Guns & Gear

Welcome back to Front Line Friday. This week is a gear week, and the topic is medical gear an individual patrol officer can carry on the body to extend capability in the minutes before EMS arrives. Front Line Friday is brought to you by Dead Air Silencers, whose support keeps this column going every week.

The Soviet RPD (Ruchnoy Pulemyot Degtyaryova) was a pioneering light machine gun that played a short but vital role in early Soviet weapon development and in adopting new intermediate-caliber weapon systems; it was adopted in 1949 alongside the AK and SKS, which significantly influenced the Cold War. It proliferated throughout ComBloc countries, driven by large-scale manufacturing and use, much like the AK and SKS.

Taurus has expanded its TX22 rimfire lineup with the Brace-Ready TX22, a version of the popular .22 LR pistol built to accept a stabilizing brace. Released in 2019, the TX22 has built a strong following among rimfire shooters. The new model keeps the familiar platform but adds an extra point of support for better stability and control.

The Strike AR Rapid Bolt Deploy Lever provides a streamlined interface for true ambidextrous operation. The upgrade attaches to an existing mil-spec bolt catch paddle via a secure two-screw installation and adds an easy-to-reach lever for fast right-hand bolt releases.

I never saw this feature coming, but it’s here and it will make sense to a lot of people. SIG Sauer has built a weapon light that talks to an optic. The FOXTROT2R LightFight is a 700-lumen, 20,000-candela white light with one party trick: it is "Connected by LIGHTFIGHT”, a Bluetooth link between the light and SIG Sauer’s new XRAY5 red dot.

Barrel-life specifications are a familiar sight in government solicitations, technical documents, and manufacturer literature, but what do they actually mean? A barrel rated for a certain number of rounds is not necessarily guaranteed to perform identically throughout that entire service life, and the terminology can be easy to misunderstand. With different definitions, testing methods, and performance standards involved, “barrel life” is often more nuanced than a single round count might suggest. I’ve seen plenty of confusion surrounding the subject, so this quick overview will break down what barrel-life figures represent, how they are established, and what they do, and don’t, tell you about a barrel’s expected service life.

The modern light machine gun sits at an interesting crossroads. For decades, the basic concept has been the same: provide a small infantry unit with a belt-fed weapon capable of delivering sustained fire while remaining mobile enough to maneuver with the riflemen. But the character of modern combat is changing, and so are the requirements. In reality, the requirements haven’t changed, but the materials and manufacturing methods have.

Shooting a suppressed .22 LR rifle or pistol is probably one of the more “peaceful” shooting experiences you can have on the homestead or at the range. Today we're looking at a CCI load built for one job: feeding a suppressed .22 without packing the baffles full of lead. CCI Clean-22 Suppressor then, naturally, uses a black, polymer-coated 45-grain lead round-nose bullet with a 1,000 fps load, and it ships in a 200-round paperboard carton about the size of the half-pint milk cartons you got with your school lunch as a kid.

As the introduction of the SIG M250 potentially opens a new chapter in the U.S. Army's squad automatic weapon story, or more accurately, the GPMG role, it is worth looking back at the excitement around the M249 when it was adopted. The U.S. Army type-classified the M249 on February 1, 1982, filling a long-standing gap in U.S. squad-level firepower.

First, before buying and using the weapon, visually inspect the rifle for damage to better assess its condition. Begin with an overall examination of the rifle. Inspect for obvious damage, corrosion, contamination, missing components, and other visible deficiencies. During this inspection, you also conduct a function check to ensure everything works. If a gunsmith or maintainer can check the headspace, that's beneficial.

The first rifle I ever really shot was a plain old Ruger 10/22, and the ammo feeding it came out of a brown box that looked like it belonged in my grandfather's tackle shed. Peters. Forty grains of lead, high velocity, round nose, and in my memory it never once let me or my 10/22 down at the range. Every round went bang, every can went flying, my groups were as good as they could be for a new shooter, and I never thought twice about it as a child, just happy to be at the range with his dad. Years and a lot of ammunition later, a friend randomly handed me a near-full brick of the stuff. Same brown box, same old-timey lettering, stored so carefully it could have rolled off the line last week or thirty years ago. Between the sands of time and my slowly deteriorating memory, there's no honest way to tell just by looking at this stuff to tell if it's any good anymore, so today we’ll group and chronograph a box of it to see if its performance lines up with my memories of it.

