The genesis of the B&T USW was a two and a half hour car ride home from a youth hockey game, when Karl Brugger and a friend were thinking about how to improve police effectiveness with handguns. What would make a handgun more accurate in practice? Clearly a red for and a shoulder stock. So how does one add those elements to a pistol while maintaining easy carry in a service holster? The answer was the USW.
The first prototypes were built on AT-84 Sphinx pistols (a Swiss-made copy of the CZ75). The first production run used Sphinx components, but with newly made frames and slide that incorporated cocking surfaces forward not he slide and an extension off the frame to mount the side-folding stock and Aimpoint Nano optic. Only a few of these were made, as the project was never all that popular.
Other experiments included conversions for other pistol models, with the SIG P320 being the most practical. Clamp-on conversion kits were made for guns like the CZ P10, Walther PPQ, and Glock.
Perhaps the most influential outcome of the project was the optic. Aimpoint originally developed the Nano as B&T’s request, but in the original form is was not nearly as reliable as Aimpoint desired. It was iterated and ruggedized (and renamed to avoid a lawsuit over the Beretta Nano pistol) and became the very successful Aimpoint Acro.
My 2022 Desert Brutality match with a USW-320:
Need to learn how to use a spell checker.
I hope Ian was being sarcastic when he writes ‘clearly’ a shoulder stock. The vast majority of police gunfights are at ranges inside five yards. As for those where a carbine is desirable, the lesson of the 1986 Miami FBI shootout was issue the cops carbines. Like Kirk keeps complaining, far too many innovative ideas are based on solving outlier incidents. The old dictum that hard cases make bad law holds here too. A bull session after a youth hockey game scarcely serves as an adequate limning of the problem to be addressed.
In the 1969 Griffiths Incident, in Glasgow, the only firearms available to the police were detectives’ .38 revolvers and the .22 rifles of the Police Rifle Club. Griffiths was armed with a shotgun and shot a detective and several civilians, killing one, during a chase through the city centre. The concern of returning fire with the .22 rifles was the risk of a riccochet. Griffiths finally holed up in a flat and was fatally shot through the letterbox by a .38 revolver. The resultand decision was for the Glasgow police to obtain pump action shotguns, to recuduce the riccochet risk. There were no armed response units at that time. Nowadays, roccochets and collateral damage to not appear to feature in the choice of police armament.
I’d heartily recommend against taking anything out of the UK with regards to policing and firearms at all seriously.
The vast majority of the incidents I’ve researched from the UK indicate a near-total ineptitude by the cops and even most of the perpetrators. It’s a unique environment, and any lessons you take from it need to be heavily salted with the idea that most of what you’re looking at isn’t applicable anywhere else in the world, at any time.
A lot of the issues they have revolve around the “Magic Wand” concept of the firearm; the cops think that they’ve gotten the armed guys on the case, that solves everything. The armed cops think that the firearms they carry make them immune to criticism, and because of the rare use of those teams, they’re mostly correct. This is why you have these incidents where the use of force has gone totally nuts, like in the de Menezes case.
I’ve spent some time with UK cops, both retired sorts and the younger guys who’ve come over to the US. The general mentality they’ve all displayed regarding firearms and lethal force is universally delusional and entirely lunatic. I had one guy arguing that he’d chose to deal with an armed citizen trying to help the police first, because “…they are a threat to public order…”. His reasoning was that anyone crazy enough to try and help the police in an armed situation was probably unbalanced and since they were likely to be easier for the police to disarm and take under authority, the police should start with them.
The UK has gone down a very strange road, with regards to self-defense and policing. Mostly due to putting numpty types in charge, allowing them to set precedent, and ignoring the ugly reality of trying police great apes with access to tools and technology. It won’t end well for the average person, as we can see by the fact that while rioters run rampant in modern Britain, they’re finding the time to harass and arrest people for expressing opinions online.
Peel was a smart man, with good ideas. His successors? Not so much; you’ll note that none of the “Disarm the public…” thing that they put in to deal with “Irish criminality and terrorism” back in the early days of the 20th Century actually did much to discourage said Irish “criminality” or “terrorism”. The common people of Britain pissed away their right to self-defense in the name of good public order and so fort, but what did they actually get in return? “Knife Crime”?
It’ll all end in the same “authority figures” going after rocks and stones, next. Mark my words: You’ll see turn-in bins for sticks and stones, one day (likely, very…) soon.
