With the ATF appearing to essentially throw out regulation of short-barreled rifles, should we expect a renaissance in stocked pistols? Personally, I think not. They are very specialized tools that have been around for as long as pistols have, but have never been very popular because of all the sacrifices they make. I think there will be a spurt of interest on the basis of them being taboo items, but most people will pretty quickly become disillusioned with the impracticality of stocked pistols for most purposes.
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While stocked pistols have been around for some time and I’ve shot a bunch over the years. The most notable was the Nazi Artillery Luger. Long barrel hidden inside a wooden holster. Gun had a wee forearm to hold making it a reasonable weapon to shoot. In full auto like most machine pistols were uncontrollable. I’ve shot 1911’s and Inglis High Powers with butt stocks they’re just a novelty. I’ve even shot a black powder revolver with a buttstock.
The “artillery Luger” had a 20cm (8 inch) barrel and no wooden forearm (unless somebody added one).
The Luger Carbine (Old Model, leaf mainspring, “dished” toggle knobs) had a 40cm (16-inch) barrel and that wooden forearm. The forearm concealed and protected a supplemental coil recoil spring and guide rod (very much like the ones on many modern autopistols like Glocks, etc.), which bore on a ring-shaped boss welded to the underside of the long barrel.
The spring’s purpose was to help haul the heavier-than-standard barrel and upper receiver assembly back into battery after each cycle. The leaf spring in the butt behind the magazine well wasn’t strong enough to do it by itself.
cheers
eon
As with suppressors, BATFET has “agreed” to not enforcing the NFA restrictions on “short-barreled rifles” since Congress reset the license fee to $0.
That is not the same thing as repealing the statute.
The National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act of 1968 are still on the books in toto. The laws still exist.
All it will take is a change in administrations and a BATFET Director who returns to the “cultural norm” of that anti-Second Amendment cult to reverse the policy. At which point anyone with any proscribed item in their possession will likely end up in a Federal prison.
To the loud cheers of “enlightened progressives” from newsrooms to faculty lounges across America.
What is needed is for Congress, in no uncertain terms, to repeal the statutes which Congress voted into law to begin with.
Followed by Congress and the Executive Branch dis-establishing BATFET by the same mechanism with which Richard Nixon created it in its present form in 1969.
Incidentally, it is the only agency within the Justice Department which is charged with both law enforcement and tax collection; An exception to normal separation of powers that is generally restricted to agencies of the Treasury Department, which is where BATFET was to begin with, along with the Internal Revenue Service. When President George W. Bush “moved” BATFET from Treasury to DoJ after 9/11, he created a conflict of interest due to not addressing this.
There are many Constitutional issues with that agency. This is just one of them.
clear ether
eon
Good post. This is a policy change, not a change in the law or a dictate from the Supreme Court. The ATF did this only because of pressure from Trump. When Trump is no longer President, the next President may allow the ATF off its leash again. So many unanswered questions here. I am not going to buy/make supressors or SBRs/SBSs until the matter is clearer and permanent.
Nope, and there’s a huge difference between enforcement policy change and law change. The good news is that once enforcement of a law stops, the conduct prohibited explodes. I’m old enough to have worked in law enforcement when both Homosexual Conduct and Communism were arrest titles in Texas. Never saw anybody take someone to jail for either though, and pretty soon the legislature caught up with removing the laws. Not saying that’s the case here, but one can hope.
I already removed my arm brace from my AR9 pistol, and installed a carbine stock.
I have always maintained that a shoulder stock attached turns a practical pistol into an indifferent carbine. The only real exceptions were the various long-barreled “carbine” variants of the Mauser C/96, the Parabellum, and the Smith & Wesson .320 single-action revolvers.
The “canteen” shoulder stock for the Colt 1860 army and 1861 Navy percussion revolvers had a certain utility. Mostly because being copper-lined, they could be filled with liquids rather more ardent than water.
😉
cheers
eon
A couple of my favorite exhibits at the Texas Ranger Museum are C&B Colts with flasks in the stocks. This could be the chance to make pistol stocks cool again.
The “stocked pistol” concept fails on the same fundamental reasons why the various “supersize” pistols like the MK23 and Beretta M92 family do: Too much weight/volume for the amount of “cartridge power” that you get for lugging all that mass around.
If you’re going to have to have something in that size class, why the hell wouldn’t you go for an actual rifle-caliber weapon in that size/weight category? The range/lethality benefits for recognizing reality and going to a 5.56X45 or even a 7.62X39 cartridge are exponentially greater, in about the same mass/size class. So, why?
