We are living in a very weird time.

Currently, all of the usual anti-gun people and organizations are falling all over themselves defending a concealed carrier who was killed by ICE yesterday in Minnesota. Hell, Brady: United Against Gun Violence even pointed out that he was a “legal gun owner” just before they went off the rails and referred to law enforcement as “Institutionalized armed intimidation.”

What we do know is that Alex Pretti was a 37 year old nurse who worked for the VA. By all accounts, he was a kind, caring person and not a criminal. It is also reported that he had a valid concealed carry permit, although it is also being reported that he did not have his ID or permit on him when he was killed, which is mostly irrelevant to the situation as a whole.

It is being widely claimed that Pretti was doing nothing but filming as a “legal observer.” The following image is being pushed by left leaning media outlets and liberal politicians as evidence of that fact. Some are going as far as saying “Alex Pretti was shot for daring to film ICE.”

I will not dispute that he was indeed there filming, but claiming he was “shot for filming” is the equivalent of saying “Mike Brown was shot for jaywalking.” More on that later.

We all now know that Alex Pretti was also concealed carrying a Sig P320. Some accounts say he had one spare mag, while others claim he had two spare mags.

Yes, the 2A applies to people with whom I disagree politically.

As a pro-gun, 2A advocate, I have absolutely no issue with Pretti carrying a gun, although personally I take issue with the gun he chose to carry.

I commend Pretti for going through all the hurdles that allowed him to legally carry concealed in Minnesota.

Where I stop defending Pretti is at the point that he decided to go hands on with a federal law enforcement officer who was dealing with another protestor.

Wait, what are you talking about? The left leaning people are all screaming that Pretti was doing nothing wrong when ICE agents attacked him. They are saying ICE agents were the aggressors.

Like most “facts” coming from left leaning outlets, that is not remotely accurate.

In this screen grab that I took from cell phone footage, the ICE agent in the tan beanie had just pushed the protestor at the far left of the image. Pretti, in the black beanie immediately adjacent the ICE agent, stopped being a legal observer and became a suspect of assault on a peace officer at this very point, because he grabs the ICE agent who then turns to deal with Pretti.

Here is a short clip from that cell phone footage (full video available at the bottom of this post). I also slow it down and roll it back and forth so you can see what I am referring to.

I won’t pretend to know why that ICE agent pushed that person, but I do know from watching the video that Pretti put himself in the conflict, not the other way around.

If you have taken any concealed carry classes, or have been issued a concealed carry permit, you have probably heard repeated multiple times that the best, first step in a defensive use of deadly force is to do your best to avoid the situation.

I phrase it another way:

“Don’t do stupid shit while armed!”

Sadly for Pretti, he failed to heed that advice not once, but twice. His first mistake was going hands on with a law enforcement officer while armed. His second mistake was resisting arrest while armed. His two bad decisions lead him down the road that resulted in his death.

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Was the shooting justified?

Now I am not suggesting that the shooting was lawfully justified, although I am leaning that way. Currently there is insufficient information to make that call. None of the cell phone videos that have been released of the incident show clearly enough what was happening.

One of those videos appears to show an ICE agent disarming Pretti just before he was shot, but to my knowledge that has not yet been confirmed. Also of great importance is if that fact (that he had been disarmed) was communicated to the cops wrestling with Pretti. If they were unaware that the gun had been removed, that is very important.

What an officer knows at the time of the shooting is the only thing that can be considered (Graham v. Connor). Facts discovered after the incident carry no weight on the legality of a shooting.

A perfect example of that is when a guy is robbing a store with a toy gun and gets shot by the cops (or anyone for that matter). Finding out after the fact that it was not a gun does not change a lawful shooting into an unlawful one.

From a legal standpoint, I have a feeling this incident is going to found as falling into the “lawful but awful” category. “Lawful but awful” meaning the shooting is legally justified but could have been avoided. That remains to be seen at this point.

What about Mike Brown?

My comparison between Pretti and Mike Brown is regarding the claims that Pretti’s death was based on an unrelated fact from the incident. Yes, Pretti was filming but it was his physical assault on a law enforcement officer that caused the cops to attempt to arrest him, not the filming.

Just like yes, Mike Brown was jaywalking when he was initially contacted, but it was his fighting and trying to take the officer’s gun that caused him to get shot.

The left has a very bad habit of attempting to ignore all the bad things someone does in an incident while trying to claim the incident was based on something entirely different.

The following video is the best one I have seen thus far that captures the moments leading up to the shooting.

1) Just because a magazine holds more than some magical number you anti-gunners determined to be “normal” does not in fact make them “large-capacity.”

2) That decade that they were banned proved that nationwide magazine capacity laws had absolutely no effect on violent crime, which is why that ban was allowed to expire.

3) During that decade long national ban, criminals intent on committing violent crime had no problem obtaining any of the millions of pre-existing “large-capacity” magazines.

4) “Large-capacity” magazines do not make guns any deadlier. What bans on them do affect, and negatively, is the average law abiding concealed carrier’s ability to defend themselves.

5) Multiple mass-shooter incidents across the nation (Virginia Tech & Isla Vista to name two) show that even when there are magazine capacity laws in place, those laws do not stop evil people from attacking innocents. The suspects just prepare by buying and bringing more low-capacity magazines with them.

If you look at the homicide rate in the United States, you can see that the gun and magazine bans have zero effect on the national homicide rate.

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Even though the country has been “swamped” with hundreds of millions of “large capacity magazines,” tens of millions of “assault weapons” and constitutional carry has exploded across the nation, which according to those seeking more gun control was going to cause blood to flow in the streets and turn the US into the “wild west,” in actuality the United States currently is the safest it has been in at least 60 years.

That last bit bears repeating.

Despite the growing number of relaxed concealed carry laws, an abundance of “large-capacity” magazines, and more “assault weapons” than ever before, the country is the safest it has been in more than 60 years.

Imagine how safe it would be if we went back to locking up violent criminals 🤔

Suppressor technology keeps changing. For decades, the technology was essentially the same. The cans were welded baffle stacks, like the one in the cutaway photo of the Otter Creek Labs image below.

There were variations made by different companies to try and change the sound, different materials used, but essentially the technology for suppressing the sound of gunfire changed very little.

That is until the ability to 3D print suppressors came into being. All of a sudden, manufacturers could do essentially whatever they wanted. If you look into a 3D printed can, you never know what you will find. Some look like some sort of alien hive while others look, well, more terrestrial.

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For instance, the inside of a Stealth Additive Works suppressor looks like no can I have ever seen before. The image below (which I stole off the internet) shows you what I am talking about.

So, with all these changes in how cans are produced, what does this mean for the end user? Well, not only does it mean we have lots of options in terms of construction, design, size, and performance, but it also gives us lots of price categories too. Additionally, more and more companies are diving into the market which means those options keep increasing.

I recently took seven different cans to the range to test them back to back on the same gun. In addition to myself, the entire staff of Boise Black Rifle attended so the opinion at the end is not just mine, it was a consensus. The winner, in our combined opinion, was a suppressor that they did not even carry (yet) at the store.

The cans tested, in the order tested, are as follows:

1. Surefire RC2

2. Otter Creek Labs Polonium 5.56

3. Stealth Additive Works Ekron 5.56

4. SilencerCo Velos LBP 5.56K (someone forgot the fullsize Velos LBP 5.56)

5. CAT WB

6. Dillon Rifle Co Hush Kit 5.56

7. Exigent Defense Vanish556

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The first two cans in that list are traditional welded baffle stack designs, while the remainder are all newer designs intended to lower backpressure and reduce the amount of gas that gets redirected into the shooter’s face. The prices ranged from $550 on the low end to $1500 on the high end.

In the attached video, you get to see and hear all the cans being shot back to back. You will hear some of the discussion about performance, and then I wrap it up at the end and tell you which one we found to be the best choice. With that said, all the cans we shot are solid options. There was not a single bad can in the bunch.

So let’s talk about those Giffords rankings a bit...

My current state of Idaho received an F while my former state of California, where I worked my entire career as a cop, received an A, and yet according to the CDC’s annual homicide mortality rate statistics (most recent year is 2023), Idaho’s homicide rate (2.7 per 100k) is half of California’s (5.1)?

