Handgun - Forgotten Weapons

Bernardon-Martin: France’s First Commercial Semiautomatic Pistol

February 11, 2019 Ian McCollum 13

The Bernardon-Martin was the first commercially viable semiautomatic pistol manufactured in France; a .32ACP (7.65mm Browning) striker-fired pocket pistol competing with the FN Browning 1899/1900. The first model was introduced in 1907 with a fixed […]

Unique Military Trials Steyr-Hahn M1911 Pistol

February 4, 2019 Ian McCollum 17

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 […]

P.A.F. Junior – South Africa’s First Production Gun

January 29, 2019 Ian McCollum 14

The Pretoria Arms Factory was founded in 1954 by Piet Nagel and Jan Willem Dekker. both Dutch immigrants to South Africa after WW2. They began manufacturing a simplified copy of the Baby Browning pocket pistol, […]

Bernardelli UB: Hammer and Striker Fired 9mm Blowback

January 28, 2019 Ian McCollum 32

In the years following World War Two, the Bernardelli company in Italy made an attempt to enter the full-power pistol market with a simple blowback 9mm Parabellum design. They basically scaled up their existing .32/.380 […]

Walther’s .45ACP MP (P38 Precursor)

January 21, 2019 Ian McCollum 17

During the process of developing the pistol which would become the German army’s P38, the Walther company was also interested in potential export contracts (like the one they actually did get from Sweden). One potential […]

H&K P7 Family: Pistols for Gun Cognoscenti

January 16, 2019 Ian McCollum 69

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 […]

La Lira: A Spanish Copy of the Mannlicher 1901

January 14, 2019 Ian McCollum 16

The Spanish firm of Garate Anitua y Cia manufactured this copy of the Mannlicher 1901/1905 pistol for just a brief period around 1910. It is not a straight copy, as the Mannlicher was chambered for […]

Shooting the Stechkin: How Does It Measure Up?

January 12, 2019 Ian McCollum 24

I have been curious to try shooting a Stechkin machine pistol for a while, and now thanks to Movie Armaments Group in Toronto, I have a chance to! I hate to be a downer, but […]

Stechkin APS: The Soviet Machine Pistol

January 11, 2019 Ian McCollum 19

The APS is a machine pistol developed by Igor Stechkin in the late 1940s and adopted by the Soviet Union in 1951, basically at the same time as the Makarov pistol. The Stechkin and Makarov […]

H&K P8A1: The Bundeswehr’s USP

January 7, 2019 Ian McCollum 57

Thanks to my friends at Bear Arms in Scottsdale, we have an H&K P8A1 to take a look at today – the current Bundeswehr issue version of the USP. Chambered for 9x19mm and adopted in […]