GUNCRANK DIARIES

I like stuff. At some point my poor kids will have to sort through all my junk. They’ll have a massive yard sale and call in an auction company for the...

Never underestimate the lengths humans will go in their misguided efforts to please their particular curious gods. The Adamians, an early offshoot of...

I understand the motivation. I really do. It seems some deranged psychopath is shooting up a school every week. However, despite that sordid reality there...

Sometimes it seems that half of my occupation as a physician is treating self-inflicted wounds. Were it not for drinking, smoking, and sloth I might have to...

More Gratitude, Less Ill-Informed Indignation

In general, soldiers aren’t stupid. We weren’t necessarily the smartest kids on the block, but it never was really a lack of intelligence that got us...

I was just trying to be helpful. We had company coming, and the back porch needed sweeping. This is an onerous chore. The screened-in porch plays home to a...

It’s been a big week for the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued two of the most monumental decisions of my lifetime.

You’ll never really know until you get there. We imagine how we might per-form when we’re finally facing that really bright light, but we can’t ever...

The space shuttle was 4.48 million pounds of unfiltered awesome. This 122-foot hybrid space plane could boost more than 60,000 pounds into low Earth orbit.

In 1905, Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity. Special relativity concerns all physical phenomena in the absence of gravity.

Sometimes I just like to sit quietly and imagine what it must have felt like there at the end. I’m not a particularly superstitious guy. However, there is...

One night while taking call for our busy medical practice I got a most extraordinary inquiry. A woman called the clinic after-hours line to report an...

You do what I do long enough and you make some deep connections. I am ever amazed at the intimacy implicit to my job. You close the door to that little exam...

The young woman walked into the labor and delivery suite of the University hospital unannounced. She carried a big red biohazard bag with the top tied in a...

I came of age in a small town in the era before the internet. Back then when a kid was trying to figure out what he or she wanted to do for a living we just...

I ultimately got the girl. Some 39 years later, we have had some pretty epic dates. Dinner at King Stefan’s in Cinderella’s Castle sitting by the window...

Last week we began our time together discussing what it was like to cut a woman’s head in half with a hand saw.

I discovered this on my hard drive recently. Apparently, I penned it on some forgotten military deployment many decades ago.

One of the implicit aspects of the relationship between modern American soldiers and Uncle Sam is decent health care. The government expected us to go off...

I penned a previous column about my farm dog, Dog. Dog was just a mutt. She had a crooked tail, mismatched ears, and a coat of many colors. However, she was...

The discussion invariably gravitates around to whether Shemp, Curly, Joe, or Curly Joe was the best third arm to the classic Vaudeville trio.

Mark and Linda came into town for a big omnibus Walmart run about once a month. Without children the logistics were greatly simplified. This recurrent...

I had a free day, and my Aussie buddies suggested I check out the local crocodile farm. I’m from Mississippi. I had never actually seen a real crocodile.

One morning early while in flight school he was driving out to the flight line in the pre-dawn darkness and struck a little spike buck.

Star Trek is one of the most beloved science fiction franchises ever created. Gene Roddenberry crafted the original series as a classic traditional western...

Down here in the Deep South the mosquitoes, wisteria, Johnson grass and ragweed all seem to explode at about the same time. We therefore have an annual...

The entire TOC erupted in cheers. There was a lot of back slapping and congratulations, enough to smother poor Dave in his lamentably sordid state. There...

It is frequently easier to get dehydrated in the arctic than it is in the desert. I’ve spent a lot of time in both, and each has its own unique miseries.

I despise shaving. My ideal facial state is about four days’ worth of scruff. Make that about two months in wintertime. I relish not having to fret about...

The young B17 pilot who organized the crash survivors and got them to safety was Gene Roddenberry.

Blauer combat boots are incredibly lightweight and comfortable. They really don’t weigh any more than a pair of running shoes.

Had I gotten my way you guys never would have heard of me. I had planned 25 years in the Army followed by a second career teaching high school physics...

Human stupidity can lead to dire situations. This time a voice in the wilderness knew what to do.

I despise cigarettes. Cigarettes cause heart disease and lung cancer, among a great many other vile things. Heart disease is not my problem.