Meanwhile crime ridden Illinois, thanks mainly to Chicago, gets an A on gun laws, yet has a high homicide rate (9.8). Good old New Mexico gets a B- on gun laws, but has one of the highest homicide rates (14.7). Right next door in Texas, they got an F from Giffords yet they have a homicide rate (7.1) that is less that half of New Mexico.

Virginia gets a B+ from Giffords but has a high homicide rate (6.8) and next door in West Viginia they got an F for their gun laws but have a lower homicide rate (5.4).

I could go on, but if you are like me and you function on logic you already got the point, and if you function on emotion, like the people at Giffords, nothing will ever drive the point home.

What is the point? There is absolutely zero correlation between strict gun laws and homicide rates.

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If you are one of those people who think strict gun laws keep people safe, please explain to me why every state with an A is not the safest and why those with an F are not overrun with murders. Take your time, I’ll wait.

In the meantime, let me say it extra loud for all the stupid people, GUN LAWS DO NOT PREVENT CRIME!

How It All Started

If you don’t already know this, I am the assistant manager of Boise Black Rifle, a gun store located near but not in Boise, ID. One of our oldest and best customers bought what we all thought was going to be a fantastic rifle from us on April 14, 2023. It is a Desert Tech MDRx chambered in 5.56.

Sadly, on his first outing with the gun, he experienced a significant number of malfunctions. He encountered a significant number of failures to chamber a round. When this happened, the cases were being deformed and some had the projectiles pushed back into the case.

After dealing with Desert Tech’s customer service for a while, three months after he purchased the gun he was allowed to send it to DesertTech for repair.

Desert Tech had his gun for the next seven (7) months. Seven Months!

Gun One - Take Two

On February 22, 2024 he finally got his gun back. The very next day he took it to the range. He managed to get three mags through the gun before it failed and locked up. He pulled the trigger and the gun did not go bang. Like any of us would when that happens, usually due to a bad round, he tried to operate the charging handle but it was stuck and would not move.

The facility he was shooting at has a gunsmith so he went and asked for help. After attempting unsuccessfully to operated the charging handle, the gunsmith removed the ejection port and was able to cock the hammer. He pulled the trigger and again, nothing. They did this 4 or 5 times before the gunsmith gave up and told the customer he would need to send the gun back to Desert Tech. You know, the gun he just got back from them the day before…

While the customer was packing up to leave, he decided to try cocking the hammer manually once more, seeing as there was a live round stuck in the chamber. Finally, success. The gun fired and the bolt started operating normally again. He packed up and went home.

He reached out to us at Boise Black Rifle and told us what transpired. Will, the manager, went with him to the range the following day and it was a repeat of what happened the day before.

On February 27th, five days after he got his gun back from Desert Tech, they told him via email that it sounded like the gun was faulty and would likely need to be replaced. The customer sent the gun back to them, again.

At this point, the customer bought the $2,800 rifle 10 months ago, but has only had it in his possession for barely 3 months, during which he could not even shoot it because it did not work.

On March 7th, Desert Tech acknowledged in an email to the customer they had received the gun back, for the second time.

Gun Number Two - Starting Off With A Bang (pun intended)

On March 20th, the customer received a package at his home. It was a brand new replacement rifle, sent to him directly from Desert Tech, which cannot be legally sent to him. A new/replacement gun must be sent to an FFL so that a 4473 can be completed. A gun manufacturer damn well should know this. The customer knew this and brought the gun to Boise Black Rifle so we could receive it.

At this point, the customer has lost all faith in the platform and since this was a brand new gun, he asked if we could sell it for him. We agreed and put the gun on the wall in the store.

The gun sat there for 16 months. Many people looked at it, but no one bought it. They are a very interesting gun and they look awesome, but for a lot of people, $2800 is a tough pill to swallow for a gun that they know very little about.

On July 21, 2025, the customer has given up hope that someone is going to buy the gun so he decides to take it home and give the platform another go. After all, it is a bitchin looking gun and bullpups do indeed have some advantages over traditional rifle designs.

Ready For Round Two-ish

He picks the gun up and heads straight to the range with it. This is the brand new MDRx that Desert Tech replaced his previous one with. He slaps a mag in it, charges it, and successfully fires 28 rounds through it before the gun gives up the ghost on round 29.

Trigger pulled, click no bang.

At this point, if I were the customer, I think my head would have exploded.

He goes to drop the mag so he can clear the gun, but the mag will not fall free. It has to be forcefully stripped from the magwell. Once the mag was out, he tried to eject the round that failed to fire but nothing comes out so he racks the gun repeatedly and it finally ejects the unfired round.

The unfired round has a large dent in the case.

Be puts in a new mag and tries to proceed.

Squeeze, click, no bang. Fight the mag out. Rack, rack, rack.

Rinse and repeat, for about half a magazine.

The rounds coming out of the gun are either dented or the projectiles are pushed back into the case, or both. Does this sound familiar?

After trying unsuccessfully to get the gun to fire a 29th round, he packs up and goes home.

That same day, the day he finally took possession of the replacement gun, he emails Desert Tech telling them that the replacement gun is doing the exact same thing the original gun was doing, and he asks for a refund.

At This Point, Things Turn Stupid

In the email response the customer received, the Warranty Manager tells the customer that it appears to be a gassing issue. The gun not chambering a round from a fresh mag by manually cycling the bolt is a gassing issue. Here is the email response he got after asking for a refund.

The customer is as baffled by this response as we were, but he attempted to try what he was being instructed to do by Desert Tech.

He returned to the range and tried to charge the weapon. He took several different loads but was unable to get the gun to chamber a single round. After he went home, he emailed Desert Tech, and at this point started including Boise Black Rifle in the emails, telling them he was unable to try adjusting the gas because the gun would not chamber a round.

In a move that is baffling to anyone that understands how semi-auto firearms work, the warranty manager responds to his email telling him that unless he tries adjusting the gas settings, there is nothing Desert Tech can do for him. He also asks the customer to record a video of him firing the gun and send it to them.

No, I am not making this up. Here is the email. Read it for yourself.

Retarded or Just Illiterate?

At this point, it would appear the Warranty Manager is unable to read basic English. If the gun cannot chamber and fire a round, the gas setting is completely irrelevant.

At this point, the customer is very rightfully becoming upset. He emails back reiterating that the gun will not fire a round at all, ever. He cannot adjust the gas settings as the gun is not creating any gas to adjust.

Desert Tech finally concedes and tells him he can send the gun back, but it takes them almost a week to send the customer his RMA. Once he received the RMA, he immediately dropped the gun off and sent it back to Desert Tech.

On August 8, 2025, the customer gets an email telling him that they have fired 60 rounds through his gun without any issues. At this point, they are still refusing to consider refunding his money because they cannot replicate the issues.

The customer is pretty well fed up at this point and sends an email asking them to send him a video (remember when they asked him to send them one?) showing that the rifle is functioning. He also tells them that if the rifle malfunctions when he gets it back, he is prepared to take legal action for them selling a non-functioning product.

Customer Service At Its Finest

Three days later, on August 11th, the customer receives an email in which the Warranty Manager expresses his frustration over having to deal with this customer and his rifle. He also sent a video of him firing the gun, a video that he told the customer was for his viewing only.

Sorry kid, that is not how things work.

Both the email and the video in its entirety are below.

On that same day, August 11th, the Warranty Manager asked the customer how he would like to proceed.

On August 15th, the customer once again reiterated his desire for a refund.

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Customer Gets Ghosted By Desert Tech

At this point, Desert Tech just stops responding to emails from the customer. They have his gun, refuse to give him a refund, and now they have cut off communication.

On September 3rd, the customer has not heard anything from Desert Tech so he emails asking them for an update.

On September 12th, still nothing so once again he emails asking for an update.

Its FedEx’s Fault…

On September 16th, after a full month of silence, the customer received an email telling him that FedEx was not allowing Desert Tech to ship anything. In this email, they tell the customer for the very first time since this ordeal started, that he should be using crimped ammo. They also tell him that they put another 60 rounds through his gun and it worked fine.

How Its Going

On September 23rd, the customer got his MDRx back from Desert Tech. It was delivered at his home while he was at work. It was sent with no signature required and FedEx left it on his front porch. Brilliant!

At this time, the customer was over it. He did not want the gun near him, so he brought the gun to Boise Black Rifle. At that time, he was unsure what he wanted to do with it.

