Dean Weingarten has a good find at Ammoland.
Judge Eduardo Ramos, the U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York, has issued an Opinion & Order that a ban on stun guns is constitutional. A New York State law prohibits the private possession of stun guns and tasers; a New York City law prohibits the possession and selling of stun guns. Judge Ramos has ruled these laws do not infringe on rights protected by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Let's briefly…… [read more]
The Henry Lever Action Supreme Rifle, Guns & Ammo’s Rifle of the Year, just got a new chambering. The LASR is now available in .450 Bushmaster, and for hunters in straight-wall cartridge states, this is the addition that makes the platform genuinely field-ready for big game. The .223 and .300 BLK variants were already out there, but .450 Bushmaster brings the kind of terminal performance that matters when you need to put something large and unpleasant on the ground at deer season distances.
The .450 Bushmaster LASR runs an 18-inch free-floated blued steel barrel and ships with a DuraMag Stainless Steel 10-round magazine. The platform is MSR-magazine compatible, so if you want to push capacity beyond 10 rounds you have options. The match-grade trigger breaks at 4 pounds out of the box and is user-adjustable within a 1-pound range using the included hex key, which is a legitimately useful feature for a hunting rifle that might need to be tuned for gloved hands in cold weather.
Okay, well, nice job, I guess. But I’m still waiting for a traditional non-box-magazine-fed 460 S&W and 500 S&W model. Why am I having to wait for so long?
I like it that S&W is in the lever gun market now. Frankly I just don’t like the polymer furniture. But they do sell a walnut gun that is beautiful.
One commenter observes that it would be nice for S&W to come out with more calibers, and specifically, the 460 S&W mag and 500 S&W mag. After all, they are S&W cartridges.
That would provide some nice competition with the 45-70.
I was just looking at lever action rifle optics tonight. Scopes are just expensive, almost no matter what type, brand or power. For lever action guns I’m looking towards the low power end of things (1X4, 1X9, etc.).
However, I confess I had never heard of the 7-30 Waters before. I’ll be darned if you can find them anywhere (the guns, that is). I’d certainly be interested given the ballistics of the cartridge.
He has a nice lever action rifle collection. He’s obviously spent some time and money on that collection.
They didn’t really get to the main question. Lever actions, why you need one. Well, they’re cool. We all learned on them. They can take cartridges that you can’t really put into an AR without an awful lot of weight. The recoil of a .30-30 is highly manageable and tame, and the recoil of a .45-70 isn’t much worse than a 12-gauge shotgun, which isn’t that bad. It’s something I operate rather than a machine.
This is for starters. Besides, lever actions are cool. Additionally, lever actions are cool. Finally, to my last point, lever actions are cool.
I thought the line in the middle of the video was amusing. Park ranger to dude – if you’re in the middle of the bush and a grizzly turns on you and you have a .357 magnum, use the gun on yourself.
Lever guns have (thankfully) become increasingly popular of late. Don’t get me wrong – as readers know my favorite gun is the Stoner pattern rifle. But there’s just something about a lever action gun that makes me want to get it, from the aspect of fun, to the utility of having a carbine and a wheel gun in the same caliber, with the rifle putting that extra zip on it.
TFB published this video about ten months ago (that I embedded before), but it’s worth watching again.
Then this very recent video by Chris Baker at Lucky Gunner (“Are Lever Action Rifles Reliable?), the latest in his series on lever guns, explains a lot of reasons why it can be a temperamental gun to own and operate. So be aware of what you’re purchasing.