Midwest Industries is most likely known for its various handguards, most notably its AR-15 and AK handguards. Today, with the massive amount of mission diversity that is necessitated by modern warfare, the ability to reliably mount a significant number of various accessories to a handguard is a greater demand for rigidity and adaptability for AR-based weapons. The need for increased rigidity in handguards has been recognised. Several companies have stepped up their game to facilitate these needs, and Midwest was also paying attention.

Earlier this summer, CCI and Henry Repeating Arms teamed up to come out with a special limited-edition run of 36-grain .22 LR ammo said to be “optimized” for cycling within the Golden Boy rifle - which I happen to have handy, as I’m sure many of you out there also do. CCI is no stranger to collaborative ammunition branding deals; we’ve seen that in the past with 22 Plinkster’s “Stanger” Stingers and Steve Rinella's Meat Eater series of .22 LR ammo. The real question I’m sure everyone has is what actually CCI Henry Golden Boy Edition 22LR any different than any of CCI's existing offerings. The answer for today’s example might surprise you, so let's get right into it.

The Global War on Terror has been protracted, seeing its reach stretch to every major part of the world. As this global conflict has progressed, so too have tactics and technology, culminating in a new and frightening blend of technology and tactics never before witnessed. Regardless of the advancements, warfare comes down to taking and holding territory and denying it to the enemy. This necessitates troops on the ground, and a soldier requires a rifle. Advancements in day and night combat have led to a variety of accessories needed to take and maintain the advantage. The use of multiple optics, lasers, lights, and other technology has integrated itself into the rifle. These additional requirements have equated to weapon platforms that can facilitate their use, but also support long-term use in the worst conditions.

This week on TFB's Behind the Gun Podcast, I'm joined by a long-time friend and supporter of TFB, Martin from FALCO Holsters. Most of you here already know that FALCO Holsters is the Slovakian leather shop that's been putting American concealed carriers into some of the best-fitted leather holsters on the market. Today we get into the company’s origin story in falconry gloves, sewn by founder Ivan Kovac for forestry school students. Martin also walks us through how that turned into a full holster line built in the Štiavnica Mountains, and the company’s role in the unique gun culture in Slovakia, which has more in common with ours than you'd expect. Please give Martin a warm welcome to the program!

Bosnian company AC-Unity became known in the United States for its AK magazines - cheap and pretty reliable; they became popular with those who wanted newer Russian AK magazines without paying collector’s prices.

As warfare evolves, the machine gun will always be needed. The technology surrounding it may change, but the basic requirement remains the same. One area where Russia has taken a noticeably different path from many Western countries is machine gun belts. Russian PK and PKM belts can be a headache for many Western users, and you can trace much of that design back to the Second World War and the Soviet SG-43. During its development, Soviet designers studied what the Finns were doing with their Maxim guns, as well as the German approach to feeding the MG34 and MG42 with metallic links. Had Soviet observers paid closer attention to developments in the United States during the war, they might have recognized that factory-loaded, in all flavors, and disintegrating belts seen with .50 linked ammunition during the war were becoming increasingly common in the West.

Let’s take a look at a military rifle that you can actually buy, and also afford to shoot repeatedly. Tippmann Arms has announced that its M4-22 Elite semi-automatic .22 LR rifle has been selected by the Royal Thai Army Territorial Defense Command for use in the Territorial Defense Student Program in Thailand. The rifle replaces the legacy Armi Jager .22 platform, which has been in service with the program's reserve training units for more than 40 years.

Wiley X's new Limited Edition Camo Collection is getting a new Kryptek facelift. The Founder and Ovation models (both carry a Z87.1+ ballistic rating), representing Wiley X’s ballistic-rated eyewear line, will be the first to get this new hydro-dipping treatment. In total, there will be seven new SKUs, and all are live now, priced from $215 to $270. Wiley X has each frame hydro-dipped individually, so no two come out identical, and they should blend in with the rest of your existing Kryptek camo setup perfectly.

I’ve been shooting rimfire long enough to see more than a handful of rimfire ammo types go the way of the dodo. Today’s is a particular shame, simply because of how consistent and clean the original formula was. I’m of course talking about Remington’s now-discontinued Standard Velocity Target 40-grain round-nose load. Most of you already know that Remington recently gave their rimfire ammo lineup a facelift, and that facelift also entailed removing some of their legacy ammo offerings from the catalog. So today, in honor of the now-dead ammo, we’ll put it through our standard set of tests to see if it's worth holding onto if you’re lucky enough to have some.

