Following through on their commitment to environmental radicals that it would ban lead on federal public land, today the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) released proposed regulations that begin this process on National Wildlife Refuges across the country. The Biden Administration’s proposal lays the groundwork for additional lead prohibitions on refuges and provides a precedent that will be utilized to ban lead ammunition and tackle on all public lands where hunting and fishing occur.
Filed in the Federal Register on June 8, the USFWS commits to a lead ban on any new hunting opportunities on National Wildlife Refuges across the country. The proposal includes a new study on the impacts of lead ammunition and tackle on wildlife refuges.
While USFWS referred to “science” in the rulemaking as a basis for this decision, they did not cite any actual studies to support the decision. The study would seem unnecessary as the Biden Administration has previously announced its intention to return to the “Dan Ashe Rule.” Ashe, who served as Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service under President Obama, issued an order banning lead on all National Wildlife Refuges the day before President Trump was sworn in as President. The order was rescinded by newly appointed Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke on his first day on the job. With clear evidence that the Biden Administration has already made up its mind, it is unclear what purpose the research would serve other than as hand waving bureaucracy at its finest.
“The proposed lead ban on refuges kicks open the barn door to banning lead ammunition and tackle on all federal land, including National Forests, Bureau of Land Management Lands, National Preserves, and other areas,” explains Todd Adkins, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Sportsmen’s Alliance. “It provides a legal basis for radical animal rights and environmental groups to sue the federal government to force additional lead bans. In effect, President Biden is handing extremists a howitzer to fire at the Federal Government until the use of lead in ammunition and tackle for hunting and fishing is banned everywhere.”
The problems don’t stop with federal land. Because the USFWS distributes excise tax money from the purchase of firearms, ammunition, archery equipment and fishing gear to state fish and wildlife departments, the agency might attempt to force states to adopt similar bans on state public land. It is not unforeseeable to envision USFWS using its leverage the way the federal government once forced states to adopt seatbelt laws, alcohol age minimums and more.
“The most stunning and even insulting thing about this proposal is that it has been done with no consultation with the very people, hunters, anglers and trappers, who pay the lion’s share of conservation funding in the United States,” said Adkins. “Without these people there wouldn’t be recovered wildlife populations and abundant public land for all Americans to enjoy. This decision is beyond offensive to our greatest conservationists, American sportsmen and women.”
Sportsmen can send written comments opposing the proposal until August 8th, 2022. Comments may be submitted:
Electronically: Go to the Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov. In the Search box, type in FWS-HQ-NWRS-2022-0055, which is the docket number for this rulemaking. Then, click on the Search button. click on the Docket tab. On the resulting screen, find the correct document “2022–2023 Station-Specific Hunting and Sport Fishing Regulations” and submit a comment by clicking on “Comment.”
Or submit by U.S. mail or hand delivery: Public Comments, Processing, Attn: FWS-HQ-NWRS-2022-0055, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 5275 Leesburg Pike, MS: PRB (JAO/3W), Falls Church, VA 22041–3803
Sportsmen should also contact their US Representative (Congressman) and both US Senators to oppose this extreme move by the Biden Administration. Please visit our Legislative Action Center and use the “Find Your Elected Officials” tool in the middle of the page to find their contact information.
About the Sportsmen’s Alliance: The Sportsmen’s Alliance protects and defends America’s wildlife conservation programs and the pursuits – hunting, fishing and trapping – that generate the money to pay for them. Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation is responsible for public education, legal defense and research. Its mission is accomplished through several distinct programs coordinated to provide the most complete defense capability possible. Stay connected to Sportsmen’s Alliance: Online, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
To understand firearm development, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the economy during their progress. The Civil War brought about a great increase in economic opportunities—hence industrialization—to the Union. Manufacturing business grew at a phenomenal rate. The war created a huge market for firearms and fueled the development of their technology. While the waging of war created the demand, it was the Reconstruction period after the war that brought about a maturation of that booming economy. The U.S. military—primarily the army at that time—needed better firearms with which to serve the country.
