News Brief – 12/06

Federal Premium, which makes loads for just about every popular rimfire and centerfire cartridge in production, has announced a monthly subscription service.

The way it works is subscribers receive five boxes of ammo delivered to their address every month. On the upside, it comes with free shipping. The downside is there is a 12-month service commitment and only certain SKUs are available to add to the subscription– 9mm, 40 S&W, and 45 Auto, “with possible expansion into other loads and cartridge options, pending market demand.”

However, as ammo can suddenly get impossible to find sometimes, such “ammo clubs” could be a hedge against future shortages.

If Federal’s program works out, expect it to be repeated elsewhere, with ammo likely sometimes to be hard to get unless you are a member of such programs. Welcome to 2022!

The November 2021 FBI NICS figure 2,692,188 reflects a 25.3 percent decrease from the unadjusted FBI NICS figure of 3,602,296 in November 2020, which sounds bad for the firearms industry, but, when compared to every year except 2020, it is an all-time high.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation adjusted the figures to come up with the likely figure of 1,543,378 checks done for gun sales, which is a decrease of 20.8 percent compared to the November 2020 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 1,949,141.

As with the unadjusted figure, this is still high, being the third highest after 2020 and 2016, the latter when it looked like Hillary Clinton was headed to the White House.

Starting this month, Illinois-based black rifle maker Rock River Arms will start distributing California-compliant rifles to that state.

As Cali has a ban on “assault rifles” going back to 1989, the .308-caliber AR-10 style and 9mm Glock-magged RRAs shipped to the “Best Coast” will be “featureless guns” that have CA-legal fin grips and 10-round mags.

The holder of the current contract to supply handguns to the U.S. military, Sig Sauer has teamed up with the Best Defense Foundation to take 65 World War II Vets to Pearl Harbor this week to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of that war-opening strike.

Notably, of the more than 16 million American WWII Veterans, the VA estimates that possibly fewer than 300,000 remain and their numbers are shrinking every day.

For instance, former Senator and 1996 Presidential hopeful, Bob Dole– who ran for office partially on his war record– and the last officer of the “Band of Brothers,” Col. Edward Shames, both passed away over the weekend.

Springfield Armory, seemingly with a hundred different 1911 variants in their catalog, has decided to blend the aesthetics of their Ronin line with the CCW-ready Enhanced Micro Pistol platform to create the Ronin EMP.

The “imps” are small single-stack 9mm pistols, with an ultra-compact (3-inch barrel) model having a 9+1 capacity, and a 4-incher with a 10+1 capacity.

They both have carbon steel slides with a hot salt blue finish and a lightweight aluminum frame with a satin silver Cerakote finish. MSRP is $849.

Six months have passed since Taurus debuted their small micro-compact 9mm pistol, the GX4, intended to challenge guns like the Sig P365.

However, while many of these new “micro 9s” are optics ready, the GX4 was not. Now– drumroll– the Brazilian people’s champ has given the gun the Taurus Optic Ready Option, or TORO, that includes a factory slide cut for Shield, Holosun, Trijicon, Sightmark, Sig RomeoZero, and Riton micro red dots.

MSRP still falls well under $500.

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