I’m Lance Rankin, gunsmith and owner of Western Sport in Roanoke, Texas, and Sunday Shoot-a-Round from Hickok45 is one of the few gun series I watch with coffee instead of a notepad. The episode above rambles, in the best way, from a Swedish Mauser to a Glock 43X to free speech and even diet talk. Everything on screen is his; the commentary below is mine.
Shoot your keepsakes
The theme that opens the episode is one I preach at my own counter: quit letting cherished guns rot in the safe. He’s owned his Swedish Mauser Model 96 in 6.5×55 for eight or ten years and still hikes with it and shoots it regularly. That rifle was made in 1911, the same year Browning’s famous pistol was adopted, and it’s still splitting 2-liter bottles a century later.
From the gunsmith’s chair, I’ll second all of it. The Model 96 action is one of the smoothest ever made, and 6.5×55 is the original gentle-recoiling 6.5, doing what the Creedmoor crowd rediscovered a hundred years later. His trick of dabbing white paint on the front sight is old-school and it works, especially on dark targets. Cheap fix, big difference. And no, honest use doesn’t ruin an heirloom. Neglect does. Guns are machines. They’d rather be run and cleaned than entombed.
The Glock 43X and Shield Arms mags
He’s still testing Shield Arms magazines in his Glock 43X, with good results so far, while rotating carry duty between the 43X and a Sig P365 XL. Those steel Shield Arms mags bump the 43X from 10 rounds to 15, which is why people love them. My advice as a smith: if you run them, use the recommended steel mag catch and then test the daylights out of them before you carry. Any magazine that touches a defensive gun earns trust at the range first, not in the holster. If you’re weighing that little Glock against its bigger siblings, my Glock 43 vs 43X comparison covers it.
The porch-talk portion
The episode wanders into the Joe Rogan cancellation push, platforms like Rumble courting creators who feel squeezed, and his own headaches with Facebook pulling links to his videos. Firearms channels live with that reality constantly, and he’s right that owning guns puts you in politics whether you asked for it or not. The Second Amendment doesn’t defend itself. He also shares that a low-carb diet has taken about 18 pounds off him, and revisits the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. That’s the charm of the series: it’s a range session with a neighbor, not a spec-sheet recital.
Where I land
Watch the episode for the Mauser alone. Then go dig out whatever’s been hiding in your safe the longest and take it shooting. If it needs attention first, a sticky bolt, a dark bore, sights that were never right, that’s literal daily work at my bench, and I’d rather fix it than have you retire it. Texas folks new to all this can start with my guides on buying a gun in Texas and constitutional carry. Reach me at [email protected] or 817-393-4000.
Lance Rankin is the owner and Chief Gunsmith of Western Sport, a family-run Type 07 FFL and Class 3/SOT dealer in Roanoke, Texas, serving shooters since 2007. Born and raised in Texas with over 50 years of experience handling firearms, Lance purchased Western Sport in 2017 and turned his lifelong passion into his profession. He specializes in AR-15 and AR-10 platform rifles, manufactures Western Sport’s own AR-15 line under the Rankin Industries brand, and runs the shop’s in-house Cerakote coating operation. When he’s not behind the counter or the workbench, you’ll find him on his ranch deep into the night, hunting coyotes with an AR-15 and thermal optics. Lance holds an MBA and personally shoots and tests the products Western Sport sells.
