The “Kordun” (named after a region in Croatia) was the first pistol design from Marko Vukovic, lead designer for IM Metal and later HS Produkt. It was made in 1985 for the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army, with the goal of being a softer-shooting and higher capacity sidearm than the then-standard M57 Tokar...

In the aftermath of World War One, German police forces were responsible for maintaining social order is a very chaotic Germany. They were reequipped with small arms, and in particular needed pistols. The ideal sidearm would have been the P08 Luger, but the Treaty of Versailles caused Luger produ...

The vz.82 and its cousin the CZ 83 are pistols that originated when the Czech state export company during the Cold War began looking for arms it could export to bring in hard currency. The current service pistol, the vz.52, was, shall we say, not widely desirable and its 7.62x25mm cartridge was n...

The vz.52 pistol was originally adopted by Czechoslovakia as a short-term option, with an intention to quickly replace it with something better. The problem was that without a viable domestic pistol, the Soviet Union would have forced Czechoslovakia to start production of the TT-33 Tokarev. Out o...

During the late 1920 and early 1930s, the Walther company worked on developing a military pistol in 9x19mm. They began from the basis of the PP/PPK design, and produced three separate designs, the first two designed “MP” (Military Pistol) and the third being the Armee Pistole (which was followed ...

Today we are looking at one of the surplus US Army M17 pistols that SGI put on the commercial market about 3 years ago. These were some of the very first M17s issued to Army units, and they were turned back in to SIG and replace in late 2019. The obvious difference between these and their replace...

A very small batch of special target model pistols was made at the very end of Astra 400 production in 1945. They were fitted with Patridge front sights and adjustable revolver-style square-notch rear sights, much improved over the stock Astra 400 sights. In addition, they were fitted with a spec...

The AutoMag was originally designed to use a rimless version of the .44 Magnum cartridge; the .44 AMP. Shortly after it was introduced, though, the company Brough out a second cartridge, the .357 AMP. This was simply the regular cartridge necked down to use .357" projectiles. It was a bottlenecke...

Bernardelli is (was) an Italian firearms manufacturer in the Val Tromp dating back to the 1600s...but whom few people have ever heard of. They produced 1889 Bodeo revolvers between the World Wars, and after World War Two they had a line of pocket pistols that were never particular popular or resp...

It was no secret in the international arms market that Mauser was doing a tremendous business selling C96 pistols into Warlord-era China in the 1920s. The C96 was an imposing and powerful handgun that was highly regarded in China. Spanish companies including Bestigui Hermanos took note, and start...

Note: The New Jersey law that would ban sale of regular guns once "smart guns" were deemed commercially viable is no longer on the books.

Biofire is a Colorado company that has spent the last 5 years or so developing a biometrically authenticated pistol, using both fingerprint and facial reco...

The Dutch military started looking for semiauto pistols to replace its aging revolvers around 1899. They tested all the early models; the Roth, Borchardt, Mauser and Mannlicher - and then they obtained a Borchardt-Luger (aka, a Parabellum, or Luger). They first tested a long-barreled model with s...

Note: When I say the double magazine pouch is unique for this model, I was not thinking about those issued with LP-08 Artillery Lugers.

While the Dutch Army dithered over new pistol adoption, the Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) took more decisive action and adopted the Luger as the M11 in 1911 a...

Portugal first tested the Luger pistol in 1901, and its commission on self-loading pistols recommended the design for adoption in 1904. No money was available at the time, but a second commission again recommended the Luger in 1907, and it was formally adopted and purchased in 1908. The initial b...

Today I'm at the BackUp Gun Match in Tucson with a first model Le Français made in 1923. This is an early French semiauto pistol design intended for pocket carry. It has a 7-round magazine and a tip-up barrel, so that one need not ever manually rack the slide. It's very compact, very light, and s...

Is the Laugo Alien a rugged an unstoppable HiLux or a fastidious Maserati? I would like to use it as a go-to competition pistol for matches like Finnish Brutality and Desert Brutality, but first I need to know that it can take some knocks and still run. So, let's do some horrible stuff to it and ...

The Laugo Alien has survived its mud and sand tests without any long term damage, and now it's time to put it to work. The MGM Spinner has long been my nemesis, and so I bought one to practice on. The advantages of the Alien are immediately evident - I've never been able to double-tap a spinner e...

Isaac Newton Lewis is best known for the Lewis light machine gun, but that was not his only foray into firearms design. He also patented two different types of handguns - one gas operated and this short recoil design. Very little information about this pistol is available, although it was apparen...

Produced by gunsmith Charles Kelsey, the Devel "Full House" package was a conversion of the Smith & Wesson Model 39 or Model 59 pistol (the 39 was a single stack and the 59 a double stack). In the late 1970s, there were really no factory-made semiauto compact pistols made for concealed carry - th...

W.E. Knoble of Tacoma, Washington is not a well-known gun designer, and was in fact not a successful gun designer. But he did enter a .45 caliber pistol in the 1907 US pistol trials, and in so doing put his name permanently in the annals of firearms history. In addition to that design, he also ma...

One of the domestic American pistols entered in the US 1907 pistol trials was this short recoil, toggle locked design by W.E. Knoble of Tacoma Washington. Knoble submitted two experimental pistols to the trial, one with a single action trigger and one with a double action trigger - although he wa...

In 1947, the US Army Air Corps (it had not yet become the Air Force) was assessing its pilot survival equipment, and decided that it wanted a smaller and lighter handgun than the Colt 1911. It put forth a tender for new designs in .30 to .35 caliber, and two companies were chosen to produce proto...

Almost immediately after adopting the Colt/Browning Model 1911 pistol, the US military requested a .22LR conversion for training purposes. In 1913 Springfield Arsenal developed a conversion, but it was woefully inadequate. A better solution was submitted by a man named J.H. Carl, whose system mat...

White's experiments in handgun design did not begin with the White-Merrill 1907 submitted to US handgun trials. In 1905 he submitted a patent for features in these two .38 caliber semiauto prototype pistols. These are both short recoil actions, one with a C96-like locking block and one with a rot...