Beating the Reaper!, Vol. 1: Trauma Medicine for the CCW Operator is directed toward the “Average Joe” who may have never taken a first-aid class, and certainly doesn’t consider himself to be a medically trained special operator. Instead, he is someone who realizes that, just as with his shooting skills, he needs to have skill to help save someone’s life, perhaps his own, in the aftermath of shooting or other traumatic event. He’s the “CCW Operator” who doesn’t have a team medic nearby. He must show the same self-reliance that got him through the initial incident.

If card shooters, sporting-clays shooters, skeep and trap shooters, hunters and shotgun owners in general all agree on the benefits of the screw-in choke, and millions of guns have been made with fixed chokes, how big do you suppose the need for screw-in choke installation is? It is enormous! You should learn to install screw-in chokes.

Gun Tests Contributing Editor Roger Eckstine shoots the Chiappa Rhino revolver and remarks on the unusual recoil sensation.

Gun Tests Contributing Editor Roger Eckstine takes a quick look at the Thompson 1927A-1 Deluxe Pistol TA5100D.

Gun Reports - Special Reports

Courtesy, Gun Tests

The .45 Colt Uberti required multiple hits upon the primer to fire.

Uberti’s Cattleman Mistimed

Uberti’s Cattleman with a 3.5-inch barrel differs little from what other manufacturers refer to as a Sheriff’s model. In fact, without a good look at the bore, you can’t tell it apart from Cimarron’s New Sheriff. Moreover, the guns are closely related in areas other than configuration and caliber.

The box our Cimarron Thunderer came in had an Aldo Uberti sticker on it covered unabashedly by a Cimarron sticker. We have heard that the parts for many of today’s cowboy guns are made in Italy by Uberti and assembled by differ- ent companies.

But back to this test gun, which showed a fatal flaw. The Uberti .45 Colt was badly out of time, as illustrated by a number of spent cartridges we collected with multiple hits on the case faces. This is a flaw in assembly or quality control and was enough to disqualify the gun from the test out of hand.

In the short time we were able to spend with it, we must say that these guns are more fun to shoot in .45 Colt than they are in .38 Special. The .45 Colt is a modern cartridge, but it is more like a true cowboy load than most others—a nice, big, fat, genuine, “I’ll fill you full of lead” design that booms and smokes just like in the movies.

That our test gun was out of time was regrettable.This is a fairly easy flaw to fix, but due to this malfunction, we find it easier to recommend the cartridge and the barrel length over the gun itself.