Single-shot and repeating rifles fed by cartridges that were ignited with a primer pressed into the center of the rear of the case replaced cap-and-ball muzzleloaders and rimfire-primed cartridges. Revolvers—which had progressed nicely into the cap-and-ball technology—began seeing their own cartridge development to centerfire-primed rounds. They were very popular with the cavalry because they could be operated with one hand and offered as many as six shots before requiring a reload.
Colt rather quickly came out with a Benet-primed .44 Colt cartridge for its Richards-Mason conversion of the 1860 Army. The actual diameter of the heeled, outside-lubricated bullet was .451″to .454″, and it featured a 225-gr., conical lead bullet in front of 23 grains of FFg blackpowder for a velocity of 640 f.p.s. and 207 ft.-lbs. of energy. Charles B. Richards, an engineer at Colt, and William Mason, a gunsmith who came to Colt from Remington in 1866, worked together on the .44 Colt cartridge, which was introduced in 1871.
The Richards-Mason conversion was a stopgap measure as the company retooled and set up to manufacture what would become the Colt Model 1871-72 Open Top revolver. This revolver was chambered in the more powerful .44 Henry Rimfire cartridge, a major step up in power from the .44 Colt. It was capable of kicking a 200-gr. conical ball bullet out at 1,125 f.p.s. with 568 ft.-lbs. of energy, though these numbers are probably from a rifle.
Buffalo Bore .45 Colt available today loaded with a 255 gr. lead bullet.
Nonetheless, the army bought several thousand of them for its cavalrymen during the revolver’s two-year production run. Three things became very clear. The army wanted a more powerful revolver. It did not want outside-lubricated bullets that pick up dirt and grit from the field. And a revolver tough enough to stand up to these rigors must have an enclosed window for the cylinder, what we now refer to as a solid frame.
Richards and Mason began developing a new revolver and teamed up with ammunition engineers at Remington to manufacture the cartridges. Both the revolver—the 1873 Colt Single Action Army(SAA)—and its cartridge, the .45 Colt, would become iconic in the annals of firearm development. The .45 Colt retains the bullet diameter of its .44 Colt predecessor at .452″ – .454″ but kicks the weight of the bullet up to 255 grains.
After playing with loads with bullets as light as 225 grains and powder weights from 28 to 40 grains, they settled on the 255-gr. bullet in front of 40 grains of FFg blackpowder for 840 f.p.s. with about 400-ft.-lbs. of wallop out of a revolver. Production of ammo and revolver began in 1873. The army quickly saw the improvement of both revolver and load, as did civilians, and the Colt .45, as it became commonly called, generated a great reputation as a man-stopper.
All of the preceding did not occur in a vacuum. Smith & Wesson had been hard at work on its No. 3 revolver in .45 caliber. In fact, the army adopted the No. 3 in 1870 chambered in .44 Smith & Wesson American. But the brass wanted more power. Major George W. Schofield had an engineering improvement to the Model 3. Instead of mounting the spring-loaded barrel latch on the barrel, he reversed it and mounted the latch on the frame.
Hornady .45 Colt cartridges loaded with a .255 gr. FTX bullet.
The army specified that the revolver would chamber the .45 Colt cartridge, but the Smith & Wesson revolver’s cylinder was too short do it was chambered in a shorter .45 Smith & Wesson—often referred to as the .45 Schofield, adopted in 1875. The Smith & Wesson cartridge would function in the Colt SAA but not vice-versa. Army quartermasters had headaches trying to sort out ammo for each revolver. Frankfort Arsenal, which supplied nearly all the ammo for the Army, simply ceased loading the .45 Colt and supplied the troops with .45 S&W cartridges.
Somewhere in all of this the .45 Colt nomenclature was colloquially changed to “.45 Long Colt” to differentiate it from the shorter S&W cartridge. From bank heists to battlefields, train robbers to shopkeepers, the .45 Colt and the SAA was king. Sure, there were plenty of those finely made Smith & Wessons, but out on the frontier far from gunsmiths, people counted on the robustness of the SAA and its man-or-beast-busting .45-cal. cartridge.