On October 14th, after reluctantly deciding to give it yet another go, he picked his MDRx up and took it to the range. He managed to get 100 rounds through it before it choked yet again. It would chamber the round but it was back to “click, no bang.”

That is a total of 100 rounds since he got the gun back from Desert Tech. At this point, Desert Tech has put more rounds through his gun than he has, but not for lack of him trying.

He left the range frustrated and disheartened, and on October 15th, he brought the gun back to us at Boise Black Rifle.

Failure In Epic Fashion, All On 2K Video

On October 16th, I took the gun to the range and filmed the entire range trip. That video is embedded further up in this piece.

I managed to successfully fire a whopping 57 rounds through the gun. After the 57th round, no matter what I tried, the gun never went bang again. I gave up after manually cycling about 15 rounds through it.

We at Boise Black Rifle have attempted multiple times to intervene with Desert Tech on the customer’s behalf, but they do not want us involved in the process. They routinely dropped us from any email responses they sent to the customer. Because of the way they have treated this customer, we have made the decision to no longer sell their products.

Customer Service Really Matters

This is just sad from several angles. Mostly, I feel horrible for our customer who has been dealing with this shitty situation for more than 2 1/2 years.

I feel bad because Desert Tech makes a number of firearms that are indeed good guns. I know several people who own them and love them.

One of those people is Tim from the Military Arms Channel, with whom I co-run The Bangswitch. I’ve known Tim for nearly 15 years. He has four different versions of the MDR, MDRx and a Wlvrn. He tells me they all have been great guns. He also owns a couple of their bullpup bolt action rifles, guns that I really like (aside from their price tag) and he has used all of them successfully both at the range and hunting.

I know another guy with an even bigger YouTube channel, who recently released a video on the Desert Tech Wlvrn. I spoke to him yesterday on my way home from the range after this MDRx took a crap on me. He told me that his Wlvrn has been 100% flawless.

The problem is not that Desert Tech can’t build a good gun. The problem is how they treat people who get a gun that is not good. Customer service really matters, and what Desert Tech has demonstrated here is that they do not feel the same way.

Too Late To Make It Right?

In speaking with the customer, I am not sure at this point if there is anything Desert Tech could do to make it right. However, I’d be willing to bet if they offered to replace his MDRx with the newest version of the gun, the Wlvrn, a gun with a much better reputation for reliability, he just might take them up on it.

If Desert Tech can’t do the right thing, maybe another manufacturer of a modern bullpup could take care of this customer while simultaneously earning a lot of good will from the gun community? Just a thought.

In terms of my family, I consider myself a lucky man. I reached 55 years old with not only both of my parents alive, happy and in my life, but both of my parents-in-law actively are in our lives as well.

I grew up knowing all four of my grandparents, which I sadly took for granted as most stupid young people do.

I lost the first of my grandparents when I was about 14 years old, and that was my paternal grandmother, who was taken by Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Several years later, when I was in my early 20’s, I lost my maternal grandfather, a combat vet from the Pacific theater in WWII, to cancer, which brings me to the villain of this story.

Fuck Cancer!

I have not been writing or producing videos over the last month because I have been driving back and forth between Idaho and California (Sacramento area) on a weekly basis. My mother has been fighting cancer for several months, and sadly this was her second fight with that shit ass disease in the last decade.

This time her cancer was not a candidate for surgery or radiation, and the medicine they put her on made her deathly ill. It actually landed her in the ICU.

A few weeks ago, a followup PET scan revealed not only had her cancer spread, but it had morphed into a melanoma that was untreatable. My dad brought her home and she was put on hospice.

Watching her fade in that hospice bed absolutely sucked! It reminded me of watching her father, the one I mentioned above, in the same situation for the same reason.

On August 18^th, with my dad sitting next to her holding her hand, my mother died. Cancer had finally won the fight. She was 79 years old.

Fuck Cancer!

I owe my sister a huge thank you. She lives five minutes from my parent’s home and she was an absolute rock star helping my dad care for my mom.

My mother was always my biggest cheerleader, even when I did not believe in myself. In fact, I think she made more effort in those times. But like most parents, she was hard on herself, often apologizing for something done decades in the past that she thought she could have handled better. I would always remind her I that I ended up the man she was proud of because how she raised me.

No matter how old I got, she worried about me. She and my wife worried equally about me when I was a patrol cop. They both lost sleep because of my career choice.

She was always a kind, caring person to everyone in her life.

I can’t believe I will never talk to her again. Even now, nearly a week after she passed, it has not fully sunk in. I miss her tremendously.

Fuck Cancer!

Never take the time you have with your loved ones for granted. It always seems like we will have ample opportunity in the future, but that is a lie we tell ourselves. Tell them you love them today, because tomorrow is not guaranteed.

Cancer has hit so many people in my family. Not only did cancer take my grandfather and mother, it tried to take my wife, my father, my sister, and both of my parents-in-law. I am seemingly the only one it has spared, thus far.

I know I sound like a broken record (if you are old enough to know what that is), but let me repeat this:

FUCK CANCER!

The hospice folks were amazing. I don’t know how they do it, but I sincerely thank them for everything they did not only for my mother, but for my sister and father who were caring for my mom daily.

I also need to thank a couple of companies for whom I have projects that they have allowed me to postpone until everything with my mother is sorted out. I owe projects to Springfield Armory’s publication, The Armory Life, and I owe DNT Optics a review.

I look forward to getting back to those projects as soon as we sort out everything with my mom.

Before I published the video, YouTube ran their normal checks to make sure there was no copyright infringements and that the video was “safe for ads.” Part of being “safe for ads” is that the video complies with YouTubes “Community Guidelines.” As with every video I upload, YouTube ran that safety check twice before confirming the video was indeed in compliance with their rules.

This morning, I received an email telling me that YouTube had completely removed that video from my channel. Not that they demonetized it, they removed it completely. The reason they provided was:

What we found

We think your content didn’t follow our firearms policy.

Content that facilitates the sale of certain regulated goods, like firearms, ammunition, or prohibited firearm accessories, isn’t allowed on YouTube. Read policy

You can see an example around 00:03:51, although there could be other instances.

You can see the exact timestamp that they provided me, and the supposed reason. Below is a screen grab of that exact moment in the video from the appeal screen as I attempted to point out their idiocy to them.

At no point in the video do I remotely try to sell anything. I do not mention any of the channel sponsors. I don’t even have any live ammo around and am instead using snap caps in the demo.

In fact, the entire video can be considered a safety video as I am demonstrating how to avoid artificially inducing a malfunction.

Seeing as my video does not in fact violate any of their rules, I appealed the decision, knowing in my head doing so was in vain.

You see, this is not the first time I have had the anti-gun liberals at YouTube mess with one of my videos claiming (completely incorrectly) that it violates one of their rules. I knew appealing it would go nowhere, and about two hours later they confirmed that in a second email.

Since there is no way to further appeal the removal of that video, and since republishing it would likely result in my receiving a strike by YouTube, I guess I will publish that video here instead.

Here is the full video that YouTube killed

I first tried a Stealthgear USA holster back in November 2013. It was sent to me for a review that I wrote for The Bangswitch. I was immediately impressed not only by the quality of the construction, but also by the amazing level of comfort that holster offered.

Beyond the build quality and comfort, the retention was excellent and despite my initial concerns about durability, they proved to be extremely durable. In the 12 years that have since passed, I have yet to have a single Stealthgear holster fail me. I cannot say the same for other brands I have used in that same timeframe.

Ever since I got that first holster for evaluation, Stealthgear has been my go-to brand for my daily carry holsters. During that time, they have continued to evolve their product line.

I used a Stealthgear holster daily, up until my daily carry guns evolved and ended up wearing weapon mounted lights. At the time that I started putting lights on all my carry guns, Stealthgear was not making holsters for guns equipped with lights. So I sought out other options that got me by, but none of them were anywhere near as comfortable and some proved to be far less durable.

Flash forward a couple years and while cruising my Instagram feed, I saw a post by the official Stealthgear USA account where a guy was sporting one of their holsters for a light equipped handgun.

It was not long after seeing that post that I reached out to the folks at Stealthgear and snagged a couple of the new Ventcore 2.0 holsters. I got an IWB Mini for my Hellcat Pro with a Streamlight TLR-7 light on it, the gun I carry nearly every day, and an OWB Flex for my Sig P365 X-Macro, also wearing a Streamlight TLR-7 light.

