SHOT Show 2017 Range Day Photos
The 2017 National Shooting Sport Foundation’s (NSSF) Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT Show) officially kicks off tomorrow and, as it has for years, today yielded the opportunity for members of the media and industry buyers to get hands-on trigger time with some of the newest and most innovative firearms and accessories that are hitting the shelves. The GunLink team was on hand from the opening shots through the last call so we could get first hand information and experience to pass along to those who were unable to make it out.
Check out the SHOT Show Industry Day at the Range photos below and keep an eye right here on the GunLink Blog and on the GunLink Forums for more details on our live-fire excursion into the new firearms market, from the new Hudson H9 pistol through the Smith & Wesson Performance Center M&P 10 modern sporting rifle chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor. Continue reading
GunLink Giveaway: FREE 6-Month Subscription to Firearms Guide Online!
As we have previously told our readers about, firearm mega-reference Firearms Guide made the jump from a DVD-based guide to an online cloud-based firearms reference guide with cross-platform compatibility. Already since then, the Firearms Guide has been making good on their promise to provide more frequent updates to the guide.
The Firearms Guide Online is a great reference that offers high-res photos, specifications, and blow-up diagrams of tens of thousands of firearms and we want to help share the guide with by giving out some FREE 6-Month Subscriptions to Firearms Guide Online!
Use the widget above to enter in a variety of ways:
- One entry for following @GunLink on Twitter
- One entry for following @FirearmsGuide on Twitter
- One entry for Visit & Like GunLink on Facebook
- One entry for commenting on this post about why you want the prize
- One entry per day for tweeting giveaway message
- Five entries for posting in the giveaway forum thread
We will give away two subscriptions this time around, with more to come shortly. Stay tuned!
Meet the GunLink Defensive Fighting Rifle SBR
How We Built Out Our Go-To Short Barreled Rifle
A short barreled rifle, while requiring some extra hoops to jump through to obtain (more or less depending on your filing method, now that 41F is in full effect), can be a valuable tool, offering numerous benefits over a full-length rifle as a defensive weapon.
As anyone who has had practical training can tell you, maneuvering through the hallways and rooms of your home to investigate a bump in the night is exponentially easier without those extra inches sticking out past your support hand. While firing any firearm indoors will likely lead to permanent hearing damage or loss, that risk can be substantially mitigated by using a suppressor. Putting a can on an AR can push OAL past 40″ on carbines or closer to 50″ on rifles – hardly maneuverable at all – while mounting one to an SBR might make it only as long as an unsuppressed rifle by itself. While those benefits really shine when clearing rooms and maneuvering through halls and doorways, the likelihood of having to use your AR to defend your home is relatively remote; however, there are also practical benefits. An SBR is lighter, shorter, and much easier to store and transport, both in terms of the space it takes up as well as the options for covert carry cases.
I have always been interested in NFA firearms and one of the things that you frequently hear from owners of such firearms is that one of the big joys of ownership is the ability to share them with others. Before jumping into the world of NFA, I always figured that this was nonsense and all of the fun came from the fact that one owned a machinegun, SBR, SBS, silencer or other fun, interesting weapon. After Team GunLink started “stamp collecting,” we realized that it is truly a pleasure to see the smiles on people’s faces when they shoot with them.
One of the NFA firearms that we most frequently take to the range and classes and post about on social media is an AR-type modern sporting rifle based SBR. Here is how we configured our go-to SBR – the GunLink Defensive (Fighting) Rifle – it’s GDFR.
GunLink Blog Reaches Milestone
The GunLink Blog has reached a milestone. We have successfully banged away at our keyboards enough to pass the quarter-million-words-published mark.
If each word were one mile long, you could stretch them out and reach the moon, even at apogee. Of course, if each one were $1USD, you could just buy a seat on a Virgin Galactic flight and get there quicker. If you had those dollars in the bank, the FDIC wouldn’t even insure all of them. On the other hand, if they were Turkish Lira, you could easily fit it in your pocket.
