Many of us remember the ammo shortage of the early 00s with a combination of horror and perverse pleasure. If you happened to be one of those gun owners with a pre-existing ammunition stash so spectacular it rivaled the warehouse of a major manufacturer, it wasn’t so bad. If you happened to be one of those gun owners who just grabbed a box or two of ammunition when the urge to sling lead down-range hit, well, it was a bit worse. So here’s the question – and it’s a fitting one considering the fact that this is an election year – was the ammo rush and shortage drive by sales, hoarding, or a manufacturing shortage? (Or is there perhaps some other factor?)

It’s done. 525 Lyman slugs – Target Achieved!

With just shy of 500 years under their gun belt, Beretta has announced the opening of a retail store here in the United States. The firearms industry magnate is known for its well-made, reliable long guns and pistols, but that isn’t all they make. In fact, there is an entire line of products available bearing the Beretta family name.

Here is some interesting marketing for a jewelry store in Stuttgart, Arkansas. The ad ran last year and if you purchased a diamond from them you got a free Benelli shotgun. From the photo it looks like it is just a Benelli Nova. I am curious how they managed this. Did they buy the shotguns ahead of time? Or did they work a deal with a local gun store and once you bought a qualifying diamond you go to the gun store and transfer your new shotgun. However they did it, one must think that if they can give away a $400 shotgun then they must have quite a markup on their diamonds.

Loose Rounds posted this on their Facebook Page. It is a Remington 7188 used in Vietnam. According to Gun Wikia it is a modified Remington 1100. I imagine the recoil would be somewhat brutal but could be mitigated with backboring and porting like what Vang Comp does to their 870s. 480 rpm is a rather slow rate of fire and might not be too bad if set up properly.

Whether you’re a bush pilot, a hunter, or simply an outdoors aficionado, you should have a good quality survival kit. When you picture that kit in your mind you undoubtedly envision a first aid kit complete with tourniquet and HALO Seals with a side of knives and fire starters. But there’s more to an all-out survival kit than only those smaller tools – there’s so much more. For example, you’ll do far better in the mean woods if you have a good gun on your side. Make that a lever gun and you’ve definitely attained bush pilot survival status. That’s just what Skinner Sights is after with their new Bush Pilot Survival Kit: survival with a side of badass (am I allowed to say “badass”…I suppose I just did, twice).

Winchester Repeating Arms announced several additions to the company’s Super X3 line of semi automatic shotguns. The two new additions to the line are called the Super X3 Ultimate Sporting Adjustable and the Super X3 Composite Sporting Carbon Fiber.

In part two we covered the final steps in loading handgun and rifle rounds. In this final installment, part 3, I’ll cover the process of creating shotgun shells. As I mentioned in part 2 I found the creation of shotgun shells the most interesting of these three parts. For those who commented about the shot tower and how it works we’ll sure cover that as well as making and forming brass, plastic shell cases, lead shot production and putting it all together into 20 Ga./12 Ga. loads. I hope you find it interesting.

After Miles’ excellent TFB article in 2013 about the Holland & Holland Flagship Store in London there’s almost nothing more to add. If you haven’t read it already, please put it on your list of things to do.

One of the shelves in my gun room contains a stack of gun mats. These mats are meant to be used while cleaning guns and vary in size as well as by what is written on them. Some are simply marked by a company or manufacturer’s name and logo while others are covered in a diagram labeling each and every part of a specific gun. Others are solid back. A few are magnetic. Something does seem to be missing, though, and that’s an instructional gun mat. Now Real Avid is filling the gap with their new Smart Mat line.

A number of patents from the U.S. Patent Office indicate that Sturm, Ruger & Company INC might have plans to at least develop a semi-automatic shotgun. Looking at Patent number 2015/20150089855 A1, for a “REMOVABLE SHOTGUN MAGAZINE”, in addition to 2015/0377575 A1 for a “FIREARM SAFETY MECHANISM”, 2015/0010904 A1 for a “RECOIL REDUCTION SYSTEM FOR FIREARM”,  2016/0033226 A1 for a “BARREL EXTENSION FOR FIREARM”, and finally 2016/0047610 A1 for a “SHELL LOADING SYSTEM FOR FIREARM”. All of these patents were filed between September 2014 and Feburary of this year. There are a number of names listed on each patent application (All in NH and CT), but one of the reoccurring ones is a certain Jason Pittman, who according to his Linkedin page had been designing firearms at the company since 2012.

Great photo by our very own Nathan S.

In 2011 we reported on a company called Holy Smoke, LLC that offers  a service wherein a family could have their ashes spread via reloaded ammunition. The company takes in your deceased loved ones ashes, and loads them into approximately 250 shotgun shells, 100 rifle rounds, or 250 handgun rounds. Although this news report did not go through that company, the report is about a family who recently had their loved one loaded into 50 shotshells, and fired off the shells at the trap and skeet range that the loved one favorited.

It’s spring turkey season and NWTF – that’s the National Wild Turkey Federation – has their own way of celebrating. They’ve announced a new addition to their website, a microsite titled “Wild Turkey Basics”. And although this isn’t your usual gun-related post it’s still relevant given the time of year. This is, after all, great news for spring turkey hunters everywhere.