I have used both of these model holsters previously, but in the Ventcore 1.0 version. I liked them both, and used them extensively, so I was curious what improvements the Ventcore 2.0 offered.

Turns out, besides adding light compatibility, there were a bunch of other changes. They standardized the Kydex shell for each gun model which should shorten production time, they added additional padding in a few areas to the chassis, and they increased the size of the vents. In regards to the OWB Flex, they also changed the mounting location and the material the flex wings are made from.

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All of those changes resulted in an improved holster that, despite my thinking it impossible, created a more comfortable holster than what I already knew and loved.

While their offerings for light mounted handguns are slightly limited currently, they are continually adding more models to their list. If they don’t offer something you are looking for, they invite you to send them a message and they will consider adding it, depending on demand.

With all that said, holsters are indeed a very personal thing. No two people are built the same, we don’t all carry the same gun in the same place. One person’s comfortable is not everyone’s.

Stealthgear USA understands this, and with that in mind, they offer a 30-day “Love It, Or Return It” guarantee. If you don’t like the holster, they will let you exchange it for another model or return it for a refund. You have nothing to lose, and quite a bit of comfort to gain.

Holster comfort is something that cannot be under-stressed. If your gun/holster combo is uncomfortable, you are less likely to carry it and conversely, if it is very comfortable, you are more likely to carry it. And like I always say, it is important to practice your ABC’s - Always Be Carrying!

According to a press release from Warren Air Force Base, an active-duty airman assigned to the 90th Security Forces, 90th Missile Wing was killed early on July 20, 2025. They have not released any information about the circumstances.

Then, on the same day that Warren AFB issued that press release, a memo written by General Thomas A Bussiere of the USAF was released instructing all personnel in the Air Force Global Strike Command to immediately “pause” the use of the M18 pistol.

Now I am no rocket surgeon, but when looking at those two items together, it certainly makes it look like the M18 pistol (the military version of the P320) is probably involved in one way or another.

My sincerest condolences to the family and friends of the deceased airman. It should never have come to this.

The 2020 series of guns are based on the Remington 700 action so it makes finding optic mounting solutions easy as they already exist. The bolt is very smooth cycling and the trigger is from Triggertech and is adjustable from 2.5-5 pounds.

This gun was loaned to me. It was brand new in the box and had never been fired. It had no optic or any accessories on it, so I had to equip it before putting some rounds through it.

I recently picked up an Arken EP-5 5-25x56 first focal plane optic for a rifle of mine and it seemed the best option in my inventory to take advantage of the capabilities of this rifle. The Arken optics use very clear Japanese glass which is housed in a sturdy body. They are a very solid choice, especially if you are cheap bastard like me.

Also, I do not own any 6.5CM rifles, so I immediately had to start tracking down ammo if I wanted to shoot it. A friend who has a similar rifle from Springfield told me they like lighter bullets, like in the 120 grain range.

The day I took this rifle to the range happened to be a fairly windy day. There was a pretty consistent left to right breeze of about 8 miles an hour, with gusts up to 15 or so. Less than ideal conditions to try and print groups on paper. Despite the wind, I still managed to shoot several groups smaller than the guaranteed 0.75 MOA, with my best group being a 0.639” which I shot with Federal American Eagle 120 grain.

Overall, it was a very nice shooting gun and I had a great day at the range with it. My only complaint with it is that as the barrel warmed up, once my rate of fire picked up, I did notice my groups opening up slightly. With a warm barrel and shooting the cheapest ammo I had (Winchester white box), the groups opened up to about 1.75”.

My understanding in talking to a few folks more knowledgeable than me is that it is fairly common in guns with carbon fiber barrels for the groups to open up as the barrels get warm.

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If anyone from Springfield Armory is listening, throw a 24-26” all steel bull barrel in this and you will have a really nice target / PRS type rifle. That is honestly the only change I would want to see if I were going to purchase one.

As it sits, it is a great rifle, especially for those who only want to shoot a very slow pace or only a few rounds at a sitting, like hunters.

I did not know Joe, but Kevin was and Eric is a friend of mine.

The Cause

The helicopter, a Eurocopter EC120, suffered a catastrophic engine failure due to a faulty fuel pressure regulator.

The fuel pressure regulator issue was something Eurocopter knew about, but chose to take the Ford Pinto route. They figured it would be cheaper to repair the helicopters that broke rather than recall all the faulty regulators. They figured pilots would have enough altitude to safely autorotate down if and when they failed.

When you are about 100' above a lake, which is where they were when it failed, you can't autorotate to a safe landing.

When the regulator failed, it sent the turbine engine into uncontrolled full throttle. Joe managed to gain some altitude and head toward land, but as a built in safety mechanism of the turbine engine, at a certain speed the fan blades in the engine sheared off. Compared to losing your rotor blades, the engine blades are the better option.

The Crash

When the engine blades sheared off, the helicopter lost all power and without nearly enough altitude, they dropped from the sky like a rock onto a hillside. After impact, the helicopter rolled down the hill and settled at the bottom.

Both Joe and Kevin were killed, crushed as the helicopter rolled down the hill.

Eric, who was seated in the rear seat, was saved by the firewall behind him, but he received massive traumatic injuries, including to his brain, and was in a coma for a long time. He never fully recovered physically and needs a cane to walk.

Many of my coworkers who responded to the crash (I was off that day or would have been there too) suffered from PTSD for years, from trying in vain to save the lives of their friends. A few ended up retiring due to the PTSD.

How It Still Affects Me

A couple people have commented on my Sig P320 videos that I seem worked up about it and tell me I need to calm down.

This incident, the Star 6 crash, is why I absolutely HATE companies who produce unsafe products, and rather than recall them, figure it will be cheaper to settle lawsuits.

I don’t need to calm down. Sig needs to do the right fucking thing, before someone else loses a loved one “because the lawsuit would be cheaper than a recall.”

Even after switching to Glock, I still liked Sig and continued to buy their products for personal use.

That is up until all this stuff started happening with the P320. I’m not angry because the gun has a problem, I am pissed because of how Sig has been handling the whole thing.

On June 24th, 2025, a Ceres, CA police officer was shot by her issued, holstered Sig Sauer P320. The incident was captured on surveillance video, which the Ceres PD released on Facebook yesterday.

To my knowledge, Sig has not made any public comments about this incident, but I guarantee when they do, they will blame the holster and the backpack.

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I was never a Sig hater, until Sig turned me into one a couple of months ago.

I talk about it a lot more in the embedded video. Give it a watch and let me know what your opinion is.

Two days ago, Giffords made up a bunch of BS about suppressors and posted it over on X.

I don’t think it went like they hoped it would.

People are clearly catching on that Giffords and the other gun grabbers just make crap up, because after about 15 hours and 53,100+ people viewed their post, only 9 people were gullible enough to believe it and like the post. Nine. Let me say that again, 9 people...

That is an extremely impressive lack of likes. You would be hard pressed to find any post with that many views and so few likes.

As a retired cop, and a guy who owns several suppressors, nothing those morons said about suppressors is accurate. This is not the movies. Suppressors do not make guns silent, they just make them quieter than they are without one, sort of like a muffler on your car.

There is only one mass shooting that I know of where a suppressor was used, and in that incident, 12 people were killed by the suspect who was using a .45 caliber handgun.

Taken directly from an AP article about that incident, "But gun-rights advocates and MOST LAW ENFORCEMENT EXPERTS (emphasis added) say ********* **********’s (I refuse to publish suspect's names) use of a suppressor likely had no bearing on his ability to kill so many people in so little time Friday."

The only LE expert who said otherwise was a former FBI agent who now works for.... you guessed it, Giffords.

But the reality is, the suspect went into a multi story, crowded office building and after going to three different floors, and encountering dozens, if not hundreds of unarmed, trapped people, he managed to kill only 12 people (not to remotely downplay the loss of life, but in that environment, the death toll could have been far higher).

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The suppressor had nothing to do with the number of people he killed. The environment where people were trapped and could not easily flee had much more to do with it.

Giffords and the other anti-gun organizations have been making apocalyptic predictions about the mass deaths that will result if laws supporting the Second Amendment are enacted. Every single time, those predictions have fallen flat on their face. Not once has the jurisdiction passing a pro-gun law turned into the deadly wild west that the anti-gun crowd constantly say it will.