About the only thing I can think of is that you’re in some sort of demented situation wherein you have to keep it pistol-caliber due to either backstop or regulatory requirements. Even with those constraints, you’re actually better off going with a rifle-caliber choice, in that you’ll be able to use fewer rounds for the same effect…
Stocked pistols? LOL… Just not a rational solution. Not since the days of the Colt Dragoon, which was damn near a rifle-caliber weapon in terms of contemporary effect anyway.
China from 1901 to the first revolution in 1925. After the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, when the “Sacred Order of Harmonious Fists” somehow got brand-new Mauser rifles sooner than the Prussian Army did, there was a “gentlemen’s agreement” between the various powers involved not to sell military rifles- any military rifles- to either the central (Manchu) government or the various “warlord” armies.
One side effect of this was all those weird-ass “Chinese Warlord Pistols” that Ian features so often. (Not a slam; I find those gadgets even more interesting than Cao Dai 1911, French M50, and P35 copies.)
The broader effect, though, was that Mauser did a land-office business selling C/96 pistols with the shoulder-stock holsters to all concerned. They were issued in lieu of rifles on the grounds that a stocked pistol like the “Broomhandle” was easier for a common soldier (aka “peasant”) to actually hit something with than a pistol fired the “normal” way (one-handed, back then).
Also, the ’96’s ten-shot magazine gave said common soldier twice as many tries between reloads than most bolt-action rifles of the era.
And even without the “agreement”, the British weren’t selling SMLEs to anybody in China, no way, no how. As to why not, two words; Hong Kong.
The final result of this was of course the Mauser Model 712 aka “Schnellfeuer”. But that was actually a response to the Spanish makers like Astra and Beistegui Hermanos, who had been selling Broomhandle clones in China and the Far East as early as 1922-23, and had developed selective-fire variants by 1926-27 specifically for the Chinese and other Far East “markets”.
It could be argued that the “Broomhandle” stayed in production as long as it did, and was available for German service in World War One when everybody was short of pistols for trench fighting, mostly because of the demand for them in Asia.
The real answer to the warlords’ prayers, of course, showed up just in time for the second major revolution in China, the Communist vs Nationalist one. Namely, the Russian PpSh-41 SMG in 7.62 x 25mm Tokarev. After Mao & Co. won that one, the “Pay-Pay-Shay” became the default light automatic weapon of the People’s Liberation Army. (Proving that even assholes can have good taste.)
In Korea, most historians state that the Chinese “Volunteers” were only lightly armed with the ’41, to the tune of maybe 10-15% of the grunts. According to my uncle who was there (Marine Recon, doing observe & report on first North Korean and then Chinese forces moving south starting with the destruction of Task Force Smith at Osan on 5 July 1950 and right down to the Pusan Perimeter), it was more like 25% of the NKPA infantry and about a third of the Chinese.
The Chinese had obviously grokked the whole “sustained firescreen” thing before we did. And if you’re working with fundamentally illiterate troops, it does make training easier. (“Point this thing at the enemy, pull the trigger, reload when it stops shooting.”)
clear ether
eon
Oh I hope so!
A replica M1903 in .380 or a replica Beretta 1923 would be flat awesome! Don’t think we’ll ever see a C96 though… Too bad!
If they’re cranking out cheap replacement Beretta frames in Switzerland, you know Ubertis or Pietta could do a Broomhandle. And I suspect they read this page.
“Doing a broomhandle” in today’s environment would result in something along the lines of the Stoeger .22LR “Luger” pistols. It might look like Broomhandle, but the production values would be exponentially off.
I don’t think a lot of people really appreciate the level of machining that went into those pistols, or how much hand-fitting was involved. A C-96 is a masterpiece of craftsmanship, and even the Spanish knock-offs were a lot more involved than anything that would be economical to produce today.
At some point I think we’re going to be able to take a classic design like the Luger or the C-96, pass it through a scanner, and then have something like the original come out the other end of the process. We’re nowhere near being able to really do that, as of yet… Maybe not in my lifetime, either.
I dunno…I don’t think you’re going to die that soon. We’re at a point now where scanners, 3-D printers and MIM have not only advanced to the point where they can make OK-quality components, but that technology is available to factories in Turkey. No, they’ll never crank out pre-WWI quality, but don’t write it off just yet.
Something I honestly expect to see soon and probably sold in significant numbers is a shoulder stock kit for SAA clones, For A Few Dollars More style
Uberti made an 18″ barrel version of the “Cattleman” with a detachable shoulder stock in the early 1970s, in both .45 Colt and .357 Magnum.
https://collectorsfirearms.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/162139.jpg
It was directly “inspired” by the movie For A Few Dollars More (1965).
cheers
eon
Interesting, I didn’t know they ever made a detachable stock version, I’ve only ever seen the regular pistol grip and fixed rifle-stock versions.