I’m on my fifth career. The optimist would say I’m a Renaissance Man. The pessimist would say I never stick with anything. My longsuffering bride is...

Our President needs some kind of indicator light. It need not be anything terribly complicated. It can just be a little digital addition to the bottom left...

Helicopters, survival, and St. Nick.

I thought I had been cold before. I have come home from deer hunting with my dad in the Mississippi Delta to find ice formed on the inside of my boots. I...

It turns out my problem has a name. It’s called Ichthyophobia. The word comes from the Greek “ichthus,” meaning “big fish,” and “phobos,”...

I am a man greatly blessed. I have seen the world, served my country and saved a few lives. I get to write for gun magazines and claim it’s work.

Oddly, it was early Saturday afternoon that was invariably the most fascinating. The typical MO involved the obligatory massive frat party the night before.

As anyone who has ever watched one of those criminal forensics TV shows might attest, you can ascertain a great deal from an entrance gunshot wound.

Delivering babies was one of the more rewarding things I got to do during medical training.

I’ve always been a pretty trusting guy. I find that if I treat people the way I would like to be treated, then most of life turns out rosy.

On September 5, 2021, a 12-year-old boy in Long Beach, California boarded a crowded public transit bus alone to go visit his grandmother.

Folks occasionally ask what it’s like to be a rich and famous gun writer. Well, for starters, there are no rich gun writers.

The year was 1986, and I was getting my first taste of soldiering. My initial foray into the real Army was Northern Warfare School. Did you know you can get...

A big male European boar reaches more than six feet long and weighs around 220 pounds. These animals are grouchy, mean and ravenous. Lured by the smell of...

It was scout pilot nirvana. We had four OH58 aeroscout helicopters and but two rated 58 drivers. We were therefore tasked to fly off our flying hour program...

One of ten seminal directives issued directly from the mouth of God Himself, the ninth commandment against professing falsehood represents arguably the most...

I’m told I can explore a little fiction in this venue from time to time as long as I don’t make a habit of it.

We were all poor and living hand to mouth. We each maintained a cabinet in the kitchen that we kept stocked with ramen, mac and cheese and similar low-cost...

How could something so ethereal and diaphanous be so unimaginably powerful?

The year was 1913, and my grandfather was but eight years old. He lived on a rural Mississippi farm along with his parents and dozen siblings.

How could something so ethereal and diaphanous be so unimaginably powerful?

It still amazes me after all these years that I can speak so dispassionately about this stuff.

Why does the military let children do such grownup things? I just wanted the funny hat. It is amazing what young men will do for a funny hat.

It was one of those preternaturally cold January days in the Deep South —about ten degrees out. The kids were inside doing school, and there was something...

I have a weakness for gunshot wounds. That statement reads lamentably ghoulish splashed across my computer screen, but I can’t help it.

He was the last one. Like the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger, the passenger pigeon, or the Great Auk, William Strickland was the very last of his species.

I had not slept in three days. In the modern age, the U.S. Army can’t legally hit you. However, they do liberally employ hunger and sleep deprivation as...

It was a torrid summer Saturday in the Mississippi Delta, and the air was so thick you could tear off a chunk and gnaw it.

It was Friday evening in the urban ER where I worked, and the freaks were out in force.

This is likely to make you smile like a Democrat at a gun buyback event.

There is this massive infrastructure focused on meeting the medical and dental needs of our boys and girls in military uniform. Sometimes, however, you...

Some two decades later my children don’t remember the New Orleans zoo, the WWII Museum or the food. However, from now until the sun burns out they will...

I have thus far inadvertently instigated three proper forest fires. This is indeed not the sort of thing about which one should boast.

Imagine if you will a 19-year-old wet, terrified man shivering in an office wearing nothing but a woman’s sexy transparent nightgown.

Watching the Verminator work became a social event.

We study only that which we might conveniently perceive and then declare with assurance that there is no God. Reality is something else entirely.

I knew him less than three days, yet I count him among my dearest friends. He showed me how to die well.

One of the more common letters I get here are readers worrying if their self-defense load is adequate. Regardless of the caliber, they still worry.

The passage of time has fascinated humans since the very beginning. As was so compellingly depicted in the Christopher Nolan movie “Interstellar,”...