If the impressive lack of support that Giffords received on that post tells me anything, it is that the general public is finally starting to see through their lies.

The fact that every post Giffords makes on X has replies blocked tells you they know their support is dwindling, and that they are scared of the truth.

Those with facts on their side encourage discussion, those who lie hide from it.

Hi there, my name is Matt Silvey. I have been a deputy sheriff with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department since September 1996. If you have followed me on Facebook or Twitter, you know me as Deputy Matt. To date, I have not been able to use my real name on social media because of concerns by management that if someone in the media knew where I worked, they would try to attribute my comments to the department, which would be completely insane but you know how the media can be. But now, I can proudly tell you where I worked, because I have decided to retire. In fact, today (11-28-18) was my last day.

I love my department. I am proud to wear the uniform. I love being a cop and almost everything that comes with the job, even though it is a very difficult job. As I have gotten older, and gotten to the point that I can retire, I am much less tolerant of stupid crap. It is that stupid crap that causes many of us to leave, and I am no exception.

My Career
Overall, I have no serious complaints about my career. In 1996, I started working in our jail, a place I never wanted to work but after having done so, know that it is the absolute best place any new cop can work because you learn to deal with the criminal element in a semi-safe environment. From there, because of my previous job experience in the automotive industry and my computer skills, I got a job as the assistant fleet manager for the department. At barely three years on the department, I was working in an office five doors down from the Sheriff on the administration floor of our headquarters. That job came with a lot of perks, including a take home unmarked cop car.

I enjoyed fleet management, but I wanted to be a real cop and was dying to get out on the streets, so on my weekends while working fleet, I would go out with my buddies who were working patrol. One of those good friends who I rode with as often as I could was a guy named Alan. He was a funny, energetic, quick witted shit magnet, and I learned a lot about doing good cop work from him. Sadly, Alan had a pretty rough career and was involved in an inordinate number of shootings in a very short time frame, and he medically retired very early due to PTSD, but he and I are still friends and we talk on a fairly regular basis.

Once I was finally allowed to rotate to patrol, I hit patrol training and knew everyone there because I had been working for free a couple days a month for the previous couple years. I breezed through training, took my test and was finalized. I looked forward to my first day as a finalized, all on my own, brand new patrol cop. That day was September 11, 2001. I think you all know what day that was. What an absolutely surreal day to have as your inaugural day as a patrol cop.

I worked patrol for the next 15 years, and I really enjoyed the job. I was a training officer for a while, but eventually some of the BS involved with training got to me, so I quit training. I worked as acting sergeant quite a few times, back when we used to do that. I was directly involved in two officer involved shootings, one with my handgun early in my patrol career, and one with my rifle, which I have written about in the past. I was involved in countless pursuits and have been the primary unit performing a PIT (pursuit intervention technique) in two of them, and assisted on several others.

I have held pressure on bullet wounds of gunshot victims, I’ve done CPR more than once, and proudly can say it actually worked once and I saved a guy. I even evacuated a gunshot victim off the front porch of a residence with the suspect still inside. Ironically, of the 5 cops who pulled that woman off her front porch, I somehow was the only one ignored when it came time to hand out lifesaving medals. Later, during that same incident, I was captured by news cameras pulling a small child off the suspect who was refusing to follow commands. Heck, I even got an episode of COPS under my belt (Season 28, Episode 4). Side note: One thing I found out when filming COPS, you cannot say “dildo” on national television. Who knew?

After missing out on a job at air ops the first time around, an opening at EVOC (emergency vehicle operations course) was announced. I’ve always loved driving, especially driving a car hard, and I get along very well with the only other full-time deputy at EVOC, so I put in for it, and got it. I have been assigned to our EVOC facility for the last three (3) years. It is a great job, and the wife is very happy about it because I am not getting shot at anymore, but the only downside it that I do not feel like a cop anymore. That said, it is a great job and I have a great coworker. But…

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The Crap
During my 22 years as a cop, I have lost a number of coworkers who have been killed on the job. Some were lost to accidents, like when Joe and Kevin were killed when our helicopter, Star 6, suffered a catastrophic engine malfunction, and sadly quite a few others who were murdered. The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department has been hit pretty hard as of late. In the last four years, three of my coworkers were murdered, and I have written about each incident. The one that hit me the hardest was Bob French. I wrote about it the night Bob died, but attributed it to “an unnamed Sacramento deputy” because I could not say where I worked. Bob and I went to the academy together. I had known him more than 20 years, and I was there at the scene of the shooting and watched the paramedics working on him. Bob’s death really hit home, hard.

Cody (Donut Operator) did a video about Bob and read what I wrote for that video.

Additionally, during my career, the political landscape has changed dramatically. While the Sacramento Bee has never been friendly to law enforcement, most of the news stations used to give the cops a pretty fair shake. But sadly, the political left decided to wage a war on cops. Very early in his presidency, Barack Obama got in on the act and never relented. Quite a few other politicians have also joined the fray, slinging mud at law enforcement as part of their stump speeches or just making comments on social media.

In the meantime, Black Lives Matter sprang up, and then Antifa. Now it is cool and hip to hate the cops. While all of us in law enforcement understand that those groups are the vocal minority, it still wears on you because they are in the news, slamming law enforcement, almost every single day, and law enforcement essentially just sits there quietly and takes it. Hell, some law enforcement administrators have started bending over backwards to try and placate the cop hating assholes. Thankfully, I work for a sheriff, Scott Jones, who will not play that game, but he will not be around much longer, and in fact was set to retire this year but stuck it out.

Shortly after the Michael Brown incident happened, I wrote a piece for the Daily Caller discussing how things had changed since that incident. That was the first of quite a few articles of mine that were published there.

Add all that on top of the normal BS that is part of the daily grind at any job, throw in a few law enforcement specific things, a dash of department specific annoyances, a desire to flee my home state for Free America, all mixed together with being both fully vested in my retirement and old enough to start collecting it and you end up on the “two bad days” retirement plan. That is where I was until one really stupid thing at work happened, and then…

The Final Straw
The last election here in California finally convinced my wife of something I have been convinced of for about 10 years: California is too far gone and is never coming back. She, like I, had held on to a tiny sliver of hope that John Cox would win and thus we would avoid having the cop hating, gun hating, criminal loving, homeless enabling, pro-drug, open border slime ball Gavin Newsom as governor. Not only did Cox not win, but the kicker for my wife was watching the idiot voters in California vote to keep the higher gas taxes the politicians had slapped on us because they misspent the money they already collected for road repairs.

I have for years been saying California was lost, and my wife finally has come to the same conclusion, so we are getting out!

Now What?
I am looking forward to my next endeavor. I have been writing for blogs and other online outlets now for about six years, and during that time I have had a couple things published in magazines. I have been lucky enough to have some of my pieces end up being read on a radio talk radio show (in a good way), and one even ended up being republished by the New York Post.

As much as I never would have imagined it during my time as a student, I have found I enjoy writing, and I especially enjoy writing about guns. I have been doing this all for free for the last six years, but it is time for that to change. I have a number of writing prospects that I will be pursuing once I find a new place to call home.

Thanks
To those who have followed my social media pages, I want to thank you for your support over the years. Not only has it meant a lot to me, but my coworkers, both those on my department and from other agencies, truly are thankful for your support. Our job can be quite taxing at times, and without the support of you, the general public, we would be hard pressed to carry on.

To my coworkers at the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department, you are some of the finest men and women I could imagine sharing a career with. In my 22 year career, you have continued to impress me with your professionalism, caring, and love of the job and our community.

To Sheriff Jones, and the other supervisors I have worked for over the last several years, thank you for your support of my first amendment rights by allowing me to run this page. There are many cops who do not work for a boss who would allow them to run a social media page like mine. I specifically remember reaching out to you after my open letter to Mayor Kevin Johnson went viral, and was expecting you to have me shut down my social media pages, but you read what I wrote and told me that not only did I have the first amendment right to free speech, but that I had also done so without violating any department policies or dragging the department into it.

Sheriff Jones, I also want to thank you for your steadfast support of the men and women who serve under you on a daily basis, and by extension, the men and women of other law enforcement agencies in the area, who have not always had the support of their own leadership. While you and I have not always agreed on policy issues, your outspoken support of law enforcement in general has been very reassuring, and this goes for members of those other local agencies who have specifically told me how much they appreciate and respect you for that support. Law enforcement is the favorite punching bag of some of the local media outlets, and you have always stood strong to defend us, and we all appreciate that, no matter the color of the uniform we wear.