They must have done something right because, 147 years later, the cartridge continues to be loaded. Other than in wartime, there hasn’t been a hitch in production of the .45 Colt cartridge. The military could not leave well enough alone. Some 21 years after the introduction of the Colt SAA and its .45-caliber round, the military adopted the Model 1892 Colt double-action revolver chambered in a .38 Long Colt cartridge developed in 1875, featuring a 150-gr. lead, round-nose bullet launched by blackpowder at 708 f.p.s. with a measly 157 ft.-lbs. of energy out of a 6″ barreled revolver.
Sometime later, a smokeless powder load sent a 148-gr. bullet downrange at 750 f.p.s. and 185 ft.-lbs. of energy. Some bad experiences in the Philippines during the Philippine–American War of 1899–1902 against Moro juramentados tribesmen had the army scrambling for anything that could fire .45 Colt cartridges. This led to Colt developing the M1909 round , identical in load to the original .45 Colt round but with a larger rim to accommodate the star-like extractor/ejector of the New Service double-action revolver.
The author’s Ruger Blackhawk chambered for .45 Colt.
M1909 ammunition will not work in single-action revolvers chambered in .45 Colt because the rim diameter interferes with adjoining cartridges. Even as semi-auto pistols began emerging, the .45 Colt has remained a steady-selling cartridge. Two reasons for that is the reliability and longevity of the SAA revolver and the fact is that it plain works.
Whether dealing with desperados, deer or even black bears, in the hands of a decent shot, a man armed with a .45 Colt will go home to his family or bring home the game. In the mid-1950s, a Utah-based gunsmith and experimenter named Dick Casull began exploring the limits of what a .45-cal. handgun could produce. He started with blackpowder-framed Colt SAAs, re-heat treating the frames and converting them to five-shot cylinders.
In 1959 he introduced the .454 Casull cartridge featuring a case 1.383″ long—some .098″ longer than a .45 Colt case—and a thicker web in the head of the case that Casull claimed to get more than 1,900 f.p.s. with a 250-gr. bullet. The power guys went nuts over this, but it would take almost 25 more years before this cartridge would be commercially loaded and have a factory manufacture a revolver that could handle it. In the meantime, Ruger chambered its tough Blackhawk revolver in .45 Colt, as did Thompson/Center in its equally solid Contender single-shot pistol.
Power guys ignored the loading manuals of the day and began dropping huge charges of slow-burning powders into .45 Colt cases to see what they could get away with. Now called T-Rex loads by the brethren, many loading manuals gave loads for these guns expressly and specifically. As for me, if I want an extremely powerful revolver—which I do not anymore—I would choose a cartridge expressly made for those tasks. I like the .45 Colt for what it is: a moderately powerful handgun cartridge that does anything I might ask from a handgun.
A view from the muzzle end of the author’s Ruger Blackhawk chambered for .45 Colt.
As with all my revolvers, save my J-frame Smiths, I prefer to cast hard semi-wadcutters at some 258 grains in my .45-cal. with 9.0 grains of Alliant Unique powder. In my 4 5/8″ Ruger, it gives me about 912 f.p.s. with 476 ft.-lbs. of muzzle thump. If I need more thump, I’ll choose a rifle—too many years of shooting those big bruisers has left me with some arthritis in my hands.
All the major factories load the .45 Colt cartridge today; one of the smaller manufacturers—Garrett, in Texas, loads +P .45 Colt rounds that are expressly for the Rugers. But there are plenty of JHP and SP loads available—outside of the pandemic-induced ammo shortage. There are even relatively soft-recoiling loads for cowboy action shooters. It is the cowboy action shooters that brought another firearm into the .45 Colt fold—rifles.
When the cartridge was introduced, the small diameter and thin rim of the .45 Colt cartridge, along with the straight-walled case, would not feed or extract reliably in the lever-action rifles of the day. Too, it was fueled with blackpowder, which leaves a rather heavy residue. A straight-walled case would often hang up because of that following, especially if the residue was exposed to dampness.
Today, however, Winchester, Uberti, Henry and Cimarron have produced replica lever actions chambered in the big 45. Smokeless powders, some engineering tweaks and the clientele who keep their competition guns clean has largely neutered the old attitude toward .45 Colt lever actions. Continuously produced for nearly 150 years, both in ammo and guns, the .45 Colt remains a capable cartridge for field use or even self-defense. I know several fellows who regularly have a single-action revolver on their belt on a daily basis, and that revolver is a .45 Colt.
