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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...

Today I took a Model 1883 Reichsrevolver out to the monthly BackUp Gun Match. This is an 1894-manufactured gun (made at the Erfurt Arsenal). It is a single action only, six-shot revolver chambered for the 10.6mm German Ordnance cartridge. The first type of Reichsrevolver was adopted by the young ...

Hi-Point finally released their double-stack YC-9 Yeet Cannon a few months ago, and they sent me one to try out so I figured I'd take it to the monthly BackUp Gun Match.

The new YC-9 is exactly what you would expect from Hi-Point, because they really only make one basic gun. It's a simple blowba...

Having served as the standard Soviet military sidearm for several decades, the PM Makarov was getting a bit obsolescent by the late 1980s. More of the world was using locked breech, 9x19mm service pistols but the Soviet Union still had essentially a domestic version of the Walther PP. To extend i...

Yesterday we looked at the history and the mechanics of the Vektor CP1, and today I'm taking it out to the monthly BackUp Gun Match. It isn't a pistol with a good reputation, but it's also not a pistol very many people gave a fair shake to. It has a decent grip, pretty decent sights, a fixed barr...

I recently picked up one of the Pioneer Arms semiauto PM-63C pistols that are sporadically available here in the US. They have a pretty mediocre reputation and I wasn't expecting much, but the gun is so unusual that I really must have one myself (and the likelihood of me getting an original PM63 ...

This didn't come out as well as I was hoping (one of the stage videos got corrupted and the others don't show the shooting stages as well as I'd anticipated), but I will do better in future work. The gun, on the other hand, performed much better than I was expecting!

The Star Model 1914 was a ...

The Schwarzlose 1908 is the only blow-forward firearm ever to see real commercial sale. It is a compact pocket pistol chambered for .32 ACP, with a 7-round magazine. They were sold by Schwarzlose in Germany and also assembled and sold in the United States in a slightly altered form by the Warner ...

The C.O.P. (Compact Offduty Police) .357 was designed by Robert Hillberg, patented in 1983, and manufactured by COP Inc in California. It's a stainless steel, 4-barrel, .357 Magnum derringer. It's also an awful pistol to shoot. The trigger is one of the worst I've ever felt, recoil is sharp (alth...

The Type 94 Nambu pistol is best known for the exposed sear that allows it to be fired by pressing on the side of the gun. This is actually not really the safety issue it's usually made out to be, but that's a point for another video. Today, I took a Type 94 to my local Backup Gun Match. This mat...

Today, I'm taking the AJ ordnance "Thomas" .45 to the Backup Gun Match to try it out on the clock. The Thomas was designed as a concealed carry pistol, with no external controls and a long revolver-like double action trigger in lieu of a safety. It actually performed better than I expected, espec...

A little while back during the summer I went to our monthly Backup Gun Match with, of all things, a Taurus Curve. Why do I even own one of those? Well, I found one new in the box at a local gun show for less than $200. Because it is such an unusual gun in a bunch of ways, I figured it really dese...

For this month's BackUp Gun Match, I decided to bring out the CZ38 - one of the top contenders for ugliest service pistol ever adopted. It's a single-stack, double-action-only .380 with a weirdly bulky grip, so it's not winning any ergonomic awards either...

Yesterday we looked at the history and the functioning of the Armatix iP1 "smart gun", and today I'm taking it out to a BackUp Gun Match. How will it perform? Will it cycle reliably? Will I time out before I can actually get it authorized to fire? Let's find out!

I was talking to the guys who operate BattleGnome at Lynx Brutality this summer, as they also made the holster and mag carriers for the Arex Delta I used at that match. They are really cool, down-to-earth folks and had just finished prototyping a Tokarev holster. There are no modern options for a...

Yesterday we were looking at the new resurrection of the AutoMag pistol, and today I have it out at the monthly BackUp Gun match. Is it appropriate to bring this behemoth of a pistol to a "backup" match? Sure!

My experience with magnum automatic pistols has been very mixed...actually, just mo...

Thanks to Peter, we have a .45 Winchester Magnum Wildey Survivor to do some video with. I figured the best way to start would be to take it to a Backup Gun match, right? Unfortunately, I had continuous feeding problems despite having (I thought) gotten the gas system properly dialed in. Despite t...

Today I am going to actually do some shooting with a Chinese Warlord Era pistol - a Shanghai Model 1900 Pistol-Carbine. As I described in yesterday's video, these were well-made guns produced by a large and legitimate factory arsenal. I only have a single magazine (and sadly no shoulder stock) fo...

Posting a couple videos on interesting versions of the Roth-Steyr pistols recently made me think about just how nice of a pistol the 1907 is to shoot, So, I figured I'd bring it out to the monthly Backup Gun Match. Alas, I had ammo from two different lots, one of which would not reliably cycle th...

It came out recently that the Beretta Group has purchased Chapuis, the French manufacturer of the legendary MR73 revolvers. A bunch of people have asked me if I'm getting one of the Beretta-imported guns, and the answer is YES! But it's not here yet.

So while I wait for it (a 5.25" Sport model...

Yesterday we took a look at the history and operation of the Wilkinson Arms Linda, and today I have it out at the BackUp Gun Match. Since I don't have iron sights on mine, I fitted with with a period-correct Weaver Qwik-Point fiber optic red dot sight.

Overall, the Linda performed much better...

I've been taking a lot of big pistols to the (alleged) BackUp Gun Match, and I figured it was time to try out something that actually would quality as a back-up gun. So, I got my hands on one of NAA's .22 Mini-Revolvers. This is the smallest practically shootable "real" gun made, and they are rel...

"The Formidable" was the name given to one of many different civilian pocket-carry revolvers made by the French Manufrance firm in St Etienne. This particular model was introduced in 1895, although it went through a significant redesign in 1902. The example I have here is the later pattern, which...

Yesterday we looked at the history and development of the vz.82 pistol; today I am taking it out to the BackUp Gun Match. this should be a pretty competitive pistol in this environment, and it actually meets the characteristics of a backup gun quite well. It is light and compact, but still offers...