January 2010

DIG v. GPS: Are Gas-Piston ARs Worth Their Premium Prices?
New AR-15 shooters—and there are hundreds of thousands of them in the last five years—face a bewildering set of choices when they consider buying a new rifle. Chambering (what’s the difference between 223 Rem. and 5.56 NATO, and can the rounds be shot interchangeably?), features (rails, grips, handles, sights), and even color (basic black, sand, olive drab, or multiple color tones) are among the decisions the new buyer must ponder. And, of course, there’s price, and now, gas mechanisms. The appearance of gas-piston systems in ARs has been variously hailed as a game-changer and as nothing special. Gun Tests readers have been asking for tests of gas-piston system (GPS) guns, and we are nearing the completion of head-to-head tests of several of those guns. But is standard AR direct-impingement-gas (DIG) operation going by the wayside?

Fun Rimfire Semiauto Handguns From Ruger, Magnum Research
In this evaluation we will test two guns that are difficult to categorize. They are listed as being pistols but some people call them hand rifles. The guns in question are the $380 Ruger Charger CHR22-10, and the $695 Magnum Research Picuda MLP22BN. Each is a 22LR semiautomatic with 10-inch barrel, and with an action based on Ruger’s aluminum 10/22 rifle action. Both guns plant the action inside a laminate stock with an extended grip that is flared at the butt to stabilize contact with the ground or shooting bench. Neither gun arrived with sights, but they were fitted with a Weaver scope mount. Each gun fed from a 10--round rotary magazine made by Ruger. The Magnum Research Picuda was perhaps more radical in appearance due to a graphite barrel and extra machine work atop the receiver. Our tests will compare the performance and reliability of each gun, and we’ll try to determine if one manufacturer or the other had the better recipe for this hybrid weapon.

Trap Shotguns on a Budget: Browning, Ithaca, and H&R
Of all the clay-shooting sports, the game of trap is perhaps the least understood. But the concept is simple. Target presentation is based on the taking of a bird as if it were flushed from the ground. The name trap was taken from the original mechanism, which was as simple as releasing a live bird from a box or trap placed on the ground. The practice of using live birds then gave way to tossing glass balls as targets. (We pity the persons who were charged with cleaning up the broken glass.) According to the Krause publication, the Gun Digest Book of Trap and Skeet Shooting by Christian and Sapp, the glass targets were replaced with clay 'birds' some time in the 1880s. Today, the clay birds are thrown by machine. A voice-operated release system that responds to the shooter’s verbal command is the latest innovation.