Gear Reviews

This past Sunday, Sean from NCGunBlog.com, Ben, and I all met at the Wake County Firearms Education and Training Center to put the Springfield XDs 9mm, S&W Shield, and Walther PPS up against each other. The three of us talked about the shootout on Episode 68 of the podcast, but as the week has went on I’ve come up with some additional thoughts on the three pistols: Grip: I found while shooting the three pistols, …

Several months back after picking up my S&W Shield 9mm, I was shopping around for a hybrid inside the waistband holster for the pistol. I’ve always used Crossbreed Supertuck holsters, but due to their several month backorder at the time, I decided to look for a more local option that would get me the holster sooner for less money out of pocket. I had read many fantastic reviews of the Stickywire Holsters Hybrid IWB holsters …

I mentioned last month that for 2014 I’m a staff writer for Carolina Shooters Club, and as part of that I’m doing some gear reviews for them. This month I went pretty in depth on the Streamlight ProTac HL flashlight that I bought for the Day-Night-Day match back in December. Bottom Line: It’s a great light, as long as you aren’t using it with a handgun. Check out the full review over at CSC.

A trend seems to have swept the gun and gear community over the past couple of years that I don’t really understand: torturing items with things they would never encounter in the real world. Dragging a Glock behind a pickup down a dirt road doesn’t tell us anything about the reliability, accuracy, or function of the pistol. It just tells us that in that instance we didn’t get enough garbage inside the pistol to stop …

As you know, the last comparison that I did of the Remington R51 was not correct. I was using the 6″ overall length number that was published on many different blogs, and unfortunately that number was a little bit different from the 6 5/8″ number that I believe is correct, based on this reported SHOT show brochure of the R51 from Remington. 6″ vs. 6 5/8″ doesn’t really sound like much difference, but we need …

I lifted this picture from Miguel over at Gun Free Zone, because it shows the Remington R51 in someone’s hand at SHOT show. Now, originally we received some size numbers on the pistol stating that it has a 6″ overall length, and a 4.5″ height. The 6″ length was really attractive to me, as it puts the R51 in smaller than many of the other pistols in its class. Unfortunately after looking at the above …

For 2014, in addition to writing here at Triangle Tactical, Ben and I are both Staff Writers over at Carolina Shooters Club. We’ll primarily be posting gear reviews and some editorial stuff over there. Rest assured nothing will be changing around here. Anyways, my first gear review of the Magpul PMAG 40 is posted over at CSC, and I think you should check it out.  

A couple of days ago the guys at Carolina Gunrunners let me borrow their Lyman digital trigger pull gauge for a couple minutes when I stopped by the store. I grabbed my XDs 9mm and gave it 10 pulls on the gauge. I didn’t write down all 10, but here’s the high, the low, and the mean: High: 7lb 11oz Low: 6lb 12oz Mean: 7lb 1oz These were measured from the center of the trigger, …

I’ve received more questions about this topic than any other topic, ever. Some say the Shield is thinner, others say the XDs is bigger and heavier. As far as overall size, the two pistols are really close. I took a picture of each pistol (same focal length and all that mumbo jumbo) and laid them on top of each other. I lined them up by the back edge of the front sight, and they are …

I’m now about a month in to owning the first really real pocket knife in my life, a Kershaw Skyline. It replaced my old EDC knife, a Gerber Evo Tanto Mid combo edge which was a heck of a knife for being as skinny as it was and took a beating in the three years I carried it. However, it was never really sharp to begin with, and trying to sharpen the tanto blade on …