Rifleman Report: “Piles Of Guns”

While sport shooting and hunting are still undertaken in many countries around the world, our staffers don’t often have the opportunity to test new guns in places as far away and mystical as Australia, but that’s exactly where Executive Editor Evan Brune went with the new rifle that is the subject of this month’s cover story.

In “The Hammerli Force B1: Swiss Heritage, German Engineering & All-American Versatility,” he recounts how the new biathlon-action, multi-chambering rimfire, which feeds from Ruger 10/22 rotary magazines no less, performed against the army of rabbits that has invaded Down Under. As I looked at his photos from the trip, however, despite being in awe of that great land’s beauty, I couldn’t help but remember that its people have largely been deprived of any rights to possess arms for the purpose of self-protection.

The Hammerli is but one of many new firearms set to take center stage at the 153rd NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits, our country’s largest celebration of individual liberty, set for the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas, May 17-19. Among the many other examples that our staff has already seen, handled and shot, a rundown of the 25 most intriguing appears in “Friends, Firearms And Freedom: New Guns & Gear 2024.” It is a wide-ranging slate that reveals several interesting trends in the marketplace for the coming year and confirms that America’s firearm industry is still strong and responsive to customer demands. You can also see videos of these and other new products at americanrifleman.org/newfor2024.

In a retrospective titled “General Officers’ Pistols,” Field Editor Bruce Canfield lays out the history of handguns issued to arm and honor those of high rank in the U.S. military services. If you’ve ever seen an old Colt Model 1903 or 1908 and wondered if its provenance included that tradition, or if the custom continues today, this story will help answer those questions.

Of course, as is the case each month, our regular departments contain all manner of interesting firearm-knowledge nuggets. Those include “Readers Write,” “Favorite Firearms” and “Q&A,” “Handloads” and “I Have This Old Gun ... .” And the latter two just happen to pertain to the Italian Carcano bolt-action rifle design first introduced in 1891 and since imported into this country in significant numbers. So, from the very newest guns to those more than 130 years old, we hope to have assembled an issue that you will find informative and entertaining.

Back to Australia for a moment, it’s important to realize that what has happened there, seen in the photo shown here, is a model for what anti-gun, anti-freedom factions hope to see in America some day: piles of guns, especially those suited for self-defense, rounded up and set for physical destruction as a means of disarming and, ultimately, controlling the general populace. That is, of course, the antithesis of what our Founding Fathers foresaw for America and why they crafted the Second Amendment in such clear and undeniable language.

Conservative people, by nature, tend to avoid political fights—after all, they’re too busy building lives, families and businesses and paying their taxes—but our country has reached a point where those who value freedom have no choice but to become, and remain, involved in contests intended to ensure freedom. That, of course, is the main mission of your NRA. When it comes to the Second Amendment, there simply can be no equivocation, no backing away and no giving in. As the Constitution explicitly states, “… the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”