Commentary

Every December Gun Tests Magazine picks the best from a full year’s worth of tests and distills summary recommendations for readers, who often use them as year-end shopping guides. These “best of” choices are a mixture of the Gun Tests original evaluation and other information the staff compiles during the year.Additionally, the magazine selects the best type of firearm--pistol, revolver, shotgun, and rifle--for its “Best in Class” award.The “Best in Class” Revolver for 2009 was the Taurus Judge No. 4510TKR-3BUL 3-Inch 45 LC/410-Bore, $620. It was originally reviewed in the August 2009 issue.

WASHINGTON, D.C.--An innocuous story posted on GunReports.com on August 22 wound up on dozens of websites and YouTube videos last week as hundreds of gunowners publicly worried that the U.S. Government was planning to use 200 million rounds of 40-caliber ammunition to subdue its citizens.

Michael Bellesiles published in 2000 Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. Bellesiles, a tenured professor at Emory University, argued that the American culture of gun ownership grew not from the fight by American pioneers for individual liberty but an early-American Congressional mandate necessitated by the actual absence both of firearms and Americans’ proficiency with them.

Now this is funny. Santa and his Texas whitetail sleigh.

The BFR 22H10, code name Little Max in the Magnum Research brochure, is a single action only gun. To load the BFR you first open the loading gate. No manipulation of the hammer is needed to free the cylinder. Much like the Ruger single-action revolvers, the hammer stays safely in a down position.

The BFR strikes a chord. We would have to rate the workmanship of the BFR superior to the Taurus. We recommend it if you need a hunting iron without the recoil of the harder hitting calibers meant for bears and large game.

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Chris Cassidy, assistant director of communications at the American Constitution Society, posted a short item about how women's groups lobbying for abortion may wind up supporting gun-owners' rights in the McDonald v. Chicago Supreme Court case. He wrote:

“Shouldn't an army base be the last place where a terrorist should be able to shoot at people uninterrupted for 10 minutes? After all, an army base is filled with soldiers who carry guns, right? Unfortunately, that is not the case. Beginning in March 1993, under the Clinton administration, the army forbids military personnel from carrying their own personal firearms and mandates that 'a credible and specific threat against [Department of the Army] personnel [exist] in that region' before military personnel 'may be authorized to carry firearms for personal protection.'

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The United States Senate recently approved the FY2010 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Bill Conference Report, which included an amendment to protect the use of pocketknives.

As GunReports.com readers probably know, Senator Edward Moore 'Teddy' Kennedy died last week, and the government-licensed media's lionization of him filled airwaves all weekend. We here at GunReports.com send our heartfelt condolences to his wife and family.However, Teddy Kennedy was no friend to gun owners, and we will not overlook the damage he did to our civil liberties.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh recently wrote on his blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, that the North Carolina Supreme Court has just held in Britt v. State that some felons -- whose crimes are long in the past -- do have a constitutional right to bear arms, at least under the North Carolina Constitution.

Lynch Hummer, a $7.5 million Hummer facility in an upscale St. Louis suburb, has announced the opening of the world's first combined Hummer and firearms dealership.

Every summer at Camp Perry, Ohio, prior to the National Rifle and Pistol Trophy Matches, soldiers from the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit pass their shooting knowledge on to the next generation of American shooters at the Small Arms Firing School.

The school was instituted in 1918 by the Department of Defense and is conducted by the USAMU, along with assistance by members of the Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, and Army Reserve and National Guard.