Sometimes the easiest solutions are indeed the best. In this case, a young man with a sandwich and a tennis racquet ...

Just because he can sell refrigerators, doesn’t mean he can work in our industry selling gun stuff.

I’m from Mississippi. It’s hot down here — like Africa hot. In the summertime, the humidity is so thick you can tear off a piece of air and gnaw on it,

Am I a collector — or do I simply seem to acquire guns haphazardly as they catch my eye?

What do you need to do to keep your guns ready to go? Not much, actually. I have several “levels” of clean for my own guns.

T-Mas was a Navy Lieutenant Commander flying F/A-18F Super Hornets off of the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

In experienced hands — and I mean near-expert hands — they are effective, accurate, reliable and highly concealable.

I pursue firearms like a weasel stalks a hot dog. The hunt imbues me with a certain singularity of purpose.

I thought it might be a fun exercise to see if I could offend every single person in the country in a single weekly column.

Much ado is made of sight pictures. But what is a sight picture? I think it’s many things.

It is simply breathtaking to look back on two decades of medical practice and appreciate some of the things that drive patients to seek a physician’s...

The complete series of excuses, alibis, pithy observations and general ephus originally published in American Handgunner right here!

If you ask a shooter what’s most important about shooting; what does it take to actually hit the target, they’ll likely say, “Sight picture and...

It really doesn’t matter what you did. By this point, none of that really matters. Once these gears start turning there is no stopping them.


I do this for a living, and at times, I still have difficulty separating true mental illness from the garden variety quirky and weird.

This was the Mississippi Delta in summertime, so it was Africa-hot. The air was so thick you could tear off a chunk and gnaw on it.

The gift of a “first gun” to a child can be a life-changing experience. With the right training to go with it, can instill a lifetime of responsibility.

The young man was 13 years old, and we met in Room 7 at my urgent care clinic. Room 7 is the Procedure Room. It’s the playroom for me.

There are no magic bullets and all bullets fail some of the time, so you need to be able to place any bullets you fire as accurately as possible.

The Ox Ranch is where good gun nerds go when we die. This is very likely the coolest place on the planet.

I’ve got guns with warts on them. Nicks, a bit of rust, plating flaking off, signs of bad gunsmithing in the past or just plain honest wear — warts-all.

Never let it be said that Army privates have any hesitation doing what they’re told, even when it’s a little bit crazy.

Welcome to the inaugural installment of the new online Guncrank Diaries. This should indeed be a weekly exercise in excuses, alibis, pithy observations and...

In light of all the “retro-this” and “retro-that” it suddenly dawned on me I was a “retro” myself. And, as a matter of fact, so are most of the...

If we don’t take the time to build the foundation today, it will all die, now, with us. Don’t let it die. Take pre-emptive strikes. Reach out to new...

Soldiers develop an unnatural attachment to the tools of their peculiar profession.

Some will say what I want is impossible, but I don’t believe it.

The most striking thing about the Bus Farm Fight was the “combat cool” exhibited by the Hard Hombres. I had seen veteran fighters engaged all over the...

“Blasphemy! He places grip and trigger control above The Front Sight! Heresy! Did not the prophet Jeff Cooper say, “Blessed are they who, in the face of...

I’ve seen a lot of men die for two reasons: First, because they failed to do what they were trained to do. Second, because they did exactly as they were...

Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was a fair and fertile land festooned with lotsa bananas, bunches of Bad Guys, and some buses.

I know I can count on you folks to remind the whiners and seessee-bwois it ain’t about holiday; it’s about giving thanks for your breath, your...

Lots of you have written asking what handgunning “discipline du jour,” signature school of shooting, trademarked technique, or method-of-the-month I...

My policy is to answer every e-mail, but this month, I’m gonna try to whack a flock of birds with a single stone, okay?

On Veteran’s Day, November 11th, if you haven’t got anyone else to honor, remember the woodsman. I will.

I told you guys to knock it off, didn’t I? I don’t wanta be President!

UN-Written Range Rule #30: The far right stall is unused for a reason. Try the swamp.

There’s a reason 19-year-olds make the best soldiers. They’ve not yet become jaded by the relentless grinding ambiguity of the world. Life was clearer,...