A POLITICO investigation finds that Russian companies have declared hundreds of thousands of rounds obtained from Western suppliers.
As gear reviews go, it was a glowing one: In a 60-second video clip posted on Telegram, a masked sniper sporting the death’s-head insignia of the Wagner mercenary army sings the praises of the Russian-made Orsis T-5000 rifle.
“The equipment comes very well recommended,” the soldier, pictured in the charred interior of a building, tells a war reporter from the Zvezda TV channel run by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Pulling out the clip of the weapon at his side, he continues: “It uses Western .338 caliber ammunition. It works very well. It can penetrate light cover if the enemy is behind it. And, in the open, it can strike the enemy at a range of up to 1,500 meters.”
Filings obtained by POLITICO indicate that Promtekhnologiya and another Russian firm called Tetis have acquired hundreds of thousands of rounds made by Hornady, a U.S. company that trademarks its wares as “Accurate. Deadly. Dependable.” Hornady, founded in 1949, sums up its philosophy with the phrase: “Ten bullets through one hole.”
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that supplies of lethal and nonlethal military equipment are still reaching Russia despite the West’s imposition of unprecedented sanctions in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year. The exigencies of war have exposed Russia’s lack of capacity to manufacture high-end sniper rounds, say defense experts, and that is fueling a flourishing black market for Western ammunition.
Information on the procurement of such gear is hiding in plain sight: Details of deals — importers, suppliers and product descriptions — can be found online by anyone with access to the Russian internet and a grasp of international customs classification codes.
Anything but bulletproof
In a “declaration of conformity” filed with a Russian government registry and dated August 12, 2022, Promtekhnologiya stated that it planned to sourcea batch of 102,200 Hornady lead bullets for the assembly of “hunting cartridges” used in “civilian weapons with a rifled barrel.” The specifications — .338 Lapua Magnum bullets weighing 285 grains — match those of a product in the Hornady catalog.
A second declaration bearing the same date is for a batch of “uncapped cartridge cases for assembling civilian firearms cartridges” made by Hornady with the same .338 Lapua Magnum specification.
The description is misleading: The .338 Lapua Magnum isn’t merely a “hunting cartridge;” it’s also a high-powered, long-range projectile that was developed by Western militaries in the 1980s and used by their snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reached by POLITICO, Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime.
“The instant Russia invaded Ukraine, we were done,” Hornady said in a brief telephone call.
Hornady declined at first to elaborate and, when asked to review the evidence, requested that it be sent by fax or courier as he did not use email. He eventually responded after POLITICO sent written requests for comment with supporting documentation by courier.
“We categorically are NOT exporting anything to Russia and have not had an export permit for Russia since 2014,” he replied. “We do not support any sale of our product to any Russian son-of-a-bitch and if we can find out how they acquire, if in fact they do, we will take all steps available to stop it.”
Hornady added that he had contacted the U.S. authorities following POLITICO’s inquiry. He pointed out that current U.S. law required that customers must obtain permission from the Department of Commerce to re-export articles made in the United States. “To the best of our knowledge, none of our customers violate that law,” he said.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, asked which ammunition his troops used, told POLITICO they had “a huge amount of NATO-issue ammunition left over from the Ukrainian army.” In a sarcastic voice message sent to a POLITICO journalist, the Russian warlord also asked for help procuring F-35 combat jets and U.S.-made sniper rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers.
Promtekhnologiya denied filing any customs declarations to import ammunition; said it had no relationship with Hornady; and that it had the capacity to manufacture its own ammunition. The company also said in emailed comments to POLITICO that the Orsis rifle and the ammunition the company makes are intended for “hunting and sporting” purposes and are freely available on the civilian market.
Both Promtekhnologiya and Alexander Zinovyev, listed as the company’s general director in the filings, have been sanctioned by Ukraine, which cites evidence that its Orsis rifles “have been used in Russian military operations in Eastern Ukraine.”
