You probably don’t need much advice on what to buy yourself. This is an article you might find useful to print out and leave lying around somewhere where the people in your life who will probably soon be wondering what to buy you for Christmas might find it. It might even help to draw rings about the better ideas, and add smiley faces and stars.
So what sort of gifts are appropriate for someone who owns firearms? The good news is there are a lot of things you can give to a gun owner, ranging in price from as little as $10 to as much as, well, the sky’s the limit. Best of all, many of these items are ‘universal’ – that is, the firearms owner in your life will appreciate and use the gift, no matter what his personal tastes and preferences may be.
Here are some suggestions :
Ammunition
So what does anyone who owns guns always need more of? Ammo! The good news with choosing ammo is that most of the time, we are just plinking the stuff at a range. So go buy a few boxes of the cheapest range ammo you can find.
Note that for hunting and self-defense ammo, the different variations within a caliber are more important and better not guessed at, but for simple plinking fun, just about anything should work and would be sure to be appreciated.
Ammo Cases
Ammunition usually comes in thin cardboard boxes; sometimes with each round nicely packed in some type of ‘egg carton’ type frame holder, and sometimes bulk, packed loose.
Many shooters like to transfer their ammo to plastic storage cases like you can see on this site and also on Amazon
in all sorts of different sizes and capacities. Some people like to color code the boxes for different types of ammo, others like to have clear ones so it is easy to see what is inside.
Magazines
Most shooters would like to have another magazine or two for each of their guns. We generally have anywhere from a minimum of four up to a maximum of – well, let’s just say, a lot more than four. We know people with twenty or more, for each of their guns. We’re not saying you really truly need that many, but we are saying you can probably safely buy another magazine or two for any of the guns a shooter owns.
Generally, you should buy name brand magazines for guns – ie, magazines made by the same company that made the gun. You get what you pay for with magazines, and it is a bad idea to buy cheap magazines, because they have an increased change of causing jams.
The one exception to the concept of always buying name brand magazines is with 1911 .45 semi-auto pistols. These wonderful guns can be quite fussy as to the magazines they use, and shooters pretty much unanimously agree that the absolute ‘gold standard’ for 1911 magazines are those made by Wilson Combat. We use the eight round Elite Tactical magazines ourselves.
Magazine Pouches
Everyone should have a magazine pouch/holder – something that fits on your belt to hold a couple of magazines. This is essential when practicing malfunctions and reloads, and useful for general range work and plinking. Generally we have been very happy with these holders made out of Kydex (eg made by Blade Tech), and prefer those to leather or loose nylon pouches.
You’d probably want a different way to carry spare magazines for concealed carry purposes, but for regular range work, the Blade Tech or similar double mag pouches are excellent.
Range Bag
Here’s another thought. If your shooter doesn’t already have a range bag for his pistols or just general ‘stuff’ (for a rifle/shotgun shooter), that could make a useful gift. You’d want to choose something that is large enough to hold a pistol or two, hearing protection (think bulky headphones), eye protection (glasses in a protective case), half a dozen magazines, a similar number of boxes of ammunition, maybe some additional clothing, spare parts, and/or who knows what else.
A range bag typically has several different internal compartments so you can separate things from each other and have a bit of layout and organization in the bag.
We’ve been very happy with bags something like this Uncle Mike’s Deluxe Range Bag
.
One thought is to buy a regular/generic travel duffel bag (or a camera bag) instead of a range bag. The price will probably be the same, or possibly even a bit lower, and your shooter will get a bag that looks more nondescript and anonymous, rather than one which shouts out ‘Hey, I’ve got a gun in here’.
Cleaning Gear
An unavoidable part of shooting (unless you have Glocks, of course – Glocks are renowned for not needing much care or cleaning) is cleaning the guns afterwards. There are three products that we swear by. In the order of application to a dirty gun, they are :
Hoppes No. 9 solvent is our favorite bore cleaner.
Gun Scrubber is our favorite ‘dissolves anything’ cleaner and makes light work of getting in all the ‘hard to get at’ but important places in a gun where guck and gunk accumulates (don’t ask what the difference between guck and gunk is!). We’ve no idea what sort of noxious poisonous cancer-causing solvents they might have in their product, but the more the merrier, we say! All we know for sure is that it smells very strong and makes the dirtiest of guns magically clean with the least amount of hassle and effort. Best used outside with plenty of fresh air!
Break Free is our favorite lubricant/gun oil. It is available both in a CLP formulation and an LP formulation. The CLP product stands for ‘Clean, Lubricate and Protect’; the LP stands for ‘Lubricant/Preservative’. Because we’ve used the Hoppes No.9 and the Gun Scrubber, we feel we only need the LP rather than the CLP product, but see below for a situation where the CLP product might be a better choice.
These three liquids can be used together with a traditional gun cleaning kit – a combination of rods, push/pull handle, hooks, brushes, patches, fluids, and various other things (we use nails to help us get into far away places and also toothbrushes too). Or, if you prefer, there’s a much simpler approach these days, too.
