Metal Finishes: Bluing, Electroplating, and Spray-Coats Weather isn’t always kind to steel: rust never sleeps. For the first six centuries of its existence, guns also had to deal with corrosive residues, first from black powder residue forming sulphuric acid, then from salts from mercury-based primers. First gun finish was bluing, a form of carefully controlled surface oxidation.…
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Cerakote vs. Duracoat vs. Bluing. Fight! If you find yourself saying ‘never again’ every time you find a scratch on your firearm, it may be time to make good on your resolution before you add to your collection of inevitable blemishes again. While we all might dream of a manufacturer sped’d, fully nitride-coated firearm, few…
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How to Lighten the Load this Hunting Season Going hunting shouldn’t feel like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your back. But pairing things down to just essentials seems impossible when everything you’re taking is essential. Cutting down weight and traveling light is about making sacrifices, and hopefully not all of these sacrifices…
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What Game is in for Summer Season? When most people think of hunting, they think of walking through snow-covered forests or areas with bare trees looking for large game like deer or elk. While the grand prize of landing a deer is a dream kept for fall and winter. Hunting during the summer months has…
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Light Weight for the Summer: Range and Hunting Trips The classic American icon, the Tommygun, was heavy and overlong in the stock. Its inventor, Brigadier General John T. Thompson was an unusually tall man, and his invention was a great fit for the designer’s 6ft 3in frame. For the average man, less so. And even…
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4 Things MGS Learned from No Other Choice Train and Learn This past Memorial Day weekend, MGS was proud to sponsor the NOC Train and Learn event. While yes, it was an incredible opportunity to promote the school and a way that we could be involved teaching firearms instructors and other firearms professionals, it was…
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Competitive Shooting Sports: An Introduction In this month’s discussion I will introduce you to the world of shooting sports. Firearm shooting competitions have been around as long as firearms have been in existence. In the United States, in the late 1700’s “Turkey Shoots” were organized to test the abilities of the local population. The prize,…
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Competition Shooting: Compensated Vs Stock Firearms Some people might not care too much if their gardening tips or dinner recipes are being generated by Chat GTP, but when you’re researching firearm modifications, you need far more than a laundry list of data collected by AI. You need the voice of experience. You need wisdom. And…
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How Does Trap and Skeet Shooting Differ? Trap and skeet shooting are two clay shooting sports in which participants shoot moving clay targets in various conditions. These sports originated as practice rounds for gunsmiths to shoot without harming live birds. But due to the rise of animal rights, these practices have grown into their very…
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A Brief History of Shooting Competitions and Firearms Competitive marksmanship predates not only firearms but bows and arrows: games like bocce, skittles, and cornhole emphasize accuracy, while discus, javelin, and hammer throwing emphasize range. By Medieval times, archery and crossbow competitions were famous enough to give rise to lore of Robin Hood and Wilhelm Tell. Unsurprisingly, those…
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