So, as I close one chapter of my life and open another, I am met with feelings of pride, joy, sorrow, anticipation, angst, worry, loss, but most of all, hope. Hope for a better future for my wife, myself, and most importantly, for my kids. Now I get to make sure my kids will grow up in a state that respects individual rights, freedoms, and most importantly, is pro-America, the greatest country to ever grace this planet.

For any other cops out there who recently retired or are retiring soon, I found this article on Police One to offer some very good insight on what to expect.

If you have been around AR-15s for any length of time, you have probably encountered guns that were either over or under gassed. Guns that cycle too fast, or guns that are over gassed / under buffered, will eventually beat themselves up and wear parts out faster. Guns that run too slowly, or are under gassed / over buffered, will not run properly and will suffer ejection or feeding issues, or both.

Fine Tuning With Buffers

Most experienced AR users are aware that buffers for ARs come in several different weights and the buffer system also has a number of options (carbine, rifle and now A5). All of those changes in the buffer system are designed to get the gun to run at the correct speed.

There are positives and negatives to this system. It is quick and easy to swap buffers, but the heavier the buffer, the more they cost. Unless you have a large selection of different weight buffers laying around, trying different buffers until you find the right one can be an expensive proposition.

Another negative is that as buffer weights increase, so does your reciprocating mass. While more reciprocating mass generally ensures the gun will continue to run as it gets dirtier, it also has the downside of making the gun harder to keep on target.

Again, everything is a tradeoff.

Another Option

But there is another option, a different way of fine tuning the gun, one that does not change your reciprocating mass and one that you only need buy once. That is by going with an adjustable gas block. This allows you to fine tune the gas system and allows you to choose your buffer weight without affecting how the gun will run.

In the world of adjustable gas blocks, most of them operate on the same principle. They shrink the size of the opening that sends the gas down your gas tube. Most that is except for the ones made by Superlative Arms.

Superlative Arms gives you two options for how to handle the excess gas. They let you do the same thing as the others and just limit how much gas can get through the hole. But they also give you the option of venting the extra gas outside of the gun instead of keeping the excess gas in the system.

How much of a difference does that actually make? Not a clue, but I can tell you it absolutely works.

What If You Prefer Piston Guns?

Well, if you are like me and you lean toward piston guns, Superlative Arms has got you covered. Their piston gas block adjusts in the exact same manner as their DI version, but instead of sending gas rearward, it moves a piston instead.

Another way to support my work here is to support my sponsors, several of whom are now offering discounts to people referred to them by 2A Cops.

Their piston kit is obviously more expensive than their DI block, but that is because it includes a whole lot more. It comes with the gas block, the piston, a bolt carrier, a bushing for your upper receiver and the needed tools.

The only caveat is that the installation process for the piston system is a bit more involved than the DI version. Not only are there more parts, but depending on the version you get, you might need to drill some dimples in your barrel for the set screws on the gas block.

I can tell you from personal experience, if you don’t dimple the barrel enough, the gas block will end up moving, especially if you run it on something equipped with an FRT trigger, so do it right the first time.

The video below is some footage of the Superlative Arms uppers running on my FRT equipped lower, footage I am prevented from including in my YouTube video.

The Verdict

Both versions of the Superlative Arms adjustable gas blocks did exactly what they are supposed to do, and they did it under the harshest circumstances I could subject them to. After getting them adjusted properly, both ran flawlessly mag dump after mag dump on a lower equipped with an RFT trigger. Neither gun was cleaned during the entire testing process and other than when I first lubed them, using lubricant from Aegis Gun Care, no lube was added once testing began.

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I was able to fine tune both guns to run exactly the same despite being different operating systems. That fine tuning allowed me to get the guns running as softly as I could while maintaining excellent reliability. I cannot ask more of an adjustable system than that.

If you are looking to fine tune your AR, whether or not you want it to be a DI gun or a piston gun, you would be hard pressed to find a better option than those offered by Superlative Arms.

In the world of AR triggers, there are a metric crap ton of available options. They range in price starting at about $30 for a generic mil-spec single stage and they go all the way up to $600+ for some of the newest, nicest forced reset triggers. Somewhere near the middle of that range, coming in right around $250+/-, is the king of the AR trigger - Geissele.

Geissele truly does make some of the finest AR triggers on the market, but not everyone wants to cough up that kind of money for a trigger. I used to be one of those guys, and I have tried a lot of less expensive triggers over the years.

Some were decent, some were not, but none of them came close to feeling or functioning remotely like a Geissele. Knowing that, most of my SHTF rifles are all equipped with a Geissele trigger, and my favorite of those is triggers is the SD-C. I chose that trigger because it is a two-stage trigger with a pull weight suited for combat (as opposed to competition), and because I like flat triggers which the SD-C has.

However, just because I have a bunch of Geissele triggers in my guns does not mean I have stopped looking at alternatives. I recently tried a couple of two-stage triggers from Schmid Tool and I have been duly impressed.

Many of you probably have a perplexed look on your face and are saying to yourself “from who?” Schmid Tool is a company whose parts you have likely used, but had idea you were. Schmid Tool makes OEM parts for a number of other companies, companies whose name you do know, companies like Aero Precision (2-stage), Bravo Company Manufacturing, Palmetto State Armory, Sons of Liberty Gun Works and others.

In fact, a great number of the mil-spec triggers out there are produced by Schmid Tool. If you look at the trigger or hammer in your AR and it has an “S” in a square box on the side of it, that is a Schmid Tool part. (see photo)

Not long ago, Schmid started selling their parts under their own brand name. While you cannot buy directly from them, there are several retailers, both online and brick and mortar who sell their parts, including the store I work at 3 days a week “to keep me out of trouble.”

While Schmid was already selling their two-stage trigger under other manufacturers names, all of those triggers had traditional curved triggers, and were set up with specifications from those particular brands. Now that Schmid is coming out of the shadows, they introduced a new flat face two-stage trigger of their own specs. It is available in three finishes: nickel boron, phosphate and DLC. I chose DLC for the color and the slickness of the finish.

Cosmetically speaking, I like the looks of the Schmid Tool straight trigger quite a bit, perhaps even more so than I do my favorite Geissele. But looks are of minimal consequence when it comes to an AR trigger. The more important part is how does it perform?

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Well, I am happy to report the flat Schmid Tool two-stage trigger performs phenomenally. With my finger on the middle of the trigger shoe, the first stage take up is probably a hair under 2mm and the first stage pull weight averaged 2lbs 6.4ozs on my Lyman digital trigger pull gauge. At the end of that 1^st stage, you hit a distinct wall. Pressing through that wall averaged another 1lb 5.9ozs, which let off with a pretty clean break and maybe another 1mm or less of trigger travel.

The let off of the Schmid is not quite as crisp as a Geissele, which in my experience have very little travel once you hit the wall at the second stage, but the Schmid is definitely a step above many other AR triggers on the market, including some that cost significantly more.

Speaking of cost, the DLC Schmid two-stage can be found selling for $129-175, depending on where you find it. The nickle boron version sells for about the same price, while the phosphate version can be had for around $30 less.

While I don’t expect anyone to replace their Geissele triggers with one from Schmid Tool, people looking to upgrade from a mil-spec, especially those having trouble coughing up $250 for a Geissele, should definitely give the Schmid Tool two-stage triggers some consideration. They are a fantastic trigger for the price.

Just over a month ago I watched a TFBTV video on YouTube about a new gun that Springfield Armory was going to be releasing called the Kuna. James Reeves tried to get as much info on the gun as he could, but the Springfield reps were pretty tight lipped. The sample gun they were looking at was chambered in .40S&W, but they said it was going to be offered in 9mm. I love me a good 9mm sub-gun, so I was excited to see something new in that category.

But when would we actually see it? I have found in the decade plus that I have been attending SHOT Show, manufacturers love to announce new guns, but then we wait a year or three, or more, before we ever see the gun. Based on this history, I was not expecting to see the Kuna until next year at the very earliest. Instead, here we are barely a month later and the Kuna is hitting the shelves here in the US, and I am lucky enough to have one in my grubby, stupidly large hands.

