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AR-15 Rifles, Pistols & Tactical Gear | Gun Store in Roanoke, TX

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Tactical Shooting

Would you have shot this knife-wielding man through the door? Here’s why the answer is no

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The video above walks through a Sacramento incident that’s worth thinking about before something like it happens to you. A man went door to door one evening making stabbing motions at front doors, all of it captured on Ring cameras, while families sheltered inside. The title question gets asked a lot when this footage circulates: would you have shot him through the door? I’m Lance Rankin, a Texas FFL and gunsmith, and my answer is no. Stay with me, because the reasoning matters more than the answer.

What happened

A resident’s phone lit up with camera alerts and showed a stranger at the front door, apparently miming stabbing motions. A neighbor, Amy Guthery, got warned the man was roaming the block. Her response was to grab her cats, a baseball bat, a sledgehammer, and a gun, and retreat to her bedroom. Police eventually arrested the man, 56-year-old Brian Mason, who was homeless and on felony probation.

Then the part that should bother everyone: he was charged with misdemeanor trespassing and released in under two hours because probation declined to place a hold. Hours later he was arrested again nearby, for trespassing, carrying a knife.

The legal line, plainly stated

Deadly force requires a reasonable belief of imminent death or great bodily harm. A man on the far side of a locked door, however menacing, generally doesn’t meet that standard, because the locked door is doing its job. You can’t see what he’s actually holding, you can’t be certain who’s in your line of fire beyond him, and a prosecutor will replay that Ring footage frame by frame asking what, exactly, made death imminent through a closed door.

The line to hold is the threshold. If someone is breaking through the door, the legal and tactical picture changes completely. Until then, the right moves are boring ones: keep the door locked, get your family behind you, have the gun in hand, and be on the phone with 911. If you ever do have to fire, what you say and do in the next hour matters enormously, and I’ve written about that in what to do and not do after a self-defense shooting.

On bats, sledgehammers, and equalizers

Ms. Guthery’s improvised arsenal deserves a respectful word, because her instincts were right even where her tools weren’t. A bat against a knife is a losing proposition for most people, and a sledgehammer indoors is nearly unusable. The firearm is the one tool in that pile that doesn’t depend on being younger, bigger, or stronger than the threat. That’s not bravado. It’s the practical case for lawful ownership, made by an ordinary night in a residential neighborhood.

The system did what systems do

I don’t say this to be cynical: police response and the courts exist to maintain order, not to guarantee your safety in the two minutes that matter. The officers here did their job and arrested the man. The rest of the machine released him within two hours, and he was back out with a knife the same day. No malice required, just a system with limits. Those limits are why the first responder at your front door is you.

What to actually do

Cameras are a genuinely useful early warning, and this incident shows why. Locked doors buy time. Awareness fills the gap before either matters, and my 360-degree awareness post covers building that habit. Have a family plan for exactly this scenario, the stranger at the door who isn’t leaving; my surviving a home invasion guide walks through it room by room. And know your state’s use-of-force law cold before you ever need it, because the worst time to learn the threshold rule is while you’re standing at the door deciding.

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The Memorial Drive shooting: a legal gun owner acted when every system failed

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I want to write about this one carefully, because two men nearly died and a lot of people were terrorized on an ordinary afternoon. I’m Lance Rankin, a firearms dealer in Texas, and I’m going to lay out what happened in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 11, 2026, what the record shows about how it became possible, and what I think it means. The video above, drawing on reporting and statements from the Gun Owners’ Action League, covers it in more depth.

What happened

That afternoon, 46-year-old Tyler Brown opened fire on traffic along Memorial Drive with a rifle. Witnesses described 50 to 60 rounds. Drivers abandoned their cars. One woman had a bullet pass through her windshield and her jacket. A responding police cruiser was hit. Two men were wounded with life-threatening injuries.

The shooting ended when a Massachusetts State Police trooper and a legally armed civilian, a former Marine licensed to carry, confronted Brown and stopped him. The civilian moved toward the gunfire while others ran from it. Jim Wallace of GOAL put it bluntly: “The only law that saved lives on Memorial Drive was the Second Amendment.”

