The Springfield Armory Echelon has been the darling of Geneseo, Illinois ever since its inception for innumerable reasons. The supremely-clever optics mounting system, texturing/stippling that borders on coming from a Custom Shop, a chassis design for ultimate modularity, and flat out performance...
I recently had a great opportunity to try out Zeiss’ new V3 Lineup of Rifle Scopes on a beautiful ranch in Oklahoma. While I had always known about the scopes that Zeiss makes, I honestly think of them as a photo and video lens company first, given my background as a photographer and videog...
Primary Arms has a new series of optics. The CLx family consists of four budget-minded red dots and prism scopes. Keep reading for all the details.
The Springfield Echelon VIS mounts most optics straight to the slide, no adapter plate needed. Here's why it works, plus two holsters built for it.
I love 1911 handguns. There is something about the short and light trigger that helps me shoot 1911 pistols more precisely than any other pistol platform. Quite simply, the 1911 pistol hits “home” with me. The craftsmanship engineered into a 1911 supersedes other semi-auto pistols by far for ...
The XD series of handguns from Springfield Armory have been available for over a quarter century: 25+ years now. Having seen multiple iterations and upgrades, this truly is a suite of varying pistols for evolving needs: XD, XD Mod.2, XDS, XDS Mod.2, XDM, XDM Elite, and the XD Mod.3 round out that...
When Glock announced the sixth generation of its iconic striker-fired polymer pistol series in December 2025, the firearms community responded with the usual mix of cautious interest and the usual skepticism. For me, the release was really bad timing, as I had just bought another G45 Gen 5. Was t...
More than a century after the debut of John Browning’s most celebrated handgun design, the year 2020 marked the beginning of Springfield Armory’s most recent 1911 makeover. Long known as a premium purveyor of the .45-caliber, two-time World War champ, Springfield’s catalog of 1911s had grow...
Springfield Armory has announced that the St. Louis County Police Department has adopted the Echelon 4.5F 9mm pistol as its new duty sidearm. The Echelon series was developed as a modern, striker-fired platform with a focus on modularity, ergonomics and durability. At the core of the design...
Editor’s Note: The author received a Springfield XD Mod.4 pistol on loan from the company for the purposes of writing this review. I’ve always appreciated the Springfield Armory XD series for what it is: a simple, reliable and accurate 9mm pistol. While the original may have more than two dec...