Colt has always had a thing for snakes, at least when it comes to naming revolvers. When you look back to the glory years of Colt’s revolver manufacturing, it can be hard to tell if you’re visiting a serpentarium or a production catalog. In recent years they’ve reintroduced some of these classic models, or at least the names, with varying levels of success. These include the Cobra, King Cobra, Python, and Anaconda. But that’s little more than half of their legendary Seven Serpents. In 2024, Colt released their newest Snake Gun: The Viper. This is a small-frame, six-shot, .357 Magnum stainless steel, double-action revolver with fixed sights. It differs in a lot of ways from their original incarnation, which dates from the late 1970s. Let’s check it out. THE OG…
Wilson Combat got their start back when the 1911 was king, 9mm was for weenies, and plastic guns belonged to Barbie. They quickly carved out a nice niche for themselves, producing high-quality pistols. Not a company known to bend to trends, new releases could be considered on the conservative end. But new releases they still have. We found their new Wilson Combat SFT9 advanced enough to grace the cover of CON-CEALMENT Issue 35. For the uninitiated, SFT9 stands for Solid Frame, TRAK grip, chambered in 9mm. So, the SFT9 looks like a frame with interchangeable grips but, in reality, it’s milled from a solid piece of aluminum. This allows for a thinner grip than you’d expect. With a 4.25-inch barrel and all sharp edges blended, the SFT9 is definitely designed…
Everything about modern vehicle design is intended to make us feel safe and isolated from the outside world. And if we look back at history, we quickly realize it’s more than just a feeling — it’s backed by mountains of data. There’s been a 95-percent improvement regarding fatalities in the last hundred years because of new and better safety systems combined with significant advancements in medical technology; the vast majority of automobile accidents are now survivable. Yet, per the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the number of fatal accidents increased by 28-percent nationwide over the last several years. While percentages of survivability are useful when crafting public policy, they’re cold comfort for someone bleeding out on a boulevard — and anyone who has been driving for more than five years…
We’ve optimized a lot of guns in this column. But why stop there? We decided, for this installment, we’d look at one of the most critical pieces of gun adjacent equipment: the holster. In most cases, the ability to upgrade, or add and remove features, is essentially non-existent. Open box, remove holster. After that, what you get is what you get. Then again, Safariland active retention duty holsters are no ordinary holsters. Featuring scalable and combinable locking mechanisms, manual tension adjustment, and accessories all its own, Safariland’s line has become the de facto gold standard for law enforcement holsters and tactical holsters. While they don’t really fall into the category of concealable, they are ubiquitous among both armed professionals and training junkies alike, and perhaps the only holster line with…
It’s late on a Friday night (early on a Saturday morning, if we’re being honest). You’ve been hanging out with a few friends from the office at a local watering hole in the nightlife district to celebrate finishing up a grueling end-of-quarter report. Leaving the bar and heading for your car that you left in a pay-to-park lot with a live human attendant, you decide to take a shortcut down an alley. It’s late, it’s cold, it’s only a half a block off the main drag, and it’s a pretty good part of town. As you walk down the alleyway, a very sinister-looking dude with a drawn handgun held at his waistline rolls out away from the wall so that he’s facing you squarely from 21 feet away. Rather than…
If we travel back to the earliest days of handguns — or “hand gonnes” as they were known back in the days of knights and such — holsters weren’t really a thing. There two reasons for this. The first was that these things were often 2 feet long or more, with a big ol’ knob on the butt so you could flip it around and use it as a war club once you’d fired your one shot. The other was that they often had some sort of hook screwed right to the stock so you could just stuff it in your sash or sword belt. As handguns shrank from big wheel locks to smaller flintlocks and then percussion pieces, having an easy way to carry one on your person began…
It won’t win you any games of Rock, Paper, Scissors, but rubber is an attractive option if you want a target that lasts almost forever. It’s an older concept but benefits from newer materials. Essentially, Infinity Targets are sheets of kind of special rubber shaped into targets. The primary method of mounting them is with large clips. To “reset” the targets you spray paint them any color you want. Mount the target, shoot the target, paint the target. That simple. ON THE RANGE Infinity Targets are best mounted using simple clips. Each target comes with clips for mounting, but buying some extras off Amazon is a good idea since sooner or later you’ll put a round through it. Bases can be bought directly from Infinite Defense, but just about any…
These days, it seems that if you’re a gun maker and you don’t offer a 2011, you ain’t sh*t. Rather than follow the crowd, Kimber decided to put its own spin on the double-stack, 9mm, single-action-only formula, and we’re actually glad they did. Instead of being wedded to the 2011 magazine, the KDS9C manages to shave off a few millimeters from its grip dimensions by being built around a metal mag designed from the outset for the 9mm Luger cartridge, rather than swaging down a .45ACP tube. It’s the same tactic employed by Wilson Combat and their EDC X9 and SFT9 (see CONCEALMENT Issue 36), only at a lower price point. NUTS AND BOLTS Up top, the KDS9C uses a some-what traditional 1911-style slide. Purists will turn their noses up…
We carry guns because we expect that at some point we may need to use them. We don’t want to be caught unprepared when a bad guy is doing bad things to … whom, exactly? Using lethal force against another human being is a serious undertaking. Using guns defensively requires us to buy and learn how to use one, to carry it with us even though it may be inconvenient or uncomfortable, and to understand the legal consequences that may result. The costs — monetary and otherwise — can be quite high. Even a justified shooting can still result in getting arrested, needing to hire a lawyer, and having your name and face in the local news as “that person who shot someone.” This isn’t a positive for you or…
