Author: Jack Bogart

If you’ve spent any serious time behind a suppressed firearm, you’ve either burned yourself, nearly burned yourself, or developed the kind of cautious respect for hot metal that takes a good scare to earn. You may also know the frustration of heat mirage rising off a hot can and ruining an otherwise clean scope picture. For many years, the suppressor industry’s answer to heat was essentially “wait.” Or strap a cover on it. Neither solution is particularly satisfying when you’re on the clock, whether that clock is measured in shooting strings at a match, minutes in a hunting blind, or…

*All photos by author Thanks to the Marine Corps, I’ve got natural hearing protection — lol (moderate-to-severe hearing loss). So these days, I take ear pro seriously and rely on solid in-ear earplugs every time I hit the range. I’ve grown to prefer this style of hearing protection for its minimalist footprint. Yeah, there are some slick electronic in-ear options on the market, and they work great — but they also tend to be pretty damn expensive. I keep a set of electronic over-ear muffs in my range bag for when some guy decides to mag dump with a comp…

The old phrase, “Give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile,” is nowhere more apparent than in the modern gun control movement. Gun-rights groups have warned for decades about the incremental nature of gun bans, while those on the other side of the debate have always laughed the notion off as “conspiracy theory.” Today, we are seeing more proof of this truth in Rhode Island, where anti-gun lawmakers are trying to expand on a bad law they passed last year. Last June, Democrat Gov. Dan McKee signed into law a ban on the manufacture, purchase, sale, or transfer of…

In a very disappointing move, the U.S. Supreme Court chose to not hear an important lawsuit challenging the Illinois law banning carry of firearms for self-defense on modes of public transportation. In the case Schoenthal v. Raoul, the justices denied certiorari, leaving in place a disastrous 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that upheld the ban. In a poorly thought-out decision last September, the court ruled that “crowded spaces” like subways qualify as “sensitive places” where the government may broadly prohibit the exercise of the right to bear arms. “The Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to self-defense… It does…

Colorado Senate Bill 26-043 would require background checks, dealer transfers, and five-year recordkeeping for the sale of a simple metal tube — a move critics say is a textbook step toward de facto disarmament. Colorado Democrats are pushing legislation that would regulate firearm barrels — the metal tube the bullet travels through — as if they were complete firearms. Under Senate Bill 26-043, selling or transferring a barrel to a fellow gun owner without routing it through a federally licensed dealer would be a crime, carrying up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine on the first offense.…

What Is Going On? Drama in the firearms industry is not unheard of, but it is fairly rare. Given the industry’s relatively smaller size, there just usually aren’t a lot of eyebrow-raising events that happen. However, that has changed recently with interactions between Ruger and Beretta. These two stalwart bastions of gun design and manufacture have not exactly come to blows, but there are developments raising some eyebrows. Let’s take a quick look at the situation. According to outdoorlifecom, in September of 2025, Beretta – the oldest gun manufacturer in the world, since 1526 – acquired 7.7% of Sturm, Ruger…

Images by the author I am no stranger to Griffin Armament. I recently reviewed one of their scopes, an LPVO in 1-8×24. That scope is well-built and sits atop one of my prized rifles. The company makes many products… as an example, they sent me a set of AR iron sights and two mounts for a yet-to-ship prism sight. More on those will follow after that sight comes in. Now that the $200 tax on suppressors is but a tortured dream, every company seems to be selling cans… some are better than others. Griffin Armament is a major player in…

A federal appeals court has ruled that Maine’s law requiring a three-day waiting period between firearm purchases and taking possession of a gun to be constitutional. On April 3, a three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st Circuit Court of Appeals reversed last year’s decision by Maine’s chief federal judge that blocked enforcement of the law on Second Amendment grounds. In a nutshell, the circuit court ruled that the law is a “burden on, but not an infringement of, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.” In what seems to be strained logic, the court ruled that the law…

Images by the author (Part of me wants to put “… is failure to communicate!”, but this isn’t a movie review). What we have here is something wearing a S&W logo that’s more rare than hen’s teeth… a five-shot, .44 Special revolver.  Now, please understand that S&W is no stranger to either 5-shot revolvers – the J-frame comes to mind – nor to .44 Specials. They’ve made many of both of those over the years. What IS different, however, is that they combined those design characteristics into one gun. I would say to think of the 396 as a J-frame…

The 300 Blackout is one of the most purpose-built cartridges in the AR world, designed from the ground up to perform in short barrels, run suppressed, and cycle reliably with both supersonic and subsonic loads. But that versatility comes with a catch: barrel length matters more with 300 BLK than with almost any other AR caliber. Get it wrong, and you’re either leaving performance on the table or fighting reliability issues. So what’s the optimal barrel length? The data points to 10.5 inches, and here’s why. The Case for 10.5″ 300 Blackout was specifically designed to be run in a…