The record the system had

Brown was not unknown. His convictions go back to 2008 for cocaine distribution. In 2014 he was convicted of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and witness intimidation. In 2020, while on probation, he fired 13 rounds at two Boston police officers and pleaded guilty to eight charges including armed assault with intent to murder. One of those officers wrote in a victim impact statement that Brown would hurt or kill someone when released. Prosecutors asked for 10 to 12 years. The judge gave him six. He was paroled in May 2025.

Three days before the shooting, he was released from McLean Psychiatric Hospital. His parole officer knew he had relapsed and was voicing suicidal thoughts. On the morning of the attack, Brown reportedly showed that officer a semi-automatic rifle and made threats. The officer called 911. Nobody reached him in time.

The laws that were supposed to prevent this

Massachusetts has among the strictest gun laws in the country, from its 1998 framework through Chapter 135 in 2024: an expanded assault weapon ban, registration, sensitive-place restrictions, training mandates, and more. Brown was a convicted felon on parole, prohibited from touching a firearm under both federal and state law long before any of the newer statutes existed. Every one of those laws applied to him. None of them stopped him, because laws restrain people who obey them.

GOAL points to the Commonwealth’s own public health data showing gun homicides have risen since 1998 despite each new round of legislation. And the legislative response to Memorial Drive, as of this writing, is a proposal to raise the penalty for reckless discharge of a firearm to five years. Brown faced far graver charges in 2020 and served six years for trying to murder police officers. It’s hard to see what a new discharge statute would have changed.

What I take from it

The courts had him. Parole had him. The psychiatric system had him three days before. The failure here wasn’t a shortage of gun laws; it was a chain of institutions that each had a violent, unstable man in hand and let go. When all of them failed at once, what stood between Brown and more victims was a trooper and one licensed citizen who’d done everything the law asked of him.

That’s not a talking point to me. It’s the reason the right to carry exists: it’s the last line when everything upstream breaks. Massachusetts voters will get a say on Chapter 135 in a November 2026 ballot referendum, and I’d encourage folks there to study this case, check the current status of both the referendum and the proposed legislation, and vote accordingly. My thoughts are with the two men who were wounded and everyone on that road.

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5th Circuit bombshell: judges hint the machine gun ban might be unconstitutional

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Every once in a while a court loses a case in a way that matters more than most wins. That’s what happened at the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Jamiel Wilson, the case covered in the video above. The full court declined to rehear a challenge to the federal machine gun ban, so the ban stands. But several judges used that no to hint the machine gun ban might be unconstitutional, and that’s the real story.

I’m Lance Rankin, a Type 07 FFL and SOT dealer here in Roanoke, Texas, which means NFA law is my daily reality, and the Fifth Circuit is my circuit. Standard caveat up front: I’m a gunsmith, not a lawyer, this is commentary on a moving case, and as of this writing nothing about machine gun law has actually changed. Check the current status before you assume anything.

What happened

Wilson’s team asked the full Fifth Circuit, all seventeen judges sitting en banc, to reconsider whether 18 U.S.C. 922(o), the federal machine gun ban, is unconstitutional. Seven judges voted to rehear it; ten voted no. Case closed, ban intact. Except several judges attached written opinions, and those opinions read like a set of instructions.

What the judges wrote

Judge Willett framed it as a double failure. The Constitution protects liberty two ways, he noted: it limits the government to enumerated powers and it guarantees the people enumerated rights. On the powers side, he questioned the Commerce Clause reasoning that lets Congress criminalize mere possession of a machine gun, no commerce involved. On the rights side, he poked at the “dangerous and unusual” label courts have used to exclude machine guns from Second Amendment protection. His point is hard to dodge: there are millions of registered machine guns in this country. Under Heller’s “common use” standard, how does something that common stay “unusual”?

