Fiocchi of America Pro Staff member Lanny Barnes won 1st Place Lady in the Open division at the 2026 Rocky Mountain 3-Gun Championship in Raton, New Mexico, while finishing 6th overall. The three-day championship at the NRA Whittington Center featured nine stages testing rifle, pistol, and shotgun skills across rugged terrain.

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), alongside the National Rifle Association and Second Amendment Foundation, filed a federal lawsuit challenging New York's Senate Bill S9005C, which bans semiautomatic handguns with cruciform trigger bars. FPC seeks a declaration holding the law unconstitutional and an injunction against enforcement, continuing its nationwide campaign against similar Glock bans in California and Maryland.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon is confirmed as a speaker for the 41st annual Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) 2026, scheduled for September 25-27 in Dallas. The event, co-hosted by the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, features numerous Second Amendment advocates, legal experts, and media personalities.

GrabAGun Digital Holdings Inc. announced that Co-Founder and CFO Justin Hilty will retire effective August 14, 2026, after 15 years leading finance. Jonathan Terry, a veteran public company finance executive with 25+ years of experience including roles at YETI and RetailMeNot, has been appointed as the new Chief Financial Officer.

A federal court injunction in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF took effect August 13, 2026, barring the ATF from enforcing NFA registration requirements for suppressors against B&T USA customers. The ruling eliminates Form 4 requirements for covered purchases while maintaining state law, background checks, and dealer requirements.

CCW Safe announced Steve Blackford as Vice President of Marketing and Ecommerce. Blackford brings 13 years of experience from LifeLock, where he helped build identity theft protection into a household name. He will lead brand strategy, demand generation, and member acquisition for the self-defense legal services company.

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) is hiring a Chief Conservation Officer to lead conservation initiatives and partnerships. The position, based in Missoula, Montana, requires eight-plus years of natural resources experience and five years in senior leadership, with responsibilities including advocacy, governmental affairs, and representing RMEF with federal and state agencies.

Federal Ammunition released two new 20-gauge Master Class shotshell loads featuring a customized Podium wad, high-antimony lead shot, and straight-wall hull design for competitive sporting clay shooting. The competition-level loads are now available at retailers nationwide with eight total options priced at $16.99 per 25-count box.

German Precision Optics (GPO USA) announced the GPO Setback™ Cantilever 3" extension mount designed for compact tactical 30mm riflescopes, allowing up to 3" forward or rearward positioning for optimal eye relief. The precision-machined aircraft-grade aluminum mount retails for $89.99 and is available through authorized dealers and gpo-usa.com.

EOTECH and Unity Tactical have partnered to introduce the EOTECH HHS UNITY I, combining the EXPS3-0 sight and G33 magnifier with Unity's FAST mounting systems. The system features a 2.26-inch optical centerline height and an FTC OMNI mount that stows the magnifier below the sightline for rapid CQB-to-distance transitions, available in Black or Tan at $1,599 MSRP.

Polite Society Industries announced its first line of premium silencers covering rimfire through .36 caliber, designed using laser powder bed fusion technology. Founded by industry veterans in Tampa, Florida, PSI offers competitive pricing and a comprehensive warranty covering repairs, replacements, or refunds for properly used silencers.

RCBS has launched its new 7mm Backcountry Die Set, a three-die system designed for the high-performance 7mm BC cartridge. Developed alongside Hodgdon Powder Company's Accurate High Country powder, the die set delivers enhanced control and consistency for handloaders seeking precision ammunition reloading.

The Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association, and Firearms Policy Coalition filed a lawsuit challenging New York's law banning Glock and Glock-style handguns. The law makes selling or transferring these firearms a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison, claiming the cruciform trigger bar makes them convertible to machineguns.

Benelli unveiled the M2-G1 Tactical, a semi-automatic shotgun featuring an innovative Rear Piston Operated gas system designed for defensive professionals and law enforcement. The platform earned a 4.54/5 "Gold Standard" rating from the National Tactical Officers Association and offers multiple configurations with MSRPs ranging from $1,829 to $2,149.

KDG is shipping new 3.25-inch and 6-inch rails for Grand Power Stribog 10mm and .45 ACP platforms beginning mid-September 2026. The Seymour, Connecticut manufacturer continues its aggressive product rollout following the recent Kinect ARCA Rail launch, with additional products planned over the next three months.

Hodgdon Powder Company introduced Accurate High Country, a spherical rifle propellant engineered for Federal's new 7mm Backcountry cartridge and other modern magnums. The progressive-burning propellant delivers exceptional ballistic performance while providing handloaders with versatility across a broad range of rifle cartridges from .243 Winchester through 7mm Backcountry.

