RifleGearLab.com is a blog that publishes reviews, guides, and recommendation articles revolving around the subject of firearms, optics, and firearm accessories.
The purpose of this page is to dive into how we do our reviews and what we do to ensure they are reliable and trustworthy so that you can be confident you can trust what we write about the products.
Who We Are and Our Experience
We here at RifleGearLab.com are a team of firearm experts with over 100 years of combined experience. From writers who have published books before to armorers, lifelong hunters, rifle machinists, and seasoned gunsmiths, we’ve got a spread of knowledge and expertise on our team that we bring to our reviews. But at the end of the day, each of us has a strong background in the world of firearms and optics and a passion for using them in our daily lives. So, meet our team!
First up, we’ve got L.P. Brezny, a regular writer for our website and an accomplished outdoorsman that has spent five decades writing about firearms and hunting and has even engineered innovative firearm components with his own company. Alice Jones Webb is another lifelong hunter, experienced shooter, and archer that specializes in writing about the outdoors.
We’ve got Jeramy Smith, a seasoned hunter and firearms aficionado that spends his days gunsmithing or at the range. Andrew Maurer is also a seasoned gunsmith who specializes in building competition rifles for PRS events, participating in them quite often too.
Then we have Dakota Potts, a devoted armorer and competitive shooter with experience building high-end custom rifles. And lastly, we have Brian Belko, a freelance writer for many platforms that has held a deep passion from a young age for outdoor recreation and shooting sports.
Our Review Process
Before we recommend any products, we first buy them with our funds and test them out. The testing procedure includes field tests, load tests, and doing tests at a test shooting range to ensure that the product meets our standards and hopefully exceeds them. After thorough testing and research, we pick the top products that we think are the best of them and offer excellent value for money.
At no point are we paid to make a review about a certain product. We believe consumers appreciate good value for their money and hence recommend products that we believe are worthy of it.
All products featured on this site are governed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and are not banned by federal law. You must check your individual state’s jurisdictions prior to making a buying decision.
Criteria for Review
When we review products, we run them by very specific criteria to check if certain aspects meet our satisfaction. For optics and firearms, we check for accuracy, ergonomics, reliability, and value for money.
Now, why we believe these aspects are important to check for is because we want to ensure that if you buy the products we review and suggest, they’ll function as they should and hit the mark, be comfortable to use instead of hinder you, be a tool that won’t fail you, and is worth the price you’ll be paying. We run every product through these criteria, if applicable, and make sure each product we suggest is one of the best options you can get on the market.
We Scour Through Online Reviews
As opposed to simply cherry picking high quality samples obtained by us, we rely heavily on publicly available reviews when making our decisions.
Our opinion is if there are 100 positive reviews online for example, that looks more favorably to a product than if just one of our writers was to have a similar positive experience
The same goes with negative reviews. If our writer was to have a bad experience with a product, but 100 people online had a good one, we would still consider featuring this product, though we would mention our negative experience.
Product Line And Brand History
We not only look at the product as is, but we also dig through a product and company’s history when making a recommendation.
Here are a few things we take into account while making our reviews:
- Brand & product line voluntary recalls
- Manufacture plants and their recalls
- Any ATF warnings or recalls
- Place of manufacture
- Brand affiliations
- Any name changes with the attempt to hide their history
- Any changes of ownerships or manufacture location
Consider The Type of Hunter, Gender and Shooting Style of Our Readers
We cover very specific situations for all types of shooters. We do so to deliver the correct product recommendations to the right person.
Analyze Each Brand’s Marketing Claims
We compare the claims made by each company regarding their product to what we find testing them in the field.
Consider Product Pricing
These products can be very expensive. We know. For this reason we always try to review a range of products, and regularly give a top “budget pick” and a top “high-end pick” to provide recommendations for all shooters.
Look At Delivery Options
Most of the products mention on this site can not be found on Amazon. For that reason we take into account average delivery time and cost, country delivery coverage and return policies in case you are unsatisfied with your purchase.
Take Our Readers Opinions Into Consideration
All posts have a comments section at the bottom. We encourage our readers to post if they had a bad experience or each out to us on our contact page with feedback.
Updates
Staying up to date in the firearms and optics world is important for a site like RifleGearLab.com, and we make sure that our articles and reviews are regularly updated to correspond with the latest information out there.
Once every six months, we go through our reviews to make sure they reflect the best products currently available in the market and run through another testing process for any new products added. If we’ve made an update to an article, you’ll see that reflected in the last update date.
Independence Statement
We ensure that our reviews are unbiased and not influenced by manufacturers or other parties in any way. Through our reviews, we do earn affiliate commissions if you click on text or an image on RifleGearLab.com to enter an online shopping site and purchase a product. RifleGearLab.com may receive a commission from purchases made on that visit and sometimes future visits. However, there is no additional cost to the consumer; referral fees are paid by merchants. See: How RifleGearLab.com Makes Money for more information.
Despite this revenue stream, the views and opinions written in reviews are the bloggers’ own and have no relation to how we earn commissions. We separate the team writing these reviews from the team responsible for making revenue decisions to ensure that we maintain our integrity and objectivity in our articles.
Regarding our policy for accepting free products, we don’t normally accept these, but if we do, we’ll disclose this in the article.
Community and Interaction
If you have any thoughts or feedback regarding our articles, definitely feel free to leave comments. And if you have questions, please let us know! We really like interacting with you all and appreciate the feedback we receive so that we can improve our site all the more.
Any inaccuracies pointed out or criticisms raised are looked into by our team, and any information we find that needs to be changed will be done soon after. We value your help in making this platform better and hope we can continue to grow this platform and enhance our content for you all.