Let there be light, said SureFire and added the XC3 Sub to its weaponlight lineup built specifically for subcompact concealed carry handguns rather than the larger duty-sized guns most weaponlights are designed around. The fitment chart lists compatibility with the Glock 43X and 48, the Springfield Hellcat, the H&K CC9, and the SIG Sauer P365, using swappable rail adapters to get a secure fit across that spread of frame sizes. It retails for $369.

Welcome back to Front Line Friday. This week is a gear week, and the topic is the medical gear an individual patrol officer can carry to extend capability in the minutes before EMS arrives. Front Line Friday is brought to you by Dead Air Silencers, whose support keeps this column going every week.

The world of firearms is evolving and it is coming fast. We are no longer relegated to owning a pistol and rifle in fixed configurations. With chassis system handguns (SIG P365 with an FCU or Springfield Echelon with a COG), we can simply pull the “guts” - your serialized portion from your handgun - and plug-and-play it into multiple frames, chassis systems, and platforms. That is the premise of the Strike Industries SMC Bravo Chassis. If you have a chassis system pistol like those we mentioned, you can upgrade it to something much more capable in a matter of minutes with very few tools. So, today we are going to take a look at the Strike Industries SMC Bravo Chassis for the Springfield Echelon 4.5F to see how it performs. Let’s dive in!

In general, Bosnian defense manufacturers are not very well known in the US. But there is one important exception – AC Unity, a company from the town of Goražde, known to US and international customers for its polymer magazines for AK, AR-15, and MP5s, which TFB reviewed several years ago.

As the War in Ukraine shifts once again, Russia has moved to a defensive approach to the growing threat posed by unmanned aerial systems (UAS), particularly as drone attacks have increasingly reached targets inside Russian territory. This expanding threat has created a clear need for systems that can detect and counter small, low-flying UAVs while protecting critical infrastructure. In response, Russia has accelerated the development and deployment of several short-range counter-UAS systems.

I don’t think anyone would deny that rimfire is equally as valuable as a training cartridge as it is as a recreational one. While tracers are primarily designed for military use, most often in automatic guns, they are neither impossible to find nor illegal to purchase in the civilian world. More relevant to this series, I’ve been waiting for a long time to test out Piney Mountain Ammunition Company’s (PMAC) 22LR tracer loads, now sold under the Supernova Brand name. I’ve spent the last month or so testing out this ammunition in a variety of different 22LR firearms, and today I’ll give you my overall impressions of Piney Mountain Supernova 22LR tracers, along with some of my typical range data (velocity and accuracy), to see if this stuff is worth keeping around for some special range sessions.

The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center has introduced SixPAC, a polymer and steel ammunition packaging system designed to replace the wood wirebound boxes that have been standard for small-caliber munitions since World War II. The system consists of two lightweight polymer inner containers housed within a steel outer pack, initially developed for 6.8mm cartridges and planned for rollout across legacy small-caliber production lines.

Welcome back to Front Line Friday. This week is a gear week, and the topic is building a cold weather patrol layer system that keeps you functional across a twelve-hour shift instead of just warm for the first hour. Front Line Friday is brought to you by Dead Air Silencers, whose support keeps this column going every week.

WOOX has introduced the Vigilante Beavertail Grip, a handcrafted AR-platform grip combining premium walnut with an integrated polymer beavertail. The grip is handcrafted in Italy from American Claro walnut and features laser-engraved grip texture. The beavertail extension is engineered from high-strength technopolymer and provides an integrated reinforced design for control, stability, and comfort. The grip maintains an ambidextrous, symmetrical design compatible with AR-15, AR-10, M4, and M16 platforms.

TFB has covered numerous knife and firearms manufacturer collaborations throughout 2026, and it’s now time for Daniel Defense. The Pro-Tech x Daniel Defense knife brings a full-size automatic built for users who want speed and durability in a single carry knife. The Rockeye features a 3.38-inch DLC-coated MagnaCut drop point blade paired with Pro-Tech's button automatic action, delivering fast deployment with solid lockup. At 8.38 inches overall and 4.64 ounces, the knife balances heft and presence without excess weight.