Originally made by Hafdasa (Hispano-Argentina Fábrica de Automóviles S.A.), the HA pistol is a .22 Long Rifle caliber, semiauto only, open bolt pocket pistol. It was produced in the 1950s, right at the end of Hafdasa's existence (coincidence?). When the firm shut its doors, a group of employees t...

In 1940, Switzerland began a series of trials to replace their Luger service pistols with something equally high quality, but more economical. They had squeezed as much simplification out of the Luger as they could in 1929, and by this time the guns just needed to be replaced. The first 1940 tria...

The Swiss were the first country to adopt a self-loading service pistol; the Luger in 1900. They would keep those in service clear through World War 2, at which point they began seriously looking for a more economical and more modern replacement. During the 1940s, a number of experimental designs...

The SIG 210, aka the P49, was a magnificent pistol, but really too expensive for a modern military sidearm. In the 1960s, the Swiss military began looking for a new service sidearm that would be a bit less costly, and SIG developed the 220 in response, which would ultimately be adopted as the P75...

Today we are looking at two suppressed CZ-27 pistols, one Polish and one German. The Polish one was issued by the Ministry of Public Security, an agency which only existed from 1945 until 1954. It uses an aluminum suppressor with 5 baffles and 5 rubber wipes, threaded onto an extended barrel. It ...

Today we are looking at a unique military trials Steyr-Hahn M1911 pistol which has been fitted with an adjustable tangent rear sight. The standard model of the Steyr-Hahn has a fixed rear notch, but it seems that a potential client requested (or Steyr anticipated that someone would request) and a...

When looking at P-49 (aka SIG 210) pistols used by the Swiss military, there are five distinct groups, with different characteristics. Today we will be showing you these differences, as well as a few features of the Swiss military holster for the P49. For reference:

Type 1: 100001-103200
Hig...

The M15 General Officer’s pistol was the replacement for the Colt Model M, which had long been the military issue sidearm for General-level officers. By the late 1960s, however, the supply of Model M pistols was running out, and Colt no longer had the design (the Pocket Hammerless) in production....

This 4mm “Zimmerstutzen” conversion kit was patented by one Karl Weiss in 1921, and produced by the RWS company in Germany. Versions were made for several different types of pistol, but the Mauser 1914 was a particularly suitable base thanks to its very easy removed barrel. The kit consists of a ...

The J. Kimball Arms Company of Detroit introduced a semiauto pistol in 1955, chambered for the .30 Carbine cartridge - what better companion for the tactical uber weapon of the day, the M1 Carbine? Kimball’s pistol was styled heavily after the High Standard, and it looks good and handles well. Th...

Korth is a boutique firearms manufacturer in Germany generally known for their very fine and very expensive revolvers. In 2015, they decided to introduce an automatic pistol as well, which they called the PRS. It is a combination of a 1911 frame and a roller-delayed, fixed barrel slide assembly. ...

The Auto Mag 180 was basically the result of two guys noticing that nobody made a semiauto .44 Magnum pistol…and that they could probably do it. The men were Max Gera, a young Italian immigrant gunsmith, and his employer, gun shop owner Harry Sanford. Gera put together the core of the gun’s desig...

Today's Special Presentation is an overview of all the semiautomatic pistols that were actually put into serial production before the year 1900. We have looked at these individually before, but I think it is worthwhile to examine them together in context, to gain a better understanding of what th...

This pistol is one of just a couple surviving from a development project run by Walther in the mid to late 1930s. The goal was to produce a compact sidearm for pilots and officers using a more potent cartridge than the .32ACP or .380. To do this, Walther split the dimensional difference on case l...

In the early 1970s, Colt wanted to develop a new military pistol so that it could offer a modern replacement for the venerable 1911. Colt Engineer Robert Roy designed the new gun in 1971, and was granted patents on it in 1972. It was made entirely of stainless steel, had a 15 round capacity (in 9...

Production of the Colt Pocket Hammerless (aka the Model M) pretty much died at the end of World War Two. Military contracts ended, and the civilian market was quite weak - Colt shipped just 132 of the .32 caliber guns between 1946 and 1953, and only a handful of .380s at the same time. Several pr...

Developed in the 1980s in response to a need for new West German police sidearms, the H&K P7 is one of the most mechanically unusual pistols to have been commercially successful in recent decades. It incorporates a number of features which are rather polarizing; brilliantly innovative to some, an...

The Mamba was originally conceived in a 1970s Salisbury, Rhodesia barroom bull session about the best elements of semiauto pistols. The project would wind up being pushed by an American expat named Joe Hale, and production of parts was contracted out to a South African engineering firm.

The Ma...

During the 1920s and 1930s, a combination of civil wars and international arms embargoes led to a lot of domestic firearms production in China. The size and quality of manufacturing facilities varied widely - everything from massive factories established with European technical assistance to one-...

Gustloff was a large industrial concern in Germany which made many different weapons for the military. In addition to these, its attempted to market a small-caliber pistol for police or SS use. This pistol used an alloy frame (with steel inserts for durability in crucial areas) and steel slide, w...

The most common Japanese pistols used during World War II were the Type 14 and Type 94 Nambu designs, by a huge margin. However, there were a number of other handguns used in small numbers, and today we're looking at two of those. The first is the Sugiura, essentially a copy of the Colt 1903 made...

Until the middle of the 20th century, the most powerful automatic pistol made was Sir Hugh Gabbett-Fairfax's Mars pistol. With the .45 caliber version approaching the energy of a .45 Winchester Magnum, it was quite the accomplishment for a gun designed initially in 1898! Well, RIA has a very earl...

Before he adapted it to .45 caliber for US Army pistol trials, Jens Schouboe was building his pistol design in .32 ACP (7.65mm Browning). It was a blowback action, hammer fired, and very quick and easy to field strip. The gun was reliable and well made, but just didn't catch on in the market, and...

During the Chinese civil war in the 1920s and 30s, international arms embargoes made rifles difficult to acquire - which led to a lot of popularity for pistols with shoulder stocks. The C96 "broomhandle" Mauser in particular was popular, and it was copied by a number of Spanish firms for sale in ...