What is it?

The Kuna is a compact, lightweight, 9mm, roller delayed, semi-auto sub-gun built by HS Produkt in Croatia. It is being sold in the US as a pistol and is available with or without a brace. If you choose the braced version, it comes with a Strike Industries side folding brace. The included brace is very solid and the hinge lockup is excellent. However, the styling of the brace is very, well, Strike Industries in appearance, so some people will love it, and others are going to hate it.

All of the controls on the Kuna are fully ambidextrous, aside from the folding, non-reciprocating charging handle, but it is easily swapped from one side of the gun to the other. The gun comes with two (2) magazines, which is good as they are a proprietary magazine design. Additional mags will set you back approximately $25 each, and they should hopefully hit the shelves by the time the gun is released. If you don’t fancy the grip that comes on it, no sweat as the Kuna takes standard AR grips. That said, the included grip is actually quite nice with good texture and a more vertical angle than I am used to seeing on production guns.

The gun breaks apart into two main pieces; an upper and a lower. The two halves are held together with captive takedown pins, much like an AR. The lower is all polymer and very light weight, but there is a metal chassis in it in which the trigger and hammer are located. The controls are all metal, aside from the safety levers. For those wondering (just like I was) no, the trigger is not AR compatible. Looks wise, it appears more similar in design to the trigger in a CZ Bren 2 than that of an AR.

The upper receiver is a single piece of extruded aluminum that extends from the butt of the gun to the tip of the forend with a full length Picatinny rail on the top. Buried inside that Picatinny rail are folding backup iron sights. The barrel is free floated inside the forend and is mounted in a trunnion at the chamber end that also incorporates the front takedown pin holes.

There is very minimal space on the forend of the Kuna, which is not really surprising considering it only has a 5.5” barrel. In fact, there is so little space that there is not enough room for me to run a handstop (such as a BCM KAG) like I do on just about every gun. They must have known this would be an issue as they shaped the front edge of the lower receiver such that it functions perfectly in the same manner. The lower portion of the forend does have one and a half M-Lok slots, so if you like to run a vertical grip on your SBR’d sub-guns, you should have room for that. The sides of the forend do offer two full M-Lok slots which gave me just enough room to mount a light and keep the tape switch wire out of the way of the ejection port.

Enough about the bits and bobbles already. How does it shoot?

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Shooting Impressions

Well, I am happy to say that it shoots very nice. One of my favorite (until now) guns to shoot from personal collection has been my CZ Scorpion. It is my baby, and I have done a lot to that gun over the years. The Kuna is very likely to unseat the Scorpion and replace it as my backpack gun. Due to the roller delayed operation, it shoots noticeably softer than the Scorpion, it is smaller, lighter and more accurate.

The Kuna trigger is not horrible, but it is definitely not great either. Pull weight is good, but trigger travel could be better. It has about ¼” of nearly resistance free take up where you hit a wall. Pull through that wall and you get about 1/3” of creep before let off, and then you get about 1/8” of overtravel. According to my Lyman digital trigger pull gauge, my Kuna averaged a 5lb 2oz trigger pull weight. It is a very serviceable trigger, which I did quickly become accustomed to, but it is nowhere near as nice as a Geissele AR trigger, or the Timney that I put in my Scorpion. (Side note: the Timney Scorpion trigger is freaking amazing!)

On my initial outing with the Kuna, I put 220 rounds through it in bone stock form without any issues. I shot 115 grain Magtech steel case, 124 grain STV Scorpio, 124 grain CCI Blazer brass, and 147 grain Winchester white box hollow points and it chugged right along without a hitch.

Time To Gear It Up

For the next range session, I added a Yankee Hill Machine R9 suppressor and a Sig Sauer Foxtrot MSR compact light. I swapped out the factory pistol grip for a Kung Fu by Die Free Co. and after my Form 1 was approved, I replaced the brace with the new Haga Defense / A3 Industries HDA3 stock that I recently reviewed right here.

With the new hardware installed, I headed back to the range. The Kuna shot fantastic with the can installed. We ran a number of different loads through it, including some 140 grain S&B subsonic ammo. It was quiet and the addition of the can did not have any effect on the ejection pattern or the perceived recoil no matter which load we ran through it. I do need to note though, most of the ammo on this trip was 115 grain Magtech steel case.

A Couple Hiccups Encountered

At about 328 rounds suppressed, I encountered a malfunction - a failure to feed. It occurred when I got down to the last 2 rounds in the magazine. I cleared that malfunction, and as I cleared it, I noticed the follower in the magazine was sticking. I moved on, put in the other full mag and continued shooting, only to encounter the exact same malfunction when I got down to the last 2 rounds in that mag. This repeated several more times before I finally decided to disassemble a mag and see what was going on.

It turns out to be that when firing the gun suppressed, the added back pressure pushed more and more of the burnt powder, carbon and other gunk back into the action, and into the magazines. This is totally normal when running any gun suppressed. To compound this issue, the Magtech steel cased ammo we were using is pretty dirty stuff.

I attempted to clean the mags, both inside and out, with a rag to get the gun back into action, but I did not have any cleaning solvent or good brushes so my efforts were in vain. We packed it up and headed home for the day.

Once home, I spent 20 minutes gutting and cleaning the magazines until they were practically spotless. I examined the design and found that the follower could easily tilt fore and aft a bit in the mag body, which I feel might be part of the problem. When dirty, the follower started to drag on the dirt in the mag body causing it to tilt and lock up. A follower with longer “legs” on it might resist tilting more, and a slightly stronger mag spring could possibly be the cure.

Once cleaned, I reassembled the magazines and they both appeared to be functioning like new again. We will find out for sure if that fixed the issues on the next range outing.

Hiccups Cured

The next trip to the range went without a hitch. We fired another 544 rounds through the gun, with a suppressor on it, without any hint of an issue. We did however avoid any of the Magtech steel cased ammo, instead sticking with either S&B 140 grain subsonic or the Scorpio 124 grain supers.

It would appear that the malfunctions I encountered were a combination of dirty ammo, the suppressor, and potentially those design issues with the magazines that I noted earlier. Whatever the cause, I am glad to report it did not resurface.

On this range outing, we brought along four other 9mm sub-guns to compare to the Kuna. Those consisted of a heavily modified CZ Scorpion Evo3 S1 SBR, a PSA AK-V pistol, an HK SP5 SBR, and a Daniel Defense PCC pistol. Rob (the owner of Boise Black Rifle) and I took turns shooting the Kuna and one of the other guns back to back to get an immediate comparison of the felt recoil. We both agreed that the Kuna had a much lighter recoil impulse than any of the other guns except for the SP5. The HK definitely had the lightest recoil, but the Kuna was not far behind. It is most definitely worth noting that for the price of one SP5, you can almost buy three Kunas.

We wrapped up this third range trip experiencing zero malfunctions. In total, we put 1,243 rounds through the gun over three different trips to the range. Nearly 1,000 of those rounds were fired with a suppressor installed.

Accuracy

In terms of accuracy, the Kuna actually surprised me. It is a very accurate gun. When zeroing the kuna at 40 yards, I had a number of groups with rounds touching. That is something none of my other guns in this category have ever done. Near the end of the testing, I was shooting at my hostage taker steel targets from 40 yards, standing and unsupported, and I was having no trouble hitting the 4” hostage taker swinger. I can’t speak for other samples, but I would put my Kuna’s accuracy on par with any other gun in the category, including those priced far higher.

Final Thoughts

With an MSRP of $1149, the Kuna is priced extremely competitively. Despite that lower price, the Kuna offers more than just about any other gun in that price range. In fact, I like the Kuna so much that it is going to replace my beloved Scorpion as my backpack gun.

The only thing to keep in mind with the Kuna, at least at this point, is do not run dirty ammo through it as it could lead to magazine feeding issues. If you shoot clean ammo through it, you will love this thing. If you are in the market for a 9mm sub-gun, you owe it to yourself to give the Kuna a long, hard look.

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It is not often that I get excited about a new stock hitting the market, but when I saw the HDA3 stock, I was enthusiastic to say the least. The HDA3 is a combined effort from Haga Defense and A3 Industries (formerly A3 Tactical). As a longtime fan of the Bushmaster ACR, the cosmetic resemblance of the HDA3 is one of the reasons I was so excited about it. That was until I got the HDA3 in my hands.