Ok, ok, all right! I GET it! You like her better than you like me.

When it became obvious he couldn’t file his column from West WhereZitStan or whatever, His Editorship suggested I write it, by answering some emails from...

Let’s get this perfectly clear, okay? I’m not an expert. I’m just sorta “experienced.” They’re not the same thing at all.

What exactly does it mean to be cool? Though difficult to define, you know it when you see it. Guns are cool. So was Steve McQueen. You get kind of a...

You know what I mean. They’re like Idjits and Morons, comin’ in all colors, flavors, “life-style preferences” and two, three, or five genders,...

You have not armed and oriented yourself for fighting, in defense of yourself and others, just because you are fearful of attack by predators, have you? No....

Once upon a time on a faraway world very much like our own, there was a teeny-tiny nation surrounded by bigger, bitter enemies.

It’s happening again: A buncha you guys want me to run for president. Here’s the news flash: I ain’t runnin’, and you can’t make me!

Our resident Gun Cranks — Brent Wheat, Tom McHale, and Roy Huntington discuss the pros and cons of red dot sights and if they're right for you.

Of all the sundry holidays that so liberally populate the modern Gregorian calendar none is so superfluous as the birthday.

Streamlight's new Strion Switchblade rechargeable light bar can be used in a variety of different ways as explained by GunCrank's host Roy Huntington.

Join our resident Gun Cranks — Brent Wheat, Tom McHale, and Roy Huntington — as they welcome a new "honorary Gun Crank" into the mix, Jim Shepherd,...

I’ve just about had it with this “Gun-Free Zone” crap, you know?

American Handgunner's Tom McHale finds an IWB holster for a full-size handgun and fits every body size.

I’ve warned you guys. Weird things happen in gunfights. So, for you doubting Thomases, here are some examples from my private stock.

Join the resident Gun Cranks — Brent Wheat, Tom McHale, and Roy Huntington — as they discuss the advantages, myths, and misconceptions of the Weaver Stance.

American Handgunner editor Tom McHale finds a tool from Real Avid that can save you on the range or in the field.

Our resident Gun Cranks — Brent Wheat, Tom McHale, and Roy Huntington — talk about the myths, misconceptions, and truths of "knockdown" power.

It starts with the metal of a gun and the mettle of a man. No matter how many features it has, if it’s not made of the right stuff all the way to the...

What's charm school for shooters? Our resident Gun Cranks talk about how to be a good neighbor, and a few sure ways to get banned when you're at the firing...

“This is our policy on race and color: We have two races — the 440 and the mile, run quarterly. We have one color: camouflage. Dismissed!”

A look at Diamond-D Outdoors Denali Chest Holster and why it's the best option in a critter attack.

Regardless if you're a brand-new shooter or an old hand, the "four rules" of firearms safety aren't optional.

There’s not enough space on this website to thoroughly discuss safety and security from soup to nuts, so let me sound off on just one thing I feel...

Resident Gun Cranks share some reader letters and discuss the questions raised by our viewers and readers.

Just a buncha regular guys blastin’ targets and battin’ the breeze.

Yeah; I’ve learned some things, both esoteric and mundane, and the learning, while free of the usual tuition and lab fees, often came at the cost of...

the "almost" calibers: .25, .32, and .380 as self-defense rounds. Are they useful for personal protection, or will they only get you killed?

Are laser sights a good or bad thing? Hear what the guys have to say about these high-tech shooting tools.

Rip was an adorable $200 beagle. This was a lot for an animal by my standards. The kids fell instantly in love with the little rabbit-chasing machine.

What was the worst - and best - gun-handling scene in movies or television?

Join our resident Gun Cranks – Roy Huntington, Tom McHale, and Brent T. Wheat – as they discuss what makes a good holster and what makes a rotten holster.

Everybody wants the best, but what are some of the worst choices for self-defense ammo?

Join our resident gun cranks - Roy Huntington, Tom McHale and Brent T. Wheat - while they have a lively discussion about the gear they carry in their...

Join our resident Gun Cranks - Roy Huntington, Tom McHale and Brent T. Wheat - as they chat about their own nominations for "Worse Gun Ever!"