There’s a lot of crazy homemade shotgun slug vids on YouTube, remember the Juicer 12g Slugs? Or the Q-Tip Shotgun Slugs? There was also the awesome Folding Fin 12 Ga “Missile” from a while back as well. The popular YouTuber Taofledermaus known for his crazy custom shotgun slug vids is at it again with something pretty interesting. This time around they have the “Rocket Pod” shotgun slugs made by Tim Hamilton another YouTuber who runs Tactical G-Code. The 18 gram Rocket Pod shotgun slug has a carbide core and has holes on the front that looks straight out of the rocket pods from a Soviet helicopter gunship from Rambo III that should cause it to whistle in flight, hence the name of the slugs.

It’s been almost one year since I wrote up one of these daily posts about Snake River Shooting Product’s Drone Munition ammunition. Now, thanks to what can only be seen as a fortuitous meeting of products or an alignment of firearms-related stars, we have what just might be the perfect combination: Drone Munition and flying drones to go with it. After all, a year ago I found myself needing to add a disclaimer to the post about the ammunition reminding readers not to actually shoot down drones in a law-breaking type of scenario. Now you can – well, you can shoot these particular drones down, thanks to Gnat Warfare.

While suppressed shotguns have been around for quite a while, the first ideas coming quickly after Maxim’s patents, making a commercially successful one has been the trick that no one had yet mastered, until SilencerCo applied their brain housing groups to the idea.

Coming soon to a Canadian wasteland near you, Seraphim Armoury has started importing their Nomad pistol to Canada. With some clear Mad Max inspiration (or Desperado if you prefer) the side-by-side shotgun features a bird’s head grip, tang safety, a red fiber optic front sight, and a single trigger.

Earlier this month I was invited to attend (and participated) in a national 3-Gun competition, Superstition Mountain Mystery 3-Gun, in the new Stealth Division. Up to then I had only done my local club matches. Superstition Mountain Mystery 3-Gun is in it’s 20th year of competition, and certainly lives up to it’s name.

Over the past several months we’ve been fortunate enough to tour all of Remington’s major facilities for gun manufacturing and ending with this tour of the ammunition plant located in Lonoke, Ar. All of Remington’s ammunition is made at this plant.

Browning added 28 gauge and .410 bore versions of the Citori 725 shotguns to its 2016 catalog. A total of eight new models join the 12 and 20 gauge offerings.

I was fortunate enough to get an invite to the Superstition Mountain Mystery 3-Gun, in its 20th year, from Russell Phagen at KE Arms. I got to run the match with staff and other media the two days preceding the full competition. It was a little more relaxed of an experience and we ran through quite a bit faster (with less waiting between stages) as their were fewer squads.

Do we really need a new division in 3-Gun? As you can imagine, there are arguments on both sides of the position.

The Moscow Police Force has put on a display that has been hitting the internet recently, specifically with this excellent collection of photos on The Chive, a website I still have no clear idea about the purpose of despite being aware of them five years ago. The collection is situated in a room, somewhere in Moscow, and includes everything from percussion muzzleloading handguns, to modern day submachine guns. however the key date in all this, is that the collection compromises confiscations starting in 1949. So these aren’t firearms that were taken in the 1800s and are now on display, these are firearms taken since 1949. Whether or not some of them were actually used by criminals is another matter, as perhaps some of them were taken off their owners for bad registration papers, death, and all other possible non criminal causes.  I think the heavy, water cooled machine guns interest me the most, in addition to all the homemade devices that are on display. The FBI Museum in Washington D.C. has a similar collection with 7,000 small arms, of all their confiscated small arms, some of which are on display, but I think the majority are locked away from the public.

Sometimes there is no replacement for the immediate exclaiming of an expletive. Most of the time I let one fly its due to someone or something’s rampant stupidity, but on the flip side there are things that are so awesome to behold that no other set of vowels and consonants can do it justice.

Savage Arms announced a new shotgun under its Stevens line. The new Model 320 is a pump action scattergun designed for turkey hunting. This field grade shotgun is similar to existing Model 320 field guns, but includes a number of options making it more suited for turkey hunting:

What happens when you combine a 30 shell drum, a Fostech Origin 12, and a SilencerCo shotgun suppressor? Epic near-full auto patterning. Eric, or IraqVeteran8888 as he is known on the internet, has the Fostech Origin-12 shotgun in full short-barrel shotgun configuration in-hand for testing. While the previous video showed a similar configuration, Eric attempts to and fails to outrun the system.

A hypothetical question: If you could launch your own line of ammunition, what would you do? Considering the sheer number of ammo lines out there and their varied applications, is there really anything that can be improved upon? Or if not improved upon, perhaps simply manufactured and sold in a different way.

AmmoPal, formerly known as the AmmoBoss, has announced it is now shipping its first units. The system is basically a MOLLE compatible polymer shell designed to hold up to 10 12 gauge shells for easy reloading.

I swear there was nothing more fun back in the day than “Shotties with No Shields” on a small map… However, this offering is NOT recommended for real life but can fulfill the yearnings of our pre-pubescant selves.