While I absolutely love the looks of the HDA3, I am even more impressed by just how incredibly well built this stock is. As an owner of other A3 stocks, I already knew they made great products so my expectations were high, but this thing legitimately blew me away.

Before I dive too deep into this, it is important to note that the version of the HDA3 that I got is the “Universal 1913” version. It will mount to any gun with a 1913 stock interface. Because of this universality, which I wanted specifically so I could try the stock on a number of different guns, it might look a bit odd on a couple of the guns I tried it on. If cosmetic appearance is important to you, which if we are being honest it is to all of us, fear not – they likely make a direct fit version for whatever gun you want to put it on. The list of direct fit firearms, for a product just hitting the market, is impressive.

I have several rifles with stocks that are similar in appearance. I have the F5 stock on a couple of Jakls, and I have another with a B&T stock on it. I like both of those stocks, but they do have their own drawbacks as well. The F5 has a reputation for being a bit flimsy and the adjustable cheek riser does not like to stay in the upper position. As for the B&T, I am not a fan of the length of pull adjustments because it requires two hands to operate.

The HDA3 is better than both of those two. It is extremely solid. No matter what you have the length of pull set to, there is no discernible wiggle to it. That is likely due to the extruded aluminum frame that lies at the heart of the stock. The length of pull adjustment is easily accomplished with one hand, and the controls for that are metal on metal, so they are much more solid than stocks with polymer controls. The cheek riser has 3 different height settings, which are selected but depressing the button on the right side. Like the rest of the stock, the cheek riser is extremely solid.

The only negative I can find with the HDA3 when compared to other stocks of similar design is the weight, and this is a minor negative at that. The HDA3 weighs a whopping 2 ounces more than the F5. Unless you are one of those people who measures the weight of their gun in grams, you won’t notice the weight difference, but you will absolutely notice the superior build quality.

If you are thus far diggin’ on the HDA3 like I am, but you don’t want to Form 1 your pistol, don’t fret. They sell the HDA3 in two different versions – as a stock and as a brace. The brace version uses your choice of buffer tube brace end like the Gear Head Works Tailhook or A3’s own Steady-Brace.

At $350, the HDA3 is not cheap, but you absolutely get what you pay for, and you are not locked in to one gun only. If you buy it for a gun that you later get rid of, but you want to keep the stock, A3 has you covered. While not currently available, they plan to sell the HDA3 model specific adapters separately allowing you to swap your stock (or brace) over to a new adapter for use on a different gun.

Along the same lines for those considering the brace version of the HDA3, it will be upgradeable to a stock with the purchase of a single part. Again, this option is not available yet but will be before too long.

The HDA3 stock can be purchased directly from either A3 Industries or Haga Defense, or from one of their authorized retailers. Currently it is only available in black, but FDE, OD green and gray will be available in the future.

The HDA3 is such a high quality piece of furniture, I am expecting to see it appearing as a factory option on firearms at some point in the future.

They continue to claim there is nothing wrong with the gun, quite adamantly in fact.

Ignore the fact that they recalled them all early on because they were firing when dropped, even though they said they weren’t. But they fixed that, even though it was not an issue.

Then people started reporting that the guns were firing on their own, while holstered. In response, Sig denied it.

Then videos started showing up of it happening – holstered guns going off all on the own when bumped. Lots of videos, from all around the country. Cops, regular folks, even a competition shooter.

Sig continues to deny it. Instead they started blaming the users claiming the guns were not properly holstered.

Except the videos clearly show the guns were in fact holstered with the retention on the holsters secured.

Sig continues to deny it, and changes their approach. Their new plan is to blame the holsters.

You know, because Safariland holsters are a bad design. So bad that nearly every law enforcement agency in the US uses them, and so does a large portion of the US military.

Oddly enough, we are not hearing reports of any other gun randomly discharging while holstered in the very same holsters in which the Sig is discharging all on its own.

It has gotten so bad, some Police Academies have banned the P320 from their ranges.

Ironically, one of my coworkers at the gun store was a Navy corpsman and was assigned to a couple different Marine units during his time in the military. He personally witnessed a Sig P320 discharge while holstered when a couple of guys were goofing around and the butt of the gun got kicked while it was in the holster.

I have made two videos in the past discussing this issue. In response, I have been called all sorts of names.

I have no skin in this game. I do not work for Sig, nor any other gun manufacturer. I am not part of the anti-gun propaganda machine. I get no monetary benefit from speaking negatively about the P320.

Sig has paid out millions to people who have sued them over the P320 firing while holstered, yet Sig continues to claim that there is nothing wrong with the gun.

Sadly, lots of people with bullet holes in them disagree.

I guarantee there will be people responding to this saying they own one and it has never fired on its own. Congratulations, that proves absolutely nothing.

I have owned six Subarus over the last 25 years, and we currently have three in our stable. Exactly none of my Subarus ever developed a head gasket leak. That does not negate the fact that Subaru has a well known issue with head gaskets leaking.

I am not a Sig hater. I carried a Sig for half of my career. I personally own three Sig handguns and have no concerns about any of them. However, to be perfectly honest, the way Sig is treating this situation is likely to turn me into Sig hater.

As a side note to Sig, claiming something as fact does not actually make it a fact.

The ACLU recently tried doing something similar. Doing so proves nothing, and just makes you look silly when there is ample evidence to the contrary.

If you are not from California, you likely assume based on CA’s insane web of gun control laws, that CA also has extremely strict laws when it comes to self-defense. As a former CA cop, I can tell you that is not the case. In fact, CA’s self-defense laws are actually better than those here in my new state of Idaho.

However, that may be a thing of the past. At least one CA assembly member Rick Chavez Zbur, a democrat (shocked face 😲), wants to change that. On February 21^st, he introduced Assembly Bill 1333 (AB-1333) which seeks to rewrite the CA penal code section that defines Justifiable Homicide (PC197).

As PC197 currently stands, a person in CA is justified in using deadly force to stop an attempted homicide, an attack likely to produce great bodily injury, or to prevent certain felonies (as defined by case law). It also allows a person to use deadly force to prevent a felonious entry into their home committed “by violence or surprise.”

The first two of those are pretty clear. If you see someone stabbing another person, you are covered. If they are beating them with a bat, no worries. Attempted murder and an assault likely to commit great bodily injury are pretty easy to picture. The part that is not as clear are the certain felonies.

An armed robbery is one of those felonies where, currently, a person is authorized to use deadly force in order to prevent it. A woman defending herself from being raped is covered. Shooting a kidnapper about to flee with their victim, easily justifiable, now. Someone boots open your front door in the middle of the night and bursts into your home and you smoke them – currently, you are good to go.

However, if Zbur has his way, those would no longer be covered. His proposed rewrite of the law limits justified use of deadly force to only attempted murder and commission of an assault likely to result in great bodily injury.

That violent maniac who just smashed his way into your house in the middle of the night, I guess you have to wrestle him or run away and call the cops, hoping they get there in time to help. That guy just kidnapped your 6 year old daughter and is fleeing with her, better hope you can run fast and that he will listen to you when you tell him to stop, because Zbur says you should not to be able to kill him to save your kid.

He even takes a shot at the cops, because he just would not be a good democrat unless he craps on the cops…

Currently subsection (4) of PC197 is pretty well directed at covering cops in the commission of their duties, but it also covers the general public as well. It covers use of deadly force when attempting to capture a felon. His change to this section? Just completely eliminate it.

As if all of that was not enough, he takes it one final step further. In AB-1333, Zbur introduces a duty to retreat for ALL situations not occurring inside your home.

(b) Homicide is not justifiable when committed by a person in all of the following cases:

(1) When the person was outside of their residence and knew that using force likely to cause death or great bodily injury could have been avoided with complete safety by retreating.

That’s right folks, if you are at the park and some maniac comes after you with a knife, you can no longer shoot him in order to save your life. You must first attempt to run away.

Why should you care if you don’t live in CA? History has shown that what starts in CA has a way of migrating to other states. Pro-criminal insanity like what is being proposed by Zbur must be stopped everywhere it rears it’s head. And not just stopped, but smashed into oblivion and ridiculed endlessly.

If you live in CA, get off your butts and do everything you can to get people like Zbur booted out of office. Your lives and the lives of your kids quite literally may depend on it.