No, not THAT kind of Link. I mean links to everything I mention in each video, all in one place! Videos are listed in chronological...

Designing a reliable semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun is one of the hardest engineering challenges in the firearms industry. Unlike a rifle, which fires a relatively consistent cartridge, a tactical shotgun has to cycle an insanely wide spectrum of ammunition. It needs to strip a light, low-recoiling 2.75-inch target load out of the tube, and it also needs to handle the massive, violent pressure spike of a 3-inch magnum slug, all without completely battering the aluminum recei

If you pull the upper receiver off an AR-15 and pull the buffer out of the lower receiver extension, it looks and feels like a solid aluminum cylinder. But if you shake it in your hand, you can hear and feel heavy pieces of metal rattling around inside. A lot of newer builders assume the buffer is just a static weight designed to slow the bolt carrier down, and they think the rattling means the part is defective. The reality is that the buffer is not just a static weight. It

When a pistol fires and the slide cycles backward, there is only one piece of metal responsible for dragging the empty brass casing out of the filthy, superheated chamber. The extractor has to grip the rim of the cartridge with absolute reliability, pull it backward until it hits the ejector, and let it fly clear of the gun. While the job is simple, the mechanical geometry used to accomplish it splits into two completely different schools of engineering. You have the traditio

A lot of shooters will take a modern polymer striker-fired pistol to the range, shoot a few magazines, and find their shot groups are sitting slightly low and to the left on the paper target. Then they will pick up an old, heavy steel 1911 and effortlessly punch the center completely out of the bullseye. The immediate reaction is to credit the crisp, light trigger pull of the 1911 for the sudden increase in accuracy. While a good trigger absolutely helps you shoot better, the

There is a conversation that happens at almost every shooting range and gun shop in the country regarding magazine maintenance. Guys will load up their spare magazines for their carry gun or their home defense rifle, put them in a safe, and then worry that leaving the ammunition in the magazine for months at a time is going to ruin the spring. You will hear shooters talk about routinely rotating their magazines, unloading them to let the springs "rest" and recover their stren

When you finally get your tax stamp approved and bring a new suppressor home, the natural instinct is to immediately thread it onto your rifle, tighten it down by hand, and head straight to the range. It seems like a foolproof mechanical connection. The barrel is threaded, the suppressor has matching threads, so they should just screw together perfectly straight. But a massive number of shooters destroy their expensive new silencers on the very first shot because they complet

When you start pushing a rifle out past three or four hundred yards, you run into a very specific optical problem. You get behind the rifle, get perfectly comfortable on the stock, and put the crosshairs dead center on the steel target. But if you move your head just a fraction of an inch to the left or right, the crosshairs appear to physically float and shift off the center of the target, even though the rifle hasn't moved a millimeter. A lot of shooters think their scope m

If you pick up a modern striker-fired pistol like a Glock and pull the trigger, you'll notice a distinct, slightly spongy wall right before the gun fires. A lot of guys who grew up shooting 1911s hate that feeling and immediately start buying aftermarket trigger parts to make the break crisper. The problem is they often start swapping parts without understanding the physical geometry of how a striker actually drops. In a Glock, the entire feel of the trigger pull is dictated

When we talk about the AR-15 direct impingement system, a lot of the focus goes straight to the gas block and the gas tube. But there is a crucial piece of internal mechanics doing a massive amount of work right inside the bolt carrier group, and it usually gets ignored until the rifle starts short-stroking. The entire operating system relies on three tiny, inexpensive pieces of split steel wire called the gas rings. They sit on the tail of the bolt and act exactly like the p

When you start picking out parts for a new AR-15 build, the barrel specifications can get a little confusing. You see numbers like 1:7, 1:8, and 1:9 stamped onto the steel, and a lot of guys just grab whatever is in stock without digging into what those ratios actually mean for the rifle. The twist rate of your barrel completely dictates what kind of ammunition your gun can shoot accurately. If you mismatch your ammo to your twist rate, you aren't just going to shoot wider gr

You drop a massive amount of money on a beautifully machined, heavy-barreled bolt action receiver. You drop that steel action into a classic wooden stock or a standard factory polymer chassis, torque the two action screws down to spec, and head to the range. The gun feels incredibly tight in your hands, but when you look through the spotting scope, the rifle is shooting absolutely horrific, shotgun-pattern groups. You check your scope rings, you try different match-grade ammu

When guys start parting out a new precision rifle build, they will spend weeks agonizing over the twist rate, the contour, and the specific stainless steel alloy of the barrel. They will obsess over the chamber dimensions and the length of the gas system. But a shocking number of shooters completely ignore the single most critical mechanical surface on the entire firearm: the muzzle crown. The crown is the absolute end of the line. It is the very last piece of steel the bulle

You drop a few hundred dollars on a brand-new red dot sight, mount it perfectly on your slide, torque the screws down, and turn it on. But when you finally look through the glass, the dot doesn't look anything like the perfect, crisp two-MOA circle you saw on the packaging. Instead, it looks like a massive, blurry starburst, a jagged cluster of grapes, or a comet with a long red tail smearing across the lens. A lot of guys immediately box the optic back up and send it in for

If you look at the muzzle of almost any modern polymer handgun, the barrel just locks directly against a hole machined into the front of the slide. It’s a simple, loose system that works perfectly fine for a combat gun. But John Moses Browning designed the 1911 long before modern CNC machining existed, and he used an entirely different mechanical approach to keep the muzzle locked firmly in place. He used a removable steel collar called the barrel bushing. If you want a 1911

When guys decide to build an AR-15 from scratch, they usually pick their barrel length based entirely on how the gun is going to look or what kind of ballistics they want to push. They figure a sixteen-inch barrel is the standard do-everything length, so they buy one and slap it on the upper receiver. But a huge percentage of those builders completely ignore the most critical mechanical dimension on that entire piece of steel: the gas system length. If you mismatch your gas s

The pistol optic market has absolutely exploded over the last few years. Almost every major manufacturer is releasing "optics ready" handguns right from the factory. To accommodate all the different red dot footprints on the market, these factory guns use a universal cut paired with a stack of interchangeable modular adapter plates. It seems like an awesome, flexible system right up until you take a high-level training class and watch a guy's expensive red dot shear its screw

When guys start reloading their own 9mm ammunition for competition or range use, they usually pull a load recipe straight out of a manual, set their seating die to the exact overall length listed on the page, and start cranking out hundreds of rounds. They assume that if the manual says the cartridge should be 1.150 inches long, it’s going to run perfectly in every single handgun they own. That assumption is totally fine if you only shoot Glocks, but the second you try to run

If you hang around AR-15 building forums long enough, you’ll eventually see guys arguing about bolt carrier groups and the absolute necessity of a properly staked gas key. A lot of newer builders look at those two allen screws sitting on top of the carrier, hit them with a torque wrench, maybe add a drop of red threadlocker, and call it a day. They assume that clamping force and glue are enough to hold a piece of metal together. But if you actually tear down the physics of th

A lot of guys love repeating the old myth that revolvers never jam. It’s true that a wheel gun won't give you a failure-to-feed or a stovepipe like a semi-auto, but they fail in a completely different, much more violent way. Revolvers are practically just giant, mechanical Swiss watches built out of hardened steel. They rely on an incredibly intricate sequence of gears and levers that have to move in absolute, perfect synchronization. When that synchronization breaks down, th