The NYPD used to basically rely on a “3-3-3” equation that prevailed in the great plurality of shooting incidents: 3 shots at a target 3 yards (or less) away in 3 seconds…
On the other hand, there are any of a number of other incidents that saw rather more shots being fired, and a relatively poor hit probability…
Didn’t Man From UNCLE use one of these?
An U.N.C.L.E. Special on steroids. What the other guy is getting up to while you’re emulating Solo and Kuryakin putting this thing together doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s what Kirk said about the CETME Ameli in the briefcase all over again.
The utility of shoulder-stocked handguns has always been problematic at best. About the least-worst were the c/96 Mauser (especially the sporting carbine version), the stocked Parabellum OM in 7.65x21mm (again the sporting version with the long barrel and wooden forearm- lovely workmanship there), and the stocked Astra 903 machine pistol in 7.63 x 25mm and the Mauser 712 that followed it. (Yes, the Astra preceded the Mauser, as did the Royal and Azul machine pistols with stock-holsters.)
The most egregious? Tossup between the 1850s-era .577 Enfield and .58 Springfield pistol-carbines (kicked like mules and could destroy your eyes), the Star Model M selective-fire 1911 clone in .45 ACP, and the Russian Stechkin APS in 9x18mm Makarov. Even with the stock attached, the last two were pretty much uncontrollable in autofire.
I don’t really count the legendary “Buntline Colt” with the brass skeleton stock because I still remain unconvinced that there really was any such thing prior to about 1970 with Italian-made “reproductions”. Long-barreled Peacemakers? Yes, Colt would make you one on special order, and charge extra for the longer barrel by the inch; ditto for the 1878 “Double-Action Frontier”. But both seem to have had a “cutoff” of about 10 inches barrel length.
My books on Colt don’t say anything about shoulder stocks, detachable or otherwise, on anything after the Model 1860 Army and the Thuer (front-loading) metallic cartridge conversion of same. It seems the loading gate for the metallic cartridge breechloaders from 1872 on got in the way.
clear ether
eon
“(…)books on Colt don’t say anything about shoulder stocks, detachable or otherwise, on anything after the Model 1860 Army and the Thuer(…)”
According to https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/150-years-of-the-colt-single-action-army/ Called “Buggy rifles” by Colt, approximately 19 Peacemakers with longer-than-standard-length barrels and detachable stocks were made between 1876 and 1884. However, Stuart N. Lake’s 1931 semi-fictionalized book, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, gave them a new name: “Buntline Specials.” This pristine .45-cal. SAA with 16″ barrel, Serial No. 28818, was shipped on May 13, 1884. One of the most thoroughly documented Buntlines in existence, it has the only known detachable skeleton stock with factory-installed wrist mounted sight. Formerly in the Mel Guy collection, in November 2021, it was auctioned by Morphy Auctions for $295,200.
The number of really bad ideas foisted off on the poor schmucks actually out on the tippy-tip of the spear by lab-coated wonks with credentials is incredible, when you think about it. No amount of failure or practical experience ever seems to make a dent in their certainty that they’ve correctly analyzed a situation and then come up with a workable solution to the problem they think they’ve identified.
Let us be blunt about this: A pistol is a pistol is a pistol. As such, it is only suitable for use in terms of what it really is: A substitute for mass, strength, and combat prowess during the hand-to-hand sort of melee combat you encounter during a fistfight at close quarters. Period. No more, no less; try to use it as a substitute for anything other than your fist, and you’re demonstrating fundamental confusion about what a pistol is, what it can do, and how you ought to be using it.
Say it slowly and repeatedly, until you digest this fact: A pistol is not a carbine. It is not a rifle. It is for surviving/winning a fistfight, and nothing more.
Try to make a carbine out of a pistol, and you’re inevitably going to lose all the characteristics that make a pistol useful as a pistol. You’ll add weight, mass, complexity, and you will still never reach the utility of a good light carbine with the abortion you’re trying to strap onto the hips of the beat cops. This is why this brilliant idea has failed each and every time some bright light has chosen to reinvent it, and it will continue to fail until someone figures out how to build a cartridge that can dial up from 9mm Parabellum to 5.56mm NATO at the flick of a switch on the weapon. Not to mention, how to actually unfold a stock and longer barrel out of hyperspace such that you can still easily holster the thing in pistol mode…
I can guarantee you that no beat cop that actually paid attention to his environment would ever come up with something like this. They know better; only the lab-coat brigade could ignore the realities of life down where the guys are knocking on doors at 3:00am and trying to get drunks off the street.
I’m sort of surprised/not surprised that B&T has this sort of distantly-aware-yet-oblivious individual running the show, but it does explain a lot about the boutique nature of their production.
