Beretta Blog

On February 4th, Punxsutawney Phil announced spring would arrive in 6 weeks. I don't know about you, but after the long, cold, gray winter, I'm ready for blue skies and bright sun. Warm weather makes for ideal shooting conditions, and if your shotgun has been in the gun cabinet for a while it's time to get it ready for use.

Have you ever gotten all worked up about something only to later figure out that whatever was causing anxiety wasn’t all that big a deal? I have. In fact, I used to spend way too much time and energy thinking about the optimum way to “zero” a laser sight on a pistol.

Since the laser can’t be in the center of the bore itself, it’s (by definition) offset from the path of the bullet. That means that, like a rifle and scope, you have to choose a distance at which the laser beam and bullet path will intersect. Let’s walk through the zeroing thought process using a Beretta APX RDO pistol. This pistol has a rail forward of the trigger guard, so I mounted a Crimson Trace Railmaster Pro.

I just read a story in the news about a foiled robbery attempt where a concealed carry permit holder intervened and stopped the crime. It made me pause and reflect on the types of decisions with which anyone who carries a concealed gun can face in a moment’s notice.

With the rapidly growing interest in shotguns for home defense, tactical use, and 3-Gun competition, buckshot loads are back in the spotlight and in demand! Until these trends took over, interest in buckshot was waning. Few states still allow bucks (actually deer of either sex, for that matter) to be taken with buckshot. Even in those that do, rifled slugs and slugs fired from rifled shotgun barrels, muzzleloaders, and rifles – even handguns – provide more practical and efficient tools to cleanly harvest deer under modern hunting conditions.

It's late in the season, and that means a lot has changed since we first cut loose the dogs in the fall. Instead of winds blowing from the warm south, they now come from the cold north. Trees full of leaves first turned colorful and then dropped to the ground. Seasonally warm-if-not-hot temperatures and their associated dryness are replaced by colder weather and accompanying moisture. Scenting conditions are better with the cooler, windier, and damp weather, but what does the weather change do for hunters? If you're not careful, you'll certainly stay warm but you'll miss one heck of a lot of birds. Or you might stay too warm and overheat.

Right out of the box the Beretta APX is an awesome pistol for personal protection, competition shooting, or fun on the range. After putting a few hundred rounds through my new APX RDO, I investigated performance upgrade possibilities.

The firearms industry is susceptible to fashion trends, just like everything else. Over the last decade, as Instagram seized control of image-driven social media, "Everyday Carry" has become a thing. The high-fashion side of EDC has become cultish, but there’s something elemental to the viral fad.

Though it was 20 years ago, I remember looking out of my window like it was yesterday. The December wind honked from the Northeast, and with it came single-digit temperatures and a foot of snow. Sure I could slather up my dogs' paws with Musher's Secret, coat the inside of their bells with Pam spray to keep the clappers from filling up with ice, and slap on a pair of snow-shoes over my boots. My winter grouse hunt in the frozen tundra would be short thanks to the varsity effort required by all of us trudging through the snow. The birds likely would flush wild, I doubt I'd get even a single point, and if I did I'd have on so many layers that I wouldn't be able to move and would miss them anyway. I decided then and there that it was far better for me to head South and run the dogs on Bobwhite quail in ideal conditions. Nowadays, when our bird seasons close or the weather makes them impossible, I take my show on the road.

Congratulations, you’ve decided you want to take responsibility for your personal safety and carry a firearm with you regularly. This is one of the most adult decisions you can make in your life because you’ve realized that there will not be a policeman around when you need one the most. 

The choke tube wrench adapted to fit into the arbor of a cordless drill driver is apparently an urban legend – at least from the perspective of it being made commercially. Yet I’m sure a Frankenstein-ed version has shown up at the clays course on more than one occasion. Some shotgunners seem that addicted to changing choke tubes. No one needs a powered choke tube wrench, but watching some shooters on the sporting clays course, it seems like it’s an invention that would speed up their play.