I've been meaning to put this video together for a while, and finally have it - a detailed look at the mechanics and internal workings of the Frommer 1910. This was the third major iteration of Rudolf Frommer's long-recoil locked-breech pistol design, and the most successful up to it's time (alth...

The Gyrojet was the closest thing to a commercially successful rocket pistol, although not many were sold before the company went out of business. This is the 13mm pistol version (the most common type of Gyrojet), and fires a 180 grain rocket projectile.

This very odd one-off pistol first appeared in a 1958 Golden State Arms catalog, with no description of its history or mechanical design. I have often seen it referred to as an automatic revolver, but this is a misconception - what appears to be a cylinder is actually a rotary magazine, akin to a...

The official issue sidearm for the Iraqi Army (and many of its police agencies) is the Tariq, a domestically-manufactured copy of the Beretta M1951 pistol. The Beretta is a pretty decent pistol, mechanically fine and comfortable to shoot but hampered by an awkwardly-placed magazine release and sa...

As the Second World War started to really take a toll on German industrial production, several companies started to work on alternatives to the P38 handgun in an effort to reduce production cost and time. This is one such example made by Walther, with a normal type of milled slide and an experime...

This prototype 1895 Krnka automatic pistol, serial number 7, was the first in the developmental line that led to the 1907 Roth-Steyr cavalry pistol.

The Model 1904 was basically the first working automatic pistol made by Webley (there was a 1903 toolroom experiment, but it didn't really work). Like all the Webley automatic that would follow, it was designed by William Whiting. The 1904 was the company's first effort at making a semiautomatic ...

Margolin .22 Target Pistols

This prototype Webley was one of just under 1,000 Model 1910 pistols produced by the company in an effort to get some military and police interest in their .38/9mm automatics. It was tested by a number of organizations (including, notably, the London Metropolitan Police) but not adopted by any. T...

The P66 was a prototype .22LR semiauto pistol designed by a German immigrant to the United States by the name of Rolf Dieckmann. It never went into production, but had a number of interesting features, including a removable firing mechanism and a combination extractor and firing pin.

The Roth-Sauer is a rare early automatic pistol designed by Karel Krnka, financed by Georg Roth, and manufactured by J.P. Sauer & Sohn in Germany. It is mechanically quite complex - much moreso than strictly necessary.

The action is a long-recoil type, in which the bolt and barrel remain locke...

We have another new unique item today - a prototype pistol made by Savage in .38ACP caliber.

Prototype Savage .25 ACP pistol.

The Colt 1903 Pocket Hammerless was a very popular pistol for civilians - it was compact, comfortable, reliable, and exceptionally modern for its day. The initial production was all in .32ACP, but 5 years after it was introduced a variant in .380 caliber was introduced - the model 1908 Pocket Ham...

The Campo-Giro was Spain's first indigenous self-loading military pistol, adopted in 1912 to replace the Belgian 1908 Bergmann-Mars. Only a small number were made of the original M1913 variety, with the vast majority being the later and slightly more refined M1913/16. This particular example is ...

This particular Chinese pistol is a great example of all the elements of a proper Chinese Mystery Pistol: sights that don't function, gibberish markings, mechanical derivation from the Browning 1900, aesthetic elements form the C96 Broomhandle Mauser, and clearly handmade parts. However, it is a ...

The Khyber Pass is a region near the Afghan/Pakistan border known for firearms production - particularly for very crude guns made with crude tools. This particular pistol is an excellent example - it looks like a Colt 1911, although it is smaller and more akin to a .32ACP Llama. It is a straight ...

There are rarely any truly original ideas in the gun world, and today's "pistol" ARs and AKs are not among them. Back in the 60s and 70s, companies were marketing the "Enforcer" M1, a pistol version of the WWII M1 Carbine. Of these two, one is made of military surplus parts by Iver Johnson and on...

When the Spanish Civil War erupted, the Nationalist/Fascist forces quickly captured all the major arms production factories in the country. This left the Republican forces dependent on arms importation and the creation of new factories. The two major efforts to make weapons in Republican-controll...

In 1936 or 1937, the BSW company (Berlin-Suhler Waffenwerk) produced a small number of prototype pistols for German Army trials. These trials were eventually won by the Walther P38, and for good reason in this case. The pistol BSW submitted was a gas-accelerated blowback design, with an aluminum ...

It's fairly common today to see .22 caliber versions of larger firearms, marketed to folks who don't want to spend as much for either the gun or its ammunition. For example, the ATI Sturmgewehrs, the Beretta ARX-160, and the GSG AK and MP5 lookalikes in .22 rimfire. Well, it's not a new trend - v...

Switzerland was an early adopter of the Luger pistol as a standard military sidearm, but by WWII that design was becoming obsolete and the Swiss began looking for a newer sidearm. Several lines of development were pursued, and we have examples of two of them here: the W+F Bern P43 and the SIG P44...

The ASP was a custom take of the S&W Model 39 autoloading pistol developed by a man named Paris Theodore in the 1970s. Theodore made a wide variety of sneaky James-Bond-like guns for various clients, but is best know for the ASP. At the time, it was one of the best options for a subcompact pistol...

Bergmann was one of the reasonably successful yet relatively unknown manufacturers of early automatic pistols. Originally a delayed blowback patent purchased by Bergmann, the design was refined and simplified by none other than Louis Schmeisser into the 1896 Bergmann, in three different calibers ...