AK possesses one of the most iconic folding stocks, the AR15 has long suffered from an inability to yield. Folding the stock has been the unobtanium of the AR world since its conception. No longer, Dead Foot Arms has found the secret to folding under pressure, but without compromising form or function.

Photo Of The Day and it’s time for some knives that dropped recently. The Toor Knives Tombstone Collection is a limited-edition series built around frontier grit and hard-use practicality, finished in a bold Black & Brass scheme that makes no attempt to blend in. Drawing inspiration from the Old West attitude but engineered with modern materials, the lineup balances aesthetics with serious field capability.

Your rifle doesn’t need to be “cool.” It needs to be the same every time, for every officer, under every dumb condition.

The security check at the Mogadishu airport is no joke. The capital of Somalia has been a war zone for years, and the airport is often considered the safest place in the entire city, so naturally, the airport's security has a reputation to uphold.

Wilson Combat is expanding its WC-15 line of AR-15 pattern rifles with the addition of the new Designated Marksman Rifle (DMR). This rifle is advertised as a purpose-built platform engineered for shooters who demand accuracy, reliability, and refinement in every shot. Let’s take a look at the specs and features of the new Wilson Combat Designated Marksman Rifle.

In the world of AR15s, the sky truly is the limit with almost endless options for every budget. As of the time of this writing, there are complete rifles available online starting at $349.99. With such a wide variety of pricing, looking at some of the most expensive options can seem wild. I never understood why the HK line of rifles was drastically more expensive than other options on the market. I decided to take the plunge and purchase one so we can find out what the buzz is all about with this German tank of a rifle. Let's take a closer look at the Heckler & Koch MR556 A4 rifle.