News Brief – 10/11

Beretta announced a very small optics-ready pistol this month by adding a factory MRD cut to their tragically overlooked APX Carry series.

The new and improved model has plates available for Burris, C-more, Shield RMS-C, and Holosun K Series, features a low bore axis (which all the cool kids like), and is available in four different frame colors (Standard Black, Flat Dark Earth, Wolf Grey, and OD Green).

The price is right, at $449—likely more like $350 at retailers– and it is super small, almost pocket-sized.

On the downside, it is a single stack which means other Micro 9s like the Sig P365 and the Springfield Armory (HS Produkt) Hellcat have almost twice the capacity.

What we do like is that Beretta, in their marketing reel for the APX A1 Carry, shows a female concealed carrier (3-Gun competitive shooter Jessica Hook) getting lots of training both in self-defense shooting on the range while drawing from cover and in unarmed combatives *before* it’s needed, which should be the goal for everyone who EDCs.

“Dugan Ashley”, aka “Carnik Con,” was probably the most OG GunTuber back in the day, doing what he did for the lols and the love rather than shilling for clicks. While he long ago quit the game due to health issues, some of his old videos have been mirrored on YT for future generations and still hold up.

Thus:

Sadly, a video recently posted titled “Dugan Says Goodbye” has surfaced in which he speaks of his battle with MS, which has gotten progressively worse. It is kind of painful to watch so bring the tissues. 

An authorized crowd-funder has been set up for his expenses.  

The September 2021 figures from the FBI’s NICS system– 2,602,293 background checks– were the second strongest for the month on record, surpassed only by September 2020, when 2,857,953 checks were conducted.

Sure, they took an almost 9 percent nosedive from last year’s numbers, but those were bonkers for their own reasons.

The NSSF crunched the numbers and removed checks that weren’t likely for gun sales, concluding that something like 1.3 million guns was sold last month via over-the-counter sales that required a background check, still the second-highest for a September on record.

The Sig Sauer P320’s biggest claim to fame is that it will live on for probably two or three generations as the winner of the Pentagon’s Modular Handgun System contract to become the M17, replacing the Beretta M9 in military service.

While Sig sells commemorative versions of the M17, they also now have what they are billing as their M17 X-Change Kit which includes everything you need to build out a P320 fire control unit as a military clone.

This includes a Coyote Brown M17 grip module, matching M17 slide, two 21-round and one 17-round magazine for $499, all in a genuine cardboard box.

Smith & Wesson, almost tragically, has avoided selling widely available optics-ready models of their M&P pistols to the public, leaving that category only serviced by LE-only variants and expensive Performance Center semi-custom guns.

Taking a page from Beretta, Ruger, Taurus, Sig Sauer, Springfield Armory, (and on and on), they this week announced an optics-ready version of the new M&P9 Shield Plus 3.1.

The pistol also includes a flat-face trigger, an optimized grip texture designed for concealed carry, and two magazines: an extended 13+1 round magazine and a flush fit 10+1 round magazine.

The asking price is $595.

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