WOOX, an Italian-American gunstock manufacturer, announced the Vigilante Beavertail Grip, a premium AR-compatible grip handcrafted from Claro walnut in Italy. CEO Ben Fleming highlighted that WOOX is the first company to offer a Claro walnut AR grip with an engineered-polymer beavertail, featuring laser checkering and ambidextrous design at $99.00 MSRP.

MDT is launching three limited edition custom colorways for its CRBN rifle stock: Kryptek Obscura Nox, Veil Summit, and Veil Flagship. Available in multiple configurations for Remington 700 and Tikka T3X platforms, these stocks feature carbon fiber construction and integrated ARCA rails, launching August 14, 2026.

Umarex USA will exhibit at Nation's Best Sports 2026 Fall Market August 24-27 in Oklahoma City, showcasing 2026 product releases and brands including Umarex Airguns, T4E, Prepared2Protect, and Elite Force Airsoft. Attending dealers can access hands-on product demonstrations and speak with sales representatives about dealer incentives and stocking programs.

Blue Force Gear will exhibit at the 2026 Indo-Pacific Irregular Warfare Symposium in Honolulu, Hawaii, showcasing innovative tactical equipment including the Integrated Stealth Harness (ISH™), MARCO® HR marking light dispenser, and DRYOUT® moisture-removal technology designed for operational effectiveness.

We give away a lot of guns at Guns Save Life monthly meetings and last year we featured a couple of DPMS full-auto short-barreled rifle BB-guns. They were more popular than free pizza. As the dad of fun-loving seven-year-old twins, I bought one myself.

The plan was simple: present it to my boys at Christmas. Santa, however, somehow forgot to check the gun safe before leaving the North Pole. Classic.

I finally handed it over earlier this summer. The memories that resulted were pure Mastercard commercial worthy…priceless. The boys were full-auto addicted in the first magazine of fire. They now prefer this little beast to real rimfire pistols and even their Savage Rascal. That’s high praise from a couple of kids learning what actual gunpowder smells like.

How it works (and why it’s smarter than it looks)

The DPMS runs on a pair of CO2 cartridges in the magazine and cycles at roughly 1,200 rounds per minute. Trigger control matters if you want the fun to last more than a second or two. Pull the magazine and the whole thing goes completely inert—no residual gas, no “one last BB” surprises. You can safely set it down while you reload without worrying that Junior is going to do something unsafe with the “gun” while you’re working on the mag.

Velocity sits around 450 fps, solid airsoft territory. That’s plenty of punch to blow through cardboard and paper targets at 5 to 10 yards. CO2 lasts for a solid five-ish mags before you notice things slowing down.

The boys, bless their hearts, immediately started planning home-defense tactics, wanting to keep this under their bed: “We’ll shoot bad guys in the eyes and the balls, Dad!” I laughed. Good on them for identifying soft targets and tactics. I’ll handle the actual bad guys, the same way I used to handle the monsters in the closet. That’s what dads are for.

The one thing you should run from

The store offered a 60-round magazine for about $80 that’s supposed to make loading easier with its own BB reservoir. I bought one. It did not work especially well, even after reading the instructions, and it completely failed after three cycles.

That was a genuine disappointment in an otherwise excellent package. The “standard” magazine works fine. Sure, it takes a minute or two to reload with the included reloader, but that’s good. The delay allows memories to stack and anticipation to build.

Price of admission to the smile factory

The gun itself runs about $180. Add a case of fifty CO2 cartridges (good for three or four solid range sessions) and a pile of BBs and you’re good to go for under $250. No waiting period. No 4473. No paperwork. No FOID here in Illinois. No special transportation rules. Just pure, unfiltered fun.

Used as a crew-served device—Dad holds and stabilizes while the kids aim (or don’t) and mash the trigger—even five-year-olds will do just fine. The adjustable stock helps, too. The grins are enormous. I can’t publish the pictures because of certain court rules in my divorce, but trust me: ear-to-ear, pure joy and over-the-top, jumping up-and-down excitement.

BBs are cheap. The experiences you create and share with your kids or grandkids are priceless. This little full-auto SBR is one of the easiest ways I’ve found to make long-lasting, incredibly positive memories and at the same time, plant the seed that shooting is fun, exciting, and worth doing right. In a world that spends a lot of energy trying to make the next generation soft and scared of guns, that’s no small thing.

Just leave the 60-round mag on the shelf. Everything else about this gun is a great memory-making machine.

Lastly, it brings out the kid in adults, too. Grins, giggles, the whole nine yards. For those who don’t live in full-auto freedom states, this gun is awesome. For those who do, this is an inexpensive entree into safe, full-auto fun.

– John Boch, Shooting News Weekly