It’s been 25 years since Robbie Barrkman first built a shotgun and a pistol for me. It’s been ten years since I first torture-tested an HS2000 pistol. So the logical step, when Springfield Armory released their .45 ACP Compact XD (the Americanized name for the HS2000), was to mate up Barrkman’s prowess with an already established reliable pistol.
I like to think of myself as a progressive, forward-thinking individual when it comes to firearm design and trends. I take pride in quickly perceiving the advantages of polymer construction and the new safe-action triggers heralded by Glock.
Maybe it’s just the media giving more airtime to stories about human tragedy, but this past year seems to have had more than its fair share of people getting lost and dying in the wilds. While some of these events had heroic efforts at self-rescue, others showed signs of the victim just giving up and dying without a fight.
If one finds himself in a situation in which he has time to use the sights, then, by all means, use the sights. However, if the conflict begins at less than ten feet, in the dark, and very rapidly, as it is statistically likely to, point firing is the way to survive.
Within just a few short years, Valhalla Training Center has gone from relative obscurity to being one of the country’s top training centers. This is in no small part due to the Combat Focus™ course developed by Rob Pincus—Valhalla’s Director of Operations.
I have had a gun of one type or other in my hand for the better part of 40 years and consider myself, if you will, a “Gun Maven.” Others might say, perhaps more accurately, that I am just another old “Gun Crank,” but I take firearms ownership and skill maintenance very seriously, and it is my responsibility to honor the Second Amendment…
It has been called a number of things: the Tactical Reload, Select Reload or the Reload with Retention. Call it what you want, but for whatever reason, a person involved in a gunfight has fired a few rounds and has decided they have time to reload.
Contrary to the official government line these days, blood-sucking vampires and brain-eating zombies are as lethal a threat to civilization as they’ve always been. Now there’s a new tool to help you deal with this dangerous situation.