Promtekhnologiya is also in Washington’s sights: “We take any allegation of sanctions violation or evasion seriously and are committed to ensuring that sanctions are fully enforced,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said in response to a request for comment from POLITICO.
“We have taken steps to hold Russia accountable for its war in Ukraine and have imposed an unprecedented sanctions regime to disrupt Russia’s ability to access funds and weapons that fuel Putin’s war machine. That includes sanctioning companies like Promtekhnologiya.”
Criminal, or wilful, violations of U.S. sanctions can trigger penalties of up to $1 million per violation, as well as up to 20 years’ imprisonment for individuals. Civil penalties can run to the higher of either twice the value of the underlying transaction or around $350,000 per violation.
Describing military-grade ammunition as for hunting or sporting use, as the filings do, amounts to a thinly veiled ruse to evade targeted “smart” sanctions aimed at starving the Russian military of the means to fight the war, said defense analyst Maria Shagina.
“Strictly speaking, smart sanctions are not supposed to target anything civilian to avoid humanitarian collateral damage,” said Shagina, a research fellow at the U.K.-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. “But the targets in authoritarian countries will really exploit this.”
Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Russia reloaded
Another Russian buyer of Hornady ammunition is a company called Tetis, which has disclosed two shipments since Russia’s full-scale invasionof Ukraine beganon February 24, 2022. The most recent was in April for more than 300,000 “units” comprising a wide range of products that checked out with the Hornady catalog.
The main owners of Tetis, Alexander Levandovsky and Sergey Senchenko — who each own stakes of 41.1 percent — have links to the Russian military.
Both were previously listed as shareholders in another company called Kampo, which according to company filings holds licenses to make weapons and military equipment and has done business with the Ministry of Defense and the Special Flight Detachment that operates Putin’s presidential plane.
Although Tetis doesn’t offer Hornady ammo on its website, it does advertise itself as an international distributor for RCBS, a U.S. maker of reloading equipment. This is used to assemble cases, primer, propellants and projectiles into cartridges that can then be fired — as seen in this video posted by a Russian gun enthusiast.
A database check revealed that the most recent declaration of conformity filed by Tetis for RCBS, for electronic weighing scales, predated Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24 of last year by just over a month.
Russia’s trade bureaucracy allows local firms to vouch for the goods they are importing by filing declarations of conformity, such as those that mention the Hornady products. This means that the supplier listed on the form may not be aware of specific shipments that could have been handled by an intermediary.
Tetis did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Matt Rice, a spokesman for RCBS owner Vista Outdoor, said Tetis was no longer an international distributor for RCBS. “Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our business made the decision to end all sales of goods with the country,” Rice said in an email, adding that RCBS would remove the listing for Tetis from its website.
Doing the rounds
Hornady ammunition or its components are freely available in Russia, along with other high-end foreign military gear.
Take the “Sniper Shop” on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that is popular in Russia: It features a current offer for a full range of Hornady products, with the seller inviting buyers to visit a showroom in Sokolniki, a Moscow district, and offering delivery throughout Russia by courier or post. Contacted by POLITICO, the poster confirmed the Hornady ammo was in stock but declined to comment further on how it was sourced.
Then there is “Anton,” who advertises products from Hornady and RCBS on his profile. He also touts gear from Nightforce, maker of thermal optical sights; Lapua, which helped design the eponymous .338 ammo; MDT, a maker of chassis systems, magazines and accessories for rifles; and precision gunsmith AREA 419. All are American with the exception of Lapua, which is based in Finland and owned by a Norwegian company called Nammo.
Western high-end foreign military gear seems to be freely available in Russia | Leon Neal/Getty Images
“Anton” posted an offer for Hornady cartridges last October 24. Contacted via Telegram to ask whether he was still stocking Hornady, he replied: “We don’t do ammunition.”
POLITICO has, in the course of its research, also found declarations from several other Russian companies for ammunition made in Germany, Finland and Turkey.
The thriving black market reflects a structural deficit in Russia’s war economy. Its military-industrial complex can produce good small arms, like the Orsis rifle, but lacks the capacity to churn out the amount of ammunition needed by an army fighting a war across a front stretching hundreds of miles.
