While pistols may not feature heavily on combat footage from the ongoing war in Ukraine, sidearms continue to be a key piece of equipment for many combatants. Germany has provided Ukraine with some 3,500 pistols, from the available visual evidence these have been distributed to some of Ukraine Sp...

Proarmis is a Slovenian pistol manufacturer that has introduced a new high-end competition pistol (priced at approximately €4000). The first example has arrived in the US, and I had the chance to borrow it for some filming. The gun handles very well, and has a really remarkably adjustable trigger...

The genesis of the B&T USW was a two and a half hour car ride home from a youth hockey game, when Karl Brugger and a friend were thinking about how to improve police effectiveness with handguns. What would make a handgun more accurate in practice? Clearly a red for and a shoulder stock. So how do...

Alois Tomiška, best know for the Little Tom pistol, was one of the original founders of the South Bohemia Armory, which became CZ of Strakonice. The first pistol produced by the company was his "Fox" design a .25 ACP pocket gun. As originally designed, it used a folding trigger without a trigger ...

The Beretta Model 34 was basically the final iteration of a design by Tullio Marengoni that began all the way back in 1915. That pistol was updated in the early 1920s, and that one was updated in 1931. The Model 1931 was converted to .380 ACP (aka 9mm Short) as the Model 1932, which became the Mo...

The Glock 26 was introduced in 1995 alongside the Glock 27. These were sub-compact pistols with 3.43 inch barrels chambered for 9x19mm (the 26) and .40 S&W (the 27). These were Glock's first foray into. the subcompact market, and they offered a compelling package. These were small, lighter than t...

The Dutch Navy first acquired Luger pistols in 1918 specifically for its aviators. They has 12 German P04 Lugers taken from a German submarine stranded in the (neutral) Netherlands, and 28 more were purchased from DWM in 1918 to round out the 40 guns needed to equip the Naval Air Service. The pis...

When Germany occupied Belgium in the summer of 1940, the took over the FN factory complex and ordered production of the High Power pistol to continue. It was put into German service as the Pistole 640(b), and nearly 325,000 of them were made between 1940 and 1944. The first ones were simply assem...

The P38K is both a fantasy WWII concept and also a real pistol made in small numbers by Walther in the 1970s. The idea is simple; just cut down the barrel on a P38 to barely in front of the slide (2.8 inches on the real ones). This does make for a shorter gun, although it retains the large frame ...

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 "Kevin" (sometimes called a ZP-98) was developed by Czech gunsmith Antonín Zendl and introduced at the IWA show in 2007. It was a micro-compact pocket pistol chambered for either .380 ACP or 9mm Makarov (the Kevin M). It held six rounds in its magazine, and the most notable feature is a pair...

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...