According to Oxford Dictionaries, we could have simply listed every distinct word in the English language and realized this same auspicious achievement. However, we like guns – and, if you are reading GunLink, you presumably have at least some passing interest in them as well – so we thought that everyone’s time would be better spent if we arranged a selection of those words in such a manner as to pique that interest.
If each of those 250,000 words was a firearm, it would almost be as many firearms as are illegally smuggled into Mexico each year – thanks in part to the DOJ, Eric Holder, and Fast & Furious. If they were rounds of ammunition, it would equal what this truck driver accidentally drove in to Juarez. If, again, each of those 250,000 words was a dollar, it would cover the amount that Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants for useless gun buybacks in violent gun-control mecca Chicago. It would also cover the amount of insurance that DC wants to require gun owners to carry or the pocket-change that Michael Bloomberg dropped to get a fellow gun-grabber elected. Despite their strict gun control, Australia has as many outlawed firearms in circulation as we have words published. Continue reading
Connect with Local Second Amendment Supporters on the States Forums
GunLink Local Discussion Boards Get a Makeover
The shooting community, and Second Amendment advocates in general, have always been a relatively tight-knit group. It is always refreshing to see the camaraderie between the good, honest people from all walks of life who show up to big events like the NRA Annual Meetings or the biannual machine gun shoots at Knob Creek and Big Sandy or industry events like SHOT Show. That camaraderie is perhaps even more evident on a smaller scale such as on a competition circuit, shooting club, or informal get-together of friends participating in the shooting sports.
In the political realm, the phrase “grassroots” is often bandied about (despite its invasion by “astroturf” movements) because, realistically, concerned individuals working together to effect change is what brings about real legislative changes. This can be seen in gun-rights rallies, letter writing campaigns, and other local pushes to contact representatives to ensure that vox populi is heard. These days, it is easier than ever to connect, thanks to the internet.
The GunLink Forums has had state-by-state forums for a few years now. Those local discussion boards have served a number of purposes including, for several years, acting as an online rallying point for members of a national gun rights organization. During that period, the boards were largely limited to locating members in your area and chit-chat, even that of a local nature, was kept to a minimum.
The states’ forums have recently undergone another facelift with much of the old restrictions now removed. Under the new format, the local boards are open for any kind of discussion you like (within reason and within the general forum rules, of course). Open for discussion are all things relevant to members in your area, including shooting events, news, elections, firearm legislation, meetups, links to your buy/sell/trade listings in the GunLink Marketplace, and just about anything else.
To get started, visit the Get Local forums, or find your state below. Continue reading
List Your Business in the GunLink Directory with this #CyberMonday Deal
This Monday – December 1st, 2015 – marks the 9th anniversary of #CyberMonday being a thing. Cyber Monday is a term dreamt up by some marketing team to boost sales in online stores hoping to compete with the brick-and-mortar boon of Black Friday. What that means in practice, though, is that Cyber Monday is the day when office productivity around the globe plummets as people who a) didn’t want to deal with Black Friday crowds and B) didn’t get the day off from work surf the web to find amazing deals.
More recent than Cyber Monday is #SmallBusinessSaturday – a day meant to promote the engine of the American economy: small businesses. Here at GunLink, we love deals, we love small businesses, and, doggone it, we love America, so we’re offering a special deal on listings in the GunLink Directory: $10 off a Gold level listing and $15 off of a Platinum level listing. These deals will only last through Tuesday, December 2nd, so act now!
The GunLink Directory is the original nucleus of the GunLink family of online firearms resources. Over the years, that family has grown, but the directory remains at the heart. The GunLink Directory lives up to its name, providing a listing of links to firearms-related businesses and other web resources – an important tool for business operators of all sizes in an age when more and more search engines, social networking sites, payment services, and online marketplaces are showing their anti-gun roots and disallowing businesses with any relationship to the firearms industry. Continue reading