“Despite the quality of the rifles produced, a successful hit directly depends on the components used in the cartridges, and they, unfortunately, are imported,” a correspondent lamented in a post on a Russian military news site a few months into the war. Gunpowder produced in Russia lacks stability, the correspondent added, saying this is “unacceptable in the framework of high-precision shooting.”
The continuing access to specialized rifle cartridges made in the West, such as the .338 Lapua Magnum, by a sanctioned Russian small arms manufacturer like Orsis maker Promtekhnologiya is “egregious,” said Gary Somerville, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British defense think tank.
“At present, there is only one manufacturer of this cartridge in Russia,” he added. “Preventing the shipment of these types of ammunition from Western countries to Russia is an easy win for those seeking to constrain Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine.”
Balkan route
It’s not just ammunition from the U.S. that is reaching the battlefront around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries after a bloody, months-long battle.
There also appear to be cartridges from the European Union, which has imposed no fewer than 10 rounds of sanctions against Russia in a so-far inconclusive attempt to starve Putin’s war machine of the means to fight on.
Promtekhnologiya has filed four declarations since October covering shipments of 460,000 units described as “Orsis hunting cartridges” — most are of the .338 Lapua Magnum type. These identify a Slovenian company called Valerian as the supplier.
The first of the filings, dated October 13, 2022, includes an air waybill number whose first three digits — 262 — indicate that the shipper was Ural Airlines, a Russian carrier. It was not immediately possible to trace the route of the flight, however.
Valerian was founded on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with paid-in capital of €7,500 by Gašper Heybal, who previously worked for U.S. military outfitter Voodoo Tactical. On its home page, Valerian says: “Our goal is to equip you for your mission, whatever it might be, and wherever you are going.”
In online posts over the past decade — including on a Facebook Group called EU Guns with a declared mission of “easier transfer of weapons between European gun owners” — Heybal has done little to dispel the impression that he is an active small arms dealer.
Bakhmut was recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries, the Wagner mercenary group| Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images
The telephone number Heybal shared publicly in those posts is the same as the one for Valerian, which is registered at an address in a village around 40 minutes’ drive southeast of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana.
Reached at that number, Heybal denied that Valerian had shipped ammunition to Russia: “We don’t sell any … firearms or ammunition, and also there is an embargo on Russia,” said Heybal.
In a follow-up email on the declarations of conformity, Heybal said: “Firstly, we must stress that we do not know, nor do we understand how the name of our company, Valerian d.o.o., appears on the document.”
“Secondly, Valerian is not listed there as a supplier but as the producer, and this is not possible, as we do not produce ammunition. That being said, it still makes absolutely no sense to us as to how our name could appear on it. We are glad you brought this to our attention so we can figure out what is going on.”
A Slovenian diplomat said that, while Valerian had never applied for authorization to export weapons or ammunition to Russia, it had shipped “individual parts” to Kyrgyzstan.
The Central Asian state is one of the countries that the EU has in mind as it discusses an 11th round of measures targeting third countries that are suspected of helping Russia evade sanctions.
“The competent services in the Republic of Slovenia have already initiated the appropriate procedures to investigate the facts concerning the company,” the diplomat told POLITICO, adding that they would verify the possible diversion of goods to the Russian Federation. “Slovenia is firmly committed to supporting Ukraine, we have been supportive of all sanctions packages and especially this anti-circumvention one.”
An official at the European Commission deflected a request for comment, saying the bloc’s member countries were responsible for implementing sanctions. “As this seems like a very specific case, these allegations need to be investigated further by the competent authorities,” the official said.
Sergey Panov reported from Spain, Sarah Anne Aarup from Brussels and Douglas Busvine from Berlin. Additional reporting by Steven Overly in Washington.
Buffalo Bore .45 Colt available today loaded with a 255 gr. lead bullet.
Hornady .45 Colt cartridges loaded with a .255 gr. FTX bullet.
The author’s Ruger Blackhawk chambered for .45 Colt.
A view from the muzzle end of the author’s Ruger Blackhawk chambered for .45 Colt.
A POLITICO investigation finds that Russian companies have declared hundreds of thousands of rounds obtained from Western suppliers.