Judge Ho went at it more bluntly, urging courts to decide these cases on history rather than fear, and using the word “hoplophobia” to describe what he thinks drives some of the reasoning. His reminder: the founders expected an armed citizenry, and the Second Amendment is about defense and liberty, not duck season.

Judge Oldham added the Bruen point: after that decision, gun laws must be justified by historical tradition, not modern policy preference, and there’s no historical tradition of banning an entire class of arms, which is exactly what 922(o) does.

So why didn’t they strike it down?

Procedure. Per Willett, Wilson’s case didn’t raise the right arguments in the right way, so it wasn’t the vehicle to decide the question. That’s not a technicality dodge; appellate courts genuinely can’t reach issues that weren’t properly presented. The message between the lines is almost louder than a ruling: bring us the right case, built the right way, and we’re listening.

The roadmap to getting the machine gun ban ruled unconstitutional

Which is why Second Amendment lawyers are treating this as a blueprint. Future challenges now know to raise the Commerce Clause issue squarely, structure the Second Amendment claim around common use, and build a deep historical record for the Bruen analysis. Constitutional shifts almost never arrive as lightning bolts. They arrive like this: a denial with opinions attached, then a properly built case a few years later. That’s how Heller happened, and how Bruen happened.

I’ll keep saying it in every one of these legal posts: nothing has changed at the counter. Machine guns remain heavily restricted, and this shop follows the law as it is, not as some judges hint it might become. The legal side of the NFA world, like the suppressors I sell every week, keeps humming right along. But if you care about where NFA law is headed, put U.S. v. Wilson on your watch list. Federal judges willing to call the machine gun ban unconstitutional in all but name means the foundation just showed a visible crack.

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HK’s VP9 gets tactical: suppressor-ready and new colors debut at SHOT Show 2017 (retrospective)

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This is a look back at SHOT Show 2017, when the video above was shot at Industry Day at the Range. The footage isn’t mine; credit goes to the channel that filmed it, including their interview with Dale from Heckler & Koch. But it’s a fun time capsule, because 2017 was the year HK leaned into what the VP9 was becoming: their first genuine hit in the striker-fired market. I’m Lance Rankin of Western Sport in Roanoke, Texas, and since suppressors are a big part of what we do as an SOT dealer, this announcement aged in interesting ways.

What HK announced

The headline was the VP9 Tactical: a standard VP9 with a threaded barrel and suppressor-height sights, so you could actually see your sight picture over the top of a can. Worth knowing if you are shopping one used: HK threads those barrels M13.5×1 left-hand, not the 1/2×28 most American shooters assume — one of the 48 left-hand rows in our muzzle thread pitch database. Beyond those changes it was the same pistol people already liked, which was the smart play. Don’t reinvent a winner; make it suppressor-ready.

A few details from the interview worth noting. The threading was a left-hand twist, and Dale said most suppressor makers had compatible mounts, name-checking Gemtech and SilencerCo; the demo gun on the range wore a SilencerCo can with tall KAC sights. HK was shipping the Tactical with basic night sights while they figured out what should come standard. MSRP landed between $719 and $819, a modest bump over the standard gun. And unlike half the SHOT Show announcements every January, it was available immediately.

HK also rolled out two new frame colors that year: a Flat Dark Earth they called RAL8000, and a Gray. Small news, but it signaled HK treating the VP9 as a commercial product line rather than a police contract gun that civilians happened to buy.

The tea-leaf reading that came true

The most interesting part in hindsight is the future talk. Dale said the VP9 had become one of HK’s best-selling guns in a long time, and that the company was hoping for a carbine version someday, plus something sized between the subcompact SK and the full-size gun. Watching from 2017, that was speculation. Watching from now, HK did keep building out the line, and the VP9 family grew into a mainstay of the striker-fired market rather than a one-off experiment.

The bigger trend this announcement rode is obvious in the rearview mirror: 2017 was early in the wave that made threaded barrels and suppressor-height sights nearly standard options across the industry. Suppressor ownership has grown enormously since then, and pistols that were “tactical variants” in 2017 describe half the new-release catalog today.