I’m also surprised/unsurprised that the ugly face and form of the AT-84 rears itself in the background. The early ITM iteration of that pistol-caliber abortion was absolutely one of the worst handguns I’ve ever owned, and had the distinction of being the “most often returned” handgun in my personal experience. Mine went back to the distributor five times for issues that the gunsmith/dealer who sold it to me couldn’t figure out, and was eventually dealt with by Action Arms, the importer, by sending out a totally different, brand-new pistol that I promptly took up to the Lake County Gun Show and traded off to a dealer for a Glock 19. The only thing that we were ever able to figure out about the AT-84 that I had was that the internal machining was somehow sufficiently “off” such that the pistol simply could not function reliably, and it was way, way beyond just doing an action job on. The guy I bought the pistol from was a big fan of the CZ-75, owned several and had a small sideline tuning them for shooters. When Action Arms started bringing those AT-84s in, he was ecstatic because he saw a future where “True Germanic Quality” would be available for the discerning CZ-75 enthusiast, and… Yeah. Well, anyway, he wound up shipping most of the initial stock back to Action Arms, told their sales guy to go piss up a rope, and I think that the AT-84 debacle had a lot to do with that.
First time I saw one of those Sphinx pistols going for about $6,000.00 and change, it was all I could do to stop from rolling on the floor in fits of hysterical laughter. I was like “Do you know what you’re trying to sell, here? This is like the Swiss version of the Rogak P18…”
I have had actual hands-on experience with one of the early Sphinx pistols. It wasn’t worth the money, and I don’t think they ever got over the “Let’s copy the CZ-75 without access to the original TDP…” issue. The guy I knew who got suckered into buying one of them was never, ever happy with it. He made the comment to me that he felt like he was repeating his early life experience with his father’s M1A rifles, something he’d sworn never to do. Lots and lots of back-and-forth shipping for him with that gun; the lady down at the local FedEx shop got to know him by name. Took him about two years before he gave up and just sold the thing to someone else who was in love with the idea of “Swiss Precision”.
In short, this isn’t a workable idea. When you need a carbine, you need a carbine; nothing else will suffice. Handguns are for preventing/winning fistfights, nothing more.
No argument on any of the above.
The Winchester Light Rifle aka M1 Carbine was specifically requested by Army Ordnance as a replacement for “Pistols, submachine guns and someshotguns“. The idea being that something with a shoulder stock, a longer sight radius than a pistol, and a decent magazine capacity was easier for troops who were not Ed Fitzgerald-level pistoleers to actually hit something with.
It must be remembered that the M1911A1 was designed for the U.S. Cavalry, who prided themselves on being some of the best shots with rifle or pistol on Earth. The average cook was not going to shoot like a certain Lt. Patton during the Punitive Expedition, and thus said cook needed something more like the service rifle but lighter, not as hard-kicking, and with more range and power than the .45. The Carbine turned out to be exactly that, mainly because Ordnance for once did the sensible thing; they issued the RfP and then shut up and let the designers get on with it.
(Compare and contrast; the Carbine R&D cycle vs. M14, M16, OICW, XM8, and so on.)
Yes, there was at least one prototype for a stocked M1911A1 in the running. Even Ordnance “recoiled” at the idea.
In his book Weapons (1954), Edwin Tunis called the carbine “The pistol that looks like a rifle”. Which is a pretty accurate assessment. Its job was, and for that matter still is, to allow the troop to protect himself when Mr. Enemy pops up where intel swears he could not possibly be.
As for the pistol, unless you put in a lot of practice (like I did BITD), whether in the military or in law enforcement, you’re better off with a shotgun. Or better yet, a short rifle- a carbine.
As John Ringo said, a pistol is mainly useful for getting a rifle-from somebody else.
As for multiple backup weapons, again according to him, by the point in the debate at which you’re reloading your primary and your backup, either everybody on the other side of the debate should no longer be debating.
Or at the very least, you should be using the other side’s equipment.
clear ether
eon
What was the Clint Eastwood quote…? “A man has to know his limitations…”
Which is something that ought rightly be extended out to the weapons said man is carrying.
I’ve no problem at all with the average beat cop carrying a service carbine like an M4, alongside the pistol. Horses for courses, and if you’re talking about a target outside arm’s reach, get the carbine off your shoulder and do the necessary. I would also submit that a pistol-caliber carbine ain’t the ideal solution for these social occasions: You need something that’s going to speak with authority out to about 300m, and be able to surgically reduce the target’s interest in resistance while simultaneously avoiding collateral damage to bystanders and property.
