RECOIL Issue #41

To mark the start of the new year, we always try and do something a bit different with the cover of RECOIL. Because we wound up with so much interesting kit, the decision as to what gun to feature front and center caused much heated debate among the team — should we go for SIG’s new medium machine gun that’s lighter than a 240B, but can rain down hate from 2,000 meters away? Or should it be the groundbreaking PDW from Maxim Defense, which can reliably unleash x39 projectiles from a diminutive AR-style platform?

In the end, the choice was simple. Use both. In doing so, our senior art director came up with yet another collectible design, and it’s your call as to which one you prefer. 

To celebrate turning a page in the calendar, we’ve put together what may be the best edition of RECOIL yet, packed with the kind of wide-reaching and hard-hitting articles you can’t get anywhere else. Take for example world-renowned author Robert Young Pelton’s piece on the multiyear campaign to degrade the capabilities of Daesh, written from the perspective of a journalist with first-hand knowledge and front-line sources. There’s also a slew of exclusive first looks, at firearms and accessories ranging from the mundane to the exotic, including belt-feds and shorties that, somehow, Santa forgot to leave under my tree.

Of course, this being January, we’ll be continuing our instant tradition of providing the very best SHOT Show coverage. Look for wall-to-wall reporting on RECOILweb, RECOILtv, Instagram, and Facebook, starting Monday, January 21, and quite possibly a day or two before that, depending on when we can leak some of the cool stuff we’ve been sworn to secrecy about. Either way, it’ll be fun, hectic, snarky, and as comprehensive as we can make it.

So long as we can convince our servants in Washington not to do anything stupid regarding the Second Amendment (tall order, I know), then 2019 is already shaping up to be a good year for firearms owners, and we look forward to bringing you the very best content, no matter what medium you prefer.

– Iain Harrison

Check out RECOIL Issue 41