Why I keep posts like this around

Old SHOT Show coverage is a good reality check. Some announcements evaporate; this one turned out to be the front edge of where the market went. The VP9 remains an easy pistol to recommend, and a suppressor-ready host in 9mm is one of the most pleasant range setups there is.

If the suppressed-pistol itch has bitten you, that’s our specialty. We’re a Type 07 FFL with SOT here in Roanoke, and we handle suppressor purchases and NFA paperwork start to finish. Pair the host with the right ammo while you’re at it; my 9mm self-defense ammo guide covers that side. Questions? Email [email protected] or call 817-393-4000.

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CMMG Dissent MkGs 16″ 9mm PCC: first shots and honest impressions

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Pistol-caliber carbines are one of those categories where marketing outruns reality, so when a reviewer actually runs one hard on camera, I pay attention. The video above is a first-shots review of the CMMG Dissent MkGs, the 16-inch 9mm carbine, and it’s worth your time. To be clear on attribution: CMMG sent the gun to the video’s creator, not to me, and the range work is all his. What I can add is a working gunsmith’s read on what he found. I’m Lance Rankin, owner of Western Sport in Roanoke, Texas.

What the Dissent is

The Dissent is CMMG’s premium PCC, and it’s a real departure from a parts-bin 9mm AR. Side charging handle instead of the usual AR rear charger. Competition-style controls with a 45-degree ambi safety. A folding, retracting stock with adjustable length of pull that looks a bit SCAR-inspired. Full M-LOK handguard, included muzzle brake, and it feeds from Glock magazines, which are cheap and everywhere. The heart of it is CMMG’s radial delayed blowback action, which is the feature that separates their guns from the straight-blowback crowd.

What the review found

The short version: about 300 rounds, mixed ammo, standard Glock mags, zero malfunctions. The reviewer’s standout observations line up with what I know of CMMG’s radial system:

  • Recoil is the headline. Straight-blowback 9mm carbines slap harder than people expect because of the heavy bolt. The radial delayed system spreads that impulse out, and the reviewer compares the result to an MP5’s roller-delayed feel. On a 16-inch gun with a brake, he calls the recoil almost ridiculous, in a good way.
  • The trigger surprised him. Light, fast reset, and he rates it against the JP5 and a competition MPX, which is serious company for a factory trigger. He even calls it almost too light at first, which is an honest note you don’t hear often.
  • Fit quibbles. The stock felt long to him even fully retracted, so shorter shooters should shoulder one first. The gun carries some weight forward, 6.6 pounds total with mass out on the rail and brake, which he noticed on unsupported precision shots.
  • Accuracy held up at 75 yards, which is a sensible test distance for a 9mm carbine, and his drill times came easily for a first outing.

My take from the shop side

Two things in that review deserve underlining from someone who wrenches on these guns. First, reliable Glock-mag ARs are harder to build than the spec sheet suggests; feed geometry and mag catch placement trip up a lot of manufacturers. CMMG has been doing Glock-mag guns longer than most, and 300 clean rounds in a review matches what I’ve seen of their track record. Second, the 16-inch barrel isn’t about ballistics, it’s about paperwork. You get a bit more velocity, sure, but mostly you get a folding, shootable carbine with no NFA process at all.

The honest trade-off is price. A Banshee runs $1,000 to $1,200; the Dissent is around $2,200. That’s JP5 and MPX territory, and the review frames it exactly that way: this is a competitor to those guns, not an upgrade path from a budget PCC. If you want a fun trainer that shares mags with your Glock, a Banshee or similar does that for half the money. If you want the nicest-shooting bufferless 9mm you can buy, the Dissent belongs on the short list.

Would I stock one? Yes, and I’d also tell half the people asking about it that a good AR in 5.56 still does more for the same money; my home defense AR-15 setup post explains why. But as a range gun and competition rig, this thing looks like a genuine contender. If you want help ordering one, or deciding between it and an MPX, email [email protected] or call 817-393-4000.

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