Head Cold Woes...

...and yes, I am still struggling with the head cold I've had since my tour of the Pacific Rim. Man, I had rather have ebola — at least it would be over quickly! A head cold just drags and drags so I sound the day running at about 25%. Plus, I ran out of the bootleg Actifed I collected in England and Brazil, which worked better than anything else. Sigh...I so have to get over this before SHOT!!!!

Will have my appearance schedule at SHOT up next week. Of course, Marshal and I, along with Ed Head, will be posting daily updates from the Floor.

Ruger has jumped ahead of SHOT and released an aggressive new products schedule. Marshal, Ed Head and I got I believe the first 3 1911 Commanders coming off the Ruger lines. It is a great addition to the line, which is I believe the best value in an American-made 1911 out there. Ed'll be doing a comprehensive report for DRTV.

LC380

Couple of guns on the list caught my eye. The LC380, an LC9 in .380, is kind of an interesting development. Here's my take...the huge success of the .380 bought a flood of new people into concealed carry. Gunmakers followed in a couple of years with the introduction (actually, re-introduction) of the mini-9mm, which appeared to be a perfect upgrade path for the new .380 CCW holders. Except, as we've noted repeatedly here, on the podcast and on the television shows, mini-9mms are essentially experts' guns. They recoil, some fiercely...if you want to shoot them good, you've got to shoot them a lot. An addition point was is that with the flood of .380s, ammunition manufacturers stepped up with superb .380 self-defense ammo. I have said before that if I have to carry a .380, I'm good with that. In fact, I carry and LCP with Corbon DPX every day (it's in my pocket as I write this).

So we get a strange secondary niche...people who like the slightly larger size of the mini-9mms but are comfortable with the .380 as a self-defense caliber. I generally like the LC9...I recently had mine overhauled, but I haven't had a chance to pick it up yet. The LC9 is a little large for the pocket, although I carried it in the bigger cargo pants pockets a couple of summers ago. Where it really shines is in an IWB because it's very flat, a good thing.

.480 Ruger and .475 Linebaugh

I'm also glad to see a couple of Super Redhawks, including the snubby Alaskan, in .480 Ruger. I always thought the .480 was a pretty cool cartridge. It got labeled pretty quickly as the .475 Linebaugh "Special," with the same relationship as .44 Magnum and .44 Special, but that was never really fair. The .480 approached the power of the .475, which is right out there on the ragged edge of being able to hold onto, and outstripped the .454 Casull. My friend Il Ling New whapped a Cape buffalo with one a couple of years back and it fell right down. I thought the cartridge was doomed to drifting away, but I'm glad to see Ruger staying with it. Now, gentlemen, if you could just give me a 5-shot Super Blackhawk in .480...