I’m thankful that we seldom witness the loss of an American Rifleman field editor, but, unfortunately for the entire shooting community, that occurred recently with the passing of combat handgun authority Wiley Clapp. And while I can personally attest to his kind nature, his skill with a pistol and his commitment to the ideal of the armed citizen, details of his life—which, by all accounts, was well-lived and an honor to our country—can be found in this month’s “In Memoriam.”
Our coverage of new products this month includes an impressive example from Walther—a name synonymous with service-grade semi-automatic pistols for more than a century. The company’s experience and flair for quality is evident in nearly every aspect of its latest PDP model, which was made in collaboration with the innovators at Parker Mountain Machine. In “Unfair Advantage: The Walther PDP Pro-X PMM,” another American Rifleman field editor and nationally recognized expert in handgun combatives, Justin Dyal, put the Walther through its paces and confirms that the striker-fired design not only has an excellent trigger, but that the effectiveness of its compensator truly improves the armed citizen’s ability to remain on target in the critical seconds after an initial engagement.
In “Scout The Trail To A General-Purpose Rifle” I retrace the route pioneered by Jeff Cooper, the late innovator in both handgun and long-gun techniques, with the aim of updating the GPR definition and parameters to include examples that may not have typically been considered for that role. It is a trek replete with statistics and goals that vary as greatly as their proponents’ opinions, despite the fact that most would agree on the necessity of such arms in today’s uncertain times. My hope is that anyone in the community of shooters who has not already done so will be convinced to buy or build the very type of firearm that helped found, and still largely distinguishes, America wherein freedom rests in the hands of the armed citizen.
Then, in “More Than A Century Of Elegance: Westley Richards’ ‘Federal’ Model .410” (p. 46) contributor and past African professional hunter Joe Coogan recalls a tale from that vast and distant continent that illustrates the genius and craftsmanship of a sub-gauge shotgun built more than 100 years ago. It is the story of a hidden gem restored to its former glory, an industry-changing firearm design, adventures on a steam locomotive and a tasty dish. And it’s all capped off with a stateside shoot that proves old guns can still do the jobs for which they were designed—even for the armed citizen who simply wishes to add meat to the pot.
Finally, we update the latest effort by the NRA’s Competitive Shooting Division to engage tens of millions of American owners of AR-style rifles in “Inside NRA’s New America’s Rifle Challenge.” On Aug. 4, 2025, the organization officially launched the new competition program, which is designed to sharpen the skills of the armed citizen and everyday responsible AR owner through modernized, AR-specific training at clubs around the nation. The ARC program will also support the use of rimfire ARs, pistol-caliber ARs and suppressors. There is even a resource for competitors at arc.nra.org where plans can be downloaded for the construction of a barricade designed to foster the practice of positional shooting used in the ARC course of fire.
You may have noticed that, in each of the examples cited above, more seasoned shooters serve to educate those who come after them. Such passing down of knowledge is essential to the cultivation of an active and widespread shooting community. You may have also noticed the repetitive use of “the armed citizen,” which is by no means intended as a trite turn of phrase—after all, it is the name of one of this magazine’s longest-standing and most popular columns. Rather, it is a sacred concept worth cultivating because there is perhaps no more fitting descriptor for those Americans who understand that the critical distinction between citizens and subjects is that to be among the former they must be … armed.
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