Today we are taking a look at an interesting silenced Bulgarian Makarov with a mechanism added to lock the slide. This sort of feature is usually thought of as a sneaky way to avoid ejecting brass and leaving it behind, but it actually serves a much more practical purpose. One of the loudest elements of a suppressed pistol firing subsonic ammunition is actually the noise of pressurized gas escaping when the empty case is extracted and then the slide chambering a new round. A slide lock eliminates these sources of noise by preventing the slide from opening. While this is not a factory-made variant of the Makarov, it is an interesting mechanism that I thought worth covering.
Silenced Pistol Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9e3UCcU00TQ-0Vq_FO4gG0MVNX0YtPEO
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble this interesting piece! The NFC collection there – perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe – is available by appointment to researchers:
https://royalarmouries.org/research/national-firearms-centre/
You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/
“(…)added to lock the slide(…)”
How does its’ ergonomics compared to PT83 https://www.forgottenweapons.com/pt83-the-sneaky-silenced-version-of-polands-p83-pistol/ which is another 9×18 blow-back automatic pistol with such feature?
One has to wonder at specifically who paid for this pistol, and why…
Surely, if it were anything other than “deniable government program”, then they’d have selected something like a Walther PPK…?
Probably just some Bulgar bureau on a budget.