All In One Cleaning Approach
Gun cleaning usually involves a lot of time, a lot of materials and chemicals, and a lot of hassle. But if you get a Bore Snake, one single product takes the place of all the other components of barrel/bore cleaning. Sure, the rest of the internal parts of the gun aren’t cleaned by a Bore Snake, but the barrel surely is. Note that Bore Snakes come in different sizes to match with different caliber guns and barrels.
A Bore Snake and CLP is a great way to quickly clean your gun; perhaps between days of shooting if you’re on a multiple day shooting course (but if you’re doing that, be like us and whether you need to or not, give your whole gun a lavish amount of cleaning and care before your last day and any qualification shoots/competitions you might have).
Electronic Hearing Protectors
An interesting technology that is becoming more commonplace and more affordable are electronic hearing protectors. These look like normal ‘headphone’ type ear muff things that fit around a shooter’s ears, but they have a clever extra function.
For sure, like normal hearing protectors, they block out sound. But they also have microphones on the outside of them and speakers on the inside, and a clever electronic amplifier that amplifies quiet noises but not loud noises. This means that you can end up hearing more or less normally what is going around about you, but when loud noises (ie gun shots) occur, the amplifier switches off and those are blocked.
This makes it easy to carry on reasonably normal conversations on the range, and to hear what your instructor is telling you, without having problems when the shooting starts.
These can now be found for as little as $25 at Walmart (but – warning – neither of the two pairs we’ve bought at Walmart have worked reliably).
You want to look for a pair that has the highest possible noise rating (NRR) – look for something greater than perhaps 22dB, and ideally better than 24dB.
Belt
Okay, so your shooter probably has plenty of belts for his trousers already. But a shooting belt is different in two respects – it has an internal stiffener so the belt stays rigid rather than flexing and sagging, and it is designed to be able to hold a weight of gear – it is easy to end up with five or more pounds of gear on a shooter’s belt.
The strength of the belt is both in its material and also in its buckle mechanism – obviously the belt as a whole is only as strong as its weakest component, so you want a belt that is very strong in all respects, not just one which is selectively strong.
If a shooter is doing fast draw/timed competition shooting, he needs a very stable strong belt to provide a good platform for his holster from which he can powerfully plunge his hand down onto the gun and then draw it up and out of the holster.
An ‘instructor belt’ such as this from Uncle Mike’s
is an excellent choice of belt.
Tactical Light
There have been enormous improvements in flashlights over the last decade or two. Do you remember back to the ‘bad old days’ where flashlights were enormously big and similarly heavy – the Maglite series of flashlights made out of metal, with anywhere from three to seven or more huge D-cell batteries inside them?
These monsters weren’t even all that bright, and they chewed through batteries at an impressive rate.
These days, any decent flashlight will use LEDs rather than ‘old-fashioned’ lightbulbs. Ignore regular light bulbs, ignore halogen bulbs, ignore Xenon or any other type of bulb, and only choose an LED type flash light. There are several reasons for this – the LED uses as little as one tenth as much power to create the same amount of light as old fashioned bulbs, while being much more robust and having a huge long life (tens of thousands of hours). They are also very small, allowing for good results from small reflectors.
Most flashlights these days have their power measured in lumens. The more lumens you can get, the better, and don’t settle for anything less than 100. We also recommend you get a flashlight that is powered by regular (ie available everywhere and inexpensive) AA or AAA batteries rather than one which requires some sort of special battery that is more expensive and hard to find.
A flashlight that has both high and low power settings is also very good – most of the time we use the low power setting on our lights, and that is all we need, and we get wonderfully long battery life. But if we have a situation where we need extreme light, then it is great to have the extra power on hand.
We have been delighted with just about every light we’ve purchased. We always have tiny Fenix lights in our pockets – they are lightweight and bright and versatile. But for situations where only the best will do, we use Streamlight brand lights and you should too.
Guns
Well, of course, there’s one other thing to consider buying for the shooter in your life – another gun. We shooters can never have too many of those.
But if you’re going to buy a gun as a gift, you’ll want to be sure you’re choosing exactly the make and model that your recipient wants. There are lots of different options that can make it hard to get the right one – this is probably something you should consult with your shooter before choosing.
Which brings us to the other important consideration :
What Not to Buy
Don’t buy your shooter a new holster, unless you know for sure exactly what he wants.
Most shooters (ourselves most definitely included) have a ‘holster drawer’ – whether it be a real drawer or not, it is a resting ground for way too many (and often way too expensive) holsters that we’ve bought and ended up not liking. This is particularly so of concealed carry type holsters.
So perhaps best not to buy a holster.
A similarly difficult thing to buy is clothing, which is a shame because it is something we almost always need more of. Most shooters can always do with more ‘tactical’ or concealment gear – shirts, trousers and jackets, but trying to get the right mix of size, style, color and function is tremendously difficult.
For More Inspiration
Here are the results of a survey of hunters and shooters who were asked ‘What hunting or target shooting gear are you most hoping to receive this holiday season?’.
Whatever you choose, have a very Merry Christmas, and a very safe wonderful New Year.