Savage launched its model 1907 pistol with a lot of marketing fanfare. It was "10 Shots Quick!" and promoted with testimonials form personalities like Buffalo Bill Cody and Sheriff Bat Masterson. It was intended as a pocket pistol for personal protection and home defense, with a lot made of how i...

When CZ developed the vz.38 pistol for the Czechoslovak military, they made a number of attempts to also sell it on the international export market. This involved offering some various changes in configuration for different clients - in this case, scaling it down from .380ACP to .32 ACP. It also ...

The Mamba was a pistol that had a pretty decent design, but failed because of incompetent manufacturing. Today we are taking a look at a handful of surviving Mambas including the only know Green Mamba, courtesy of Val Forgett at Navy Arms. In addition, we have the minutes of a June 13, 1978 meeti...

In 2017, Hudson released a new pistol that was the darling of the firearms industry. It purported to offer a radically low bore axis and 1911-style trigger in a striker-fired system that would be fast and simple to use.

In 2019, Hudson went bankrupt, out of money and having started to scavenge ...

Today we are taking the Mamba out to the range to see just how badly (or how well) it works. This is one of the Mambas that was assembled in the US by Navy Arms - only a very small number of these went on the market before the whole project was abandoned.

The Flux Raider is a chassis system designed to turn the SIG P320 into a very compact PDW. The design concept began as a desire to improve the practical accuracy of a handgun by adding a collapsing stock while keeping the weapon holsterable. Flux' first product, circa 2019, was a spring-loaded st...

Today I am taking the SIG P320 Flux Legion (aka the SIG Legion edition of the Flux Raider) out to the range. I'm a big fan of PDW systems, and the Raider is one of the best - in my opinion it is better than some purpose-built PDWs, much less other pistol chassis conversions. Anyway, I registered ...

Making a successful and popular new handgun requires doing a whole lot of things right...today we are going to consider what happens when they don't go so well.

For a couple decades after World War Two, Walther survived on legacy designs - the PP/PPK and P38 (eventually made with an aluminum frame as the P4) primarily. In the 1970s they developed the P5 for German police use, and this was a reasonably successful pistol, but expensive and complex. Somethi...

The South Korean military was using old Colt M1911A1 pistols in the 1980s, and as they became worn out a new pistol was needed. This would be something designed and built domestically, and chambered for 9x19. The small arms division of the massive Daewoo industrial conglomerate, called Daewoo Pre...

Following Portuguese Army adoption in 1908, the Portuguese Navy adopted the Luger in 1909 as the m/910. The pattern they chose was a “new model” Luger in 9x19mm, with a 100mm / 4” barrel. A total of 650 were ordered in late 1909 and delivered between 1910 and 1912. The guns had Portuguese-languag...

When the French took over control of the Mauser factory complex in May 1945, the plant had some 85 tons of pistol parts on hand - 7.3 million individual components in various stages of production. This was enough to make a whole lot of guns, even if many of them were not completed parts. So along...

The Ruger P85 - like so many of Ruger's products - is not particularly attractive or exciting. It introduced no particular mechanical innovation besides the casting-based manufacturing that would actually probably be seen as a detriment if it were advertised. And yet, the gun (and those developed...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/headstamp/licensed-troubleshooter?ref=7eq2r0

Licensed Troubleshooter: The Guns of James Bond is live on Kickstarter now - check it out for lots of super cool exclusive options!

Today Caleb Daniels, author of "Licensed Troubleshooter", is joining me to talk a...

CZ has just released their new P09 Nocturne pistols, an update to the previous P07/P09 pairing. These guns fundamentally go back to the classic CZ-75. While that was (and still is) a very popular design, military and police tenders more recently have required more modern elements. So in 2007 the ...

Was the 1911 an emotional support totem or a viable combat weapon? Or both? American soldiers had a bit different take on handguns than soldiers of many other armies, and I think it stems from the American identity with the frontier - the Wild West was well within memory for many people when Worl...

"Carbine Williams", aka David Marshall Williams, has a reputation as the designer of the M1 Carbine, and a very colorful history. He was a moonshiner who pled guilty to second degree murder of a sheriff's deputy and served time in prison. He gained a reputation as a gunsmith in prison, fixing the...

The Japanese national police decided to replace their old Model 60 S&W revolvers in 1995. While traditionalist elements liked the use of a non-threatening compact revolver, others advocated for a modern sidearm - essentially a semiautomatic service pistol. Trials took place in 1995, and the SIG P...

Get Entered to WIN this legendary WW2 Remington Rand M1911A1!
https://go.getenteredtowin.com/forgottenweapons
DEADLINE to ENTER is 06/28/24 @ 11:59pm (PST).

What more classic backup gun is there than the M1911A1, beloved by GIs as a backup to their M1 Carbines, M1 Garands, BARs, and tanks? Toda...

The Strike One pistol originated around 2011 as a collaboration between Nicola Bandini and Dimitry Streshinskiy as a pistol to replace the Makarov in Russian police use. By 2014 is was progressing very successfully through testing and trials, and had gained some international interest, and that's...

The United States adopted the M1911 pistol just in time for the First World War, and between Colt and Springfield Arsenal some 643,000 of these pistols were made by the end of 1918. During that production and the gun's field service in France, a number of potential improvements were recognized. T...

In 1967, the Tula arsenal introduced a specialized silenced version of the Makarov for covert use. This was a very effective pistol, and its design was also very heavily changed from that of the regular pistol. With a two-part silencer surrounding the barrel, the recoil spring had to be moved to ...

Detonics was founded as a company in the 1970s, making high-end 1911 pistols. Their first product that really put them on the map was their 3" micro-compact 1911; something that just wasn't available on a production basis at the time. After the .45 Winchester Magnum cartridge was introduced in 19...

Except for the .22 rimfire Glock 44, all the pistols from the Austrian powerhouse Glock have shared the same fundamental mechanical system. They use the Browning tilting-barrel action, which has been long proven by many companies. With the Glock 46, however, they completely changed, and opted for...