Handgun - Forgotten Weapons

How the 1911 Got Its Safeties – and Why Its Ancestors Had None

March 3, 2020 Ian McCollum 36

Some people put a lot of weight on the fact that the 1911 has a grip safety and a thumb safety…but I don’t think many folk understand how it ended up that way. John Browning’s […]

High Standard’s Prototype World War One .45 ACP Pistol

March 2, 2020 Ian McCollum 17

The High Standard company only made on .45 caliber pistol, and it was an improvement on the Grant Hammond pistol tested by the US military during World War One. After his gun’s rejection by the […]

The Truth About the Type 94 Nambu “Surrender Pistol”

February 25, 2020 Ian McCollum 23

If there is a historical military firearm out there as badly misunderstood as the Chauchat, it is probably the Type 94 Nambu pistol. Nambu designed this pistol with an exposed sear bar, which was not […]

Type 94 Nambu at the Backup Gun Match

February 22, 2020 Ian McCollum 18

The Type 94 Nambu pistol is best known for the exposed sear that allows it to be fired by pressing on the side of the gun. This is actually not really the safety issue it’s […]

FN Grand Browning: The European 1911 that Never Happened

February 17, 2020 Ian McCollum 16

When John Browning licensed his handgun patents, the North American rights were granted to Colt, and the Western European rights to FN in Belgium. Browning provided the patents and patent model guns to the companies, […]

RIA Feb 2020 Special: Mystery Spanish Revolver

February 15, 2020 Ian McCollum 18

Today’s quick look at RIA is a Spanish revolver that I can’t identify. The proof stamps indicate that it was made in 1931, and it has an unusual cylinder latch that looks like a loading […]

“System Mauser” – The Very First C96 Pistols

February 10, 2020 Ian McCollum 20

The very first group of C96 pistols made. -about 200 in total – are called “System Mauser” pistols. They have this hand-engraved on the top of the barrel, and have a number of other very […]

SIG 44/16: The Best Service Pistol, But The Road Not Traveled

February 7, 2020 Ian McCollum 13

When SIG was developing the pistol that would ultimately be adopted as the m/49 by the Danish Army and the P49 by the Swiss Army (P210 commercially), they initially experimented with both single stack and […]

Bavarian Lightning: The 1869 Werder Pistol

February 6, 2020 Ian McCollum 27

This is a lot in the upcoming February 2020 Morphy Field & Range auction. Adopted by Bavaria in 1869, Johann-Ludwig Werder’s breechloading rifle was a brilliant piece of engineering, offering an automatically ejecting falling-block system […]

Evolution of the Military Mauser HSc Pistol

February 3, 2020 Ian McCollum 28

Mauser had been at the forefront of military self-loading pistol design with its C96 pistol, but by the 1930s it had lost major market share to Sauer and Walther in police and commercial guns. The […]