Now that I think about it, I could also see some market for the type of magnum pistols people hunt with, I figure a LAR Grizzly or even a long-barreled N-frame might benefit, sort of approaching the “trapper carbine” from the opposite direction
Look… The utility would be questionable.
Template using a stocked pistol into your usual bear situation up in Alaska: Scenario “A”: You have your pistol, you have your stock, you need to assemble them in order to deal with a bear at range… Between nerves, stress, and the amount of time it takes for a bear to charge you in typical scrub/forest, you’re almost certainly going to be bear fodder before you even get the two pieces together. Scenario “B”, you’re carrying an assembled pistol/stock combination already; at this point, why aren’t you carrying a real shoulder weapon? Something like the various lever-action offerings in .45-70, or something else equally useful that won’t go into a revolver cylinder? The weight/ungainlyness of a stocked pistol is not all that far off from a Marlin 1895, so… Why?
I honestly cannot work out a reasonable use-case for a stocked pistol. It’s like trying to make a sports car over into a pickup truck; two entirely different purposes and entirely different modes of use.
All joking aside, a stocked pistol has the same problem a full-sized Marlin M1895 .45-70 has; it’s too big to maneuver in a hurry when Ol’ Ephraim is bearing down on you.
There’s a reason the (Ruger-made) Marlin M1895 Guide Gun has a 19″ barrel.
https://www.marlinfirearms.com/s/model_70456/
To be serious, the best all-around “bear gun” for Alaska is probably a very plain, simple 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with a 3″ Magnum chamber and receiver, an 18″ cylinder bore barrel, synthetic furniture, and a rustproof finish. Yes, the kind of “patrol shotgun” I used to have in the car every day on duty.
And it should be loaded with something like the Brenneke Bear Protect (2 3/4″, 525-grain, 3,525 FPE), or the Aria Ballistic Engineering 3-inch Magnum Plus P (560-grain hard alloy Foster-style slug, 3,800 FPE).
You are not going to be shooting at long range, and you need something which will put Brother Bruin on the ground RTFN.
There’s no point in getting fancy.
clear ether
eon
The Guide Gun variant was exactly what I was thinking of.
The issue with the shotgun as “bear tool” is, as I understand it, that you are really restricted to close-in work with one. You have something like a Guide Gun, you have the advantage of being able to effectively deter a bear with a hit out some 100m or so. The shotgun? You’re going to be doing that at twelve feet, once the bear has already committed.
Friend of mine did guide work up in Alaska for years; if he was going into heavy brush like a fire zone or blow-down thicket, then he’d have a shotgun. Anywhere else? Rifle; he wanted to be able to smack the bear with something before the bear made the decision to attack. In his experience, even a peripheral hit would tend to dissuade.
To give you a good idea of how fast a bear is, I know of one case where a guy wandered into a 30-yard distance from the bear. He was carrying a .30-06 Remington 742, and got off one shot that hit the bear in the head, which the Wildlife guys figured out from the blood trail and the later necropsy. The bear charged him, and before the 742 completed its reloading cycle, with the bolt roughly halfway into battery, the bear hit the rifle hard enough to bend the barrel and action such that the weapon was unable to complete the reload. The rifle was literally bent enough that you could see it quite plainly in the pictures that were taken of the site after the attack.
At close quarters, there really isn’t a good way of stopping a really motivated bear of reasonable size. Even the smaller ones that you see down in the Lower 48 are quite dangerous when they’re motivated. An actual Kodiak brown, like the one from the incident I’m describing? You are really going to want to be with friends who’re heavily armed, and able to shoot. The majority of bear attacks are not made by what I’d term “motivated” bears, and you can persuade them to go elsewhere. The ones who’ve chosen violence? Good ‘effing luck… That guy I’m talking about got in a headshot, and the only sign he’d done it was some blood and the skid mark the projectile made on the skull once they’d tracked the bear down and killed it.
Head shot. .30-06, heavy soft-point ammo, reasonably heavy powder load. Failed to do more than piss the bear off…
Back to the topic at hand though, a stocked Mossberg AOW that can shoot slugs as well as salutes makes hazing a bear away from your fish camp a whole lot less likely to attract the attention of ADF&G. I’m sure somebody would even make a chest rig for it.
Kirk, could work for an environment where you can not get unlimited permits, but only 1-2 for pistols etc.
I’m 100% with you on stocked pistols making zero sense for a bear defense gun, I was only mentioning trapper carbines as the other form-factor of sub-16″ barrel large handgun caliber stocked guns. I meant more for the Elmer Keith devotee who goes after deer or what have you with a magnum pistol. Unquestionably niche, just something I would expect to see some small shop do sooner or later.
As for a *good* bear defense gun? Honestly, I have heard arguments by people who are regular grizzly shooters (up in North Canada) that, but for cost, an old style nitro express double with short barrels would be the ideal candidate, which I can see the logic in, but not having shot any nor having spent real time in bear country, I can’t really say for sure
There was at least one (factory-made) Desert Eagle with a long barrel and a shoulder stock.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ForgottenWeapons/comments/rc0g66/rare_rifle_variant_of_the_desert_eagle_made_for/
It was intended to mount a fixed 6X telescopic sight.
clear ether
eon
This should have been used in some video game. In RE2 you had addon of Desert Eagle with longer barrel, but not of this crazy size
Marlin also lists a 16″ barrel option for its ‘Dark Series’ 1895. In .45-70 it’d be a decent bear gun. Though with the Marlin’s price north of $1,500, your shotgun idea remains attractive.
In high-school I wad inspired by that film to whip up a shoulder stock for my H&R 622. A less than fully successful experiment. Though in the 70’s no one much sweated a 16 y.o. hiking the hills and flouting federal law with his questionable ordinance. Small town Montana, a different world then.
Just an amusing thought. Inflatable stock for concealed or holstered pistols. CO2 cartridge inflates the stock when needed. The inflatable is a tiny bump on the grip until activated. I assume that a single use stock would serve for a single situation when needed. Otherwise go to a proper PDW if in continuous use.
If feasible, it could get the sights out to proper pistol distance away from the shooter’s face and provide a proper cheek weld. Offhand, 1 psi should be sufficient for rigidity.
Something like this
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/ideal-holster-stock-for-the-luger/
Would probably be more practical.
There was also the Benke Thiemann folding stock (not a holster);
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWv5XysaPnU
Which made the P.08 look like something out of Star Wars 50 years before anybody ever heard of the latter.
cheers
eon
The folding stock in the second link seems to get the effect I was thinking of for controllability. The thought I had was that a concealed or normally holstered pistol could be drawn and stock inflated in a second or two for an immediate situation. After use, like a car airbag, it is disconnected until refurbished leaving a normal pistol.
I am assuming that this would be a once in a career move at most. Available at any time but unobtrusive until the actual emergency need.
I am an inventor, and over 90% of ideas are crap. The skill is not in having ideas, but in the sorting between the ones that are and are not worth further effort. This one is an amusing thought exercise, not a recommendation for development.
Could be, but if you need a weapon a couple of seconds can be a long time. Given the bulk of pistol plus stock, you might be better off with a small SMG like an Uzi under your jacket.
If the stock is bulky, definitely better off with an UZI or similar. I was suggesting something like 2-3 cubic inches uninflated and 16-18 inches inflated.
A couple of seconds is an enormous amount of time in certain critical situations. I was thinking in terms of hitting the inflate during the draw such that it is ready by the time it reaches the shoulder. From start of draw to good sight picture in 2 seconds or less was what I was suggesting, not 2 seconds for assembly in addition to, while getting shot at no less.
Vast majority of inventions/patents are never realized, they serve only to milk gullible inventor for their legal protection.
I am not an inventor but I mused before of using pressurized containers as structural elements, for example bicycle with thin, beer can like walls tubing that would be pressurized with gas and that would provide rigidity. Just like you can stand on unopened beer can, and opened it squishes instantly (unless you are from Liliput)
Stocked pistols may no longer require NFA but they are still NFG.
In the realm of PDW conversions, now that the SBR rules are being replaced, I can see a considerable number of old Iver Johnson Enforcers gaining a detachable or folding stock.
Why not just go with a folding-stock M1 carbine? All the Iver Johnson offers is a shorter sight radius and one’s face closer to all that muzxlr blast. That is from the buyer’s POV. From the srller’s, yeah, he does get to move morbiund inventory
shorter barrel makes a handy weapon even handier.
use the same folding stock as on the carbine and it gives a similar length of pull.
as to sights, fit a red dot or other modern optical and you have a PDW in a better/more powerful cartridge than most are currently offered.
OK maybe. Personally I feel about ‘handy’ like I do ‘convenience.’ Both become succubi detracting from the original purpose. I have never found a regular sized M1 carbine unhandy. Doubtless one can find situations where it is. I am not sure the situations justify chopping the M1 down to Enforcer dimensions.