Handguns

GUN TESTS GRADE: B $330 This was a recent in-stock price at ClassicFirearms.com. Also, the Tisas was in stock at more than a few outlets in February 2021. Our new-in-the-box example at the pawn shop sold for $299 out the door. This makes the PX-9 a very good buy. Tisas has manufactured a near-clone of […]

GUN TESTS GRADE: A- (BEST BUY) $400 The price reflects an in-stock price in mid-February 2021 at ClassicFirearms.com. The pistol is often found in gun shops at $439 average. The SAR9 seems to be more available than the other two, but this may change any moment. A rater found a dozen SAR9 pistols in a […]

In the April 2021 issue of Gun Tests Magazine, Contributing Editor Robert Sadowski compared three snubnose revolvers for possible concealed-carry use. To see how three...

GUN TESTS GRADE: A- $705 Next up is the Tracker 692, which costs $200 more than the RIA and offers the most versatility of any the revolvers in this match up because of it multi-caliber capability. The 692 fires 38 Special and 357 Magnums with one cylinder and 9mm with a second cylinder. A button […]

GUN TESTS GRADE: A $599 The AL9.0 is imported by RIA from Czech Point, the U.S. location for Czech Small Arms located in Czech Republic. We tested a 357 Magnum version last year and found it to be a capable and accurate revolver. The same can be said with the AL9.0 9mm variant. The AL9.0 […]

GUN TESTS GRADE: A $1129 Nearly double the cost of the RIA, and a step up in performance, is the S&W 986. The 986 comes out of S&W’s Performance Shop, and it looks and performs like S&W took some thought about creating a 9mm revolver. The 968 is built on S&W’s L-frame, which was originally […]

GUN TESTS GRADE: A (OUR PICK) $585 If we had a product that lent itself to further development and kept selling, we would ride that horse for all its worth. Springfield has done just that with the eXtreme Duty (XD) series. The company secured the licensing rights to the HS 2000 concept from HS Produkt […]

GUN TESTS GRADE: B+ $823 Until the acceptance of the SIG Sauer P320 in 2017, the U.S. military had survived and thrived during most of the 20th century with only two primary handguns in its inventory. We recognize that other pistols were used at different times by different units, but the Colt 1911 and Beretta […]

GUN TESTS GRADE: A- $523 One of our testers has a Smith & Wesson Model 559 in his safe. That pistol is a second-generation version of the S&W Model 59, itself a descendant of the S&W Model 39. It was the result of the U.S. Military’s pistol tests in the 1950s. The U.S. Ordnance Department […]

GUN TESTS GRADE: A (OUR PICK) $579 As determined by figures released by the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), Ruger is now No. 1 among American firearms producers. The American series is their latest product in the defensive-handgun category. To make its capacity more in line with the others, we got a […]

GUN TESTS GRADE: A- $479 Smaller stature, injury, and age can bring the best of us to a point where firearms can be difficult to manipulate. Magazines can be hard to load. Slides become hard to cycle. Technique can obviate some of those problems, but not all of them and not always. A few years […]

GUN TESTS GRADE: B+ (BEST BUY) $306 Taurus has a long-standing and well-deserved reputation for producing inexpensive firearms. In their case, inexpensive does not necessarily mean cheap. They seem to find a way to pack a lot of features into a firearm that doesn’t cost so much. We know any number of devotees of their […]