Finnish Brutality Practice: 2-Gun with a Finnish M39

As practice for Finnish Brutality, I ran a 2-Gun match with the Finnish M39 Mosin Nagant I am planning to use over in Finland. The M39 is the final iteration of the Mosin in Finnish service, and has very good sights, a great trigger, and a nice smooth action (for a Mosin, anyway). I was using PPU 182 grain “match” ammo, and the rifle short great. For a pistol, I used a Russian TT33 Tokarev, as I didn’t have a Finnish L35 Lahti available (I don’t know what pistol I will be using for Finnish Brutality yet…). Every single stage today used a kettlebell, in classic 2-Gun style!

My takeaway from the match was that I really need to practice reloading, and find some stripper clips that are less awful the typical, if possible. Once it was loaded, the rifle did great – all the misses were entirely my fault (perkele!). I’ve got plenty of time for some more practice before the match, fortunately.

19 Comments

  1. “Fun fact” while the Finnish were allied with Germany, following the logics of “enemy of my enemy is my friend”, they were not racist and never followed German requests to extradide Jews. In fact, Jews served in the Finnish military and there were field synagogues much to the shock for German soldiers. A few Finnish Jews were supposed to get German medals, but they refused.

  2. “didn’t have a Finnish L35 Lahti available (I don’t know what pistol I will be using for Finnish Brutality yet…)”
    If said weapon could not be found, I would say Parabellum Pistole would be good stand-in with similar shape and was used by Finnish military, interestingly initially in 7,65×21 Parabellum https://www.jaegerplatoon.net/PISTOLS1.htm

  3. Off topic:
    Ian I got my mask the other day. It is wonderful. I wore it to a Gun Show and 5 guys asked me to identify strange weapons for them !

  4. The M39 actually has a safety, albeit not a very good one. The big knob on the back of the bolt attached to the firing pin can be rotated left or right to rest one the receiver preventing the firing pin from going forward. Very difficult to pull back and rotate, but it does work sort of. (I did say it’s not a very good one.)

  5. Mosin’s clips are not the best.
    But there is a way.
    It is necessary to press closer to the primer, while lifting the top cartridge for the bullet.
    And when equipping the clips, you need to make sure that the cartridges do not interlock with the flanges. Especially not new clips.

    • Perhaps more.
      If we are already so meticulously (right down to the hat) reenacting the scene.
      Then complete with the original 1933 pistol was the only spare mag.
      And there was nowhere else to take.
      Ammo in your pocket, please…

  6. I noticed that during the pistol stage there was varying degrees of muzzle flash. Some shots were without any flash and some were huge!

    • That’s an artifact of video frame timing in both the filming or replay. I’ve even watched the same video more than once and sometimes it shows the the flash and sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve seen the same phenomenon at the other end of a shot where the flash of light created when a bullet strikes a hard surface shows on one viewing but not the next. To increase download speed many video formats don’t play every frame in the original film.

  7. The Finnish M39 seems to be a pretty good rifle. It shows that the Mosin design could work very well if not produced by communists.

    As for the Tokarev pistol, of course it has a safety, the half cock notch! For most of the history of firearms, that was the only safety you got. I admit, it would not have killed the soviets to fit a safety catch, but it could be carried with reasonable safety using the half cock.

  8. Safety TT33, of course it is.
    The only question is whether there were more of those who escaped an accidental shooting due to this safe, or, on the contrary, were shot.
    These pistols, after some wear and tear (which came pretty quickly on samples of military production), began to shoot when dropped with the safe on.

    And also, firing pins constantly broke in TT33. Up until the 1948(?) Improvement that eliminated this problem.
    In addition to new ones, existing pistols were also being fixed.
    Therefore, if you come across a TT33 with a strange cut on the hammer, this is it.

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