I’d also demand high levels of proficiency from any cop on the beat, with the encouragement provided by making them do their jobs unarmed should they not be able to demonstrate said proficiency on demand. Tell one of these “heroes” on the NYPD that they either “got good” with their weapons, or did the job armed with a pick-mattock handle…? I think that would concentrate their minds wonderfully.
I’d also institute some performative standards, such that if you spray a magazine around the area without hitting a valid target, you get to spend the next six months unarmed, doing the same job. No matter how good they do on the tests, if they can’t demonstrate actual real-world performance, appropriate reinforcement training should be applied.
UNCLE fan here — the Specials were primarily pistols, you didn’t see them assembled into carbines until the Agents thought they were heading into trouble and had good advance warning: defensive situations with expectation of enemy action, going on raids, static bodyguard duty. As for real life, I expect sometimes a pistol is just a pistol, and if there’s advance notice of trouble you take the time to set up the stock. Not much different than Soviet bodyguards with stocked Stechkins hung under their coats ….
Also a fan, and I noted that on the occasions that they were going in on raids, Mr. S and Mr. K were busily bolting bits on to their P.38s.
While at HQ, the personnel all carried P35 High Powers- and the security “panic squad” had HK91 rifles in 7.62 x 51mm. To be used inside Headquarters.
Having those HK91s available in the trunk of the U.N.C.L.E. Special spy car (aka the Piranha show car) would have made a lot more sense.
cheers
eon
Exactly right. The (cognitive cchallenged genius behind the concept in question is like the guy who realized you could use a brick for a hammer to crack walnuts. He reasoned ‘Hey! Let’s start making bricks with handles!’ If you want a carbine, carry one.
Man From U.N.C.L.E. on steroids indeed. I google other pictures of the USW.With everything filled out of the way, the officer is packing something the rough dimensions of a large brick on his belt. Great for that once in a long decade shootout with Yardies packing Dragunovs. For getting into and out of the car, wrangling aggressive drunks, or just walking the narrow aisles of a 7/11 an accident inducing nuisance.
Oh, and let us have a thought or two about the “generative incident” that brought about this entire questionable enterprise: A beat cop shot seven times, hit the target once, in the leg, aaaaaaand… Yet another iteration of a historically invalidated idea comes poofing into the head of someone with access to the tools to “do something about it”.
First off, we simply don’t know enough about what happened, but I can guarantee you that whatever actually went down, the reality wasn’t transmitted or recorded such that you can make a clear point-by-point linkage from “causal factor 1” through to “design feature/criteria 1a”.
It’d be my guess that a beat cop that can’t close the deal with seven rounds is also the beat cop who’ll be sitting there, in demonstration of his utter ineptitude and unfitness for purpose, trying to unfold and deploy the magnificent uber-Waffen bestowed upon him by the generosity and magnanimous nature of his supervisors and the firearms industry. Odds are excellent that the criminal in question would manage to make off with zero repercussion at all, because he’d never get shot at in the first place.
I got a news flash for anyone in “cop administration land”, where the politicians and sycophantic pricks that rise like scum to the top of the cesspool: You cannot overcome poor selection, training, and professional standards with gadgetry. Dumbass who can’t hit the inside of a barn with the doors close, when armed with a handgun? He’s still going to be missing those walls when you put the magnificence that is this excresence into his holster. Why? Because he’s an inept, badly trained, poorly led incompetent you never should have given a badge to in the first place.
Either that, or he was having a really bad day. My guess? Incompetent that should never have been made a cop. Or, alternatively, should have been trained a hell of a lot better.
In any event, this entire class of weapons has always come into existence as a sign of delusional thought by the designers/specifiers. You don’t take a weapon meant to do close-range damage and somehow rework it so as to still do that, and be able to effectively do ranged combat. It’s like trying to take a punch-dagger and then going “Wow, it’d be really cool if we could turn that into something that could deal with armored men on horseback…” and then affixing a folding staff to it such that it became a billhook or halberd.
And, subsequently wondering why the guys carrying them were having such problems dealing with the odd horse-lancer charge…
I owned a Royal, an Astra and an ‘Artillery’ P08, all with shoulder stocks, when pistols could be legally owned in the UK. All were much more accurate at 50 yards with the stock attached. This was especially true with the snail drum attached to the P08. The Vintage Arms Association still has a ‘Broomhandle’ competition in Jersey, where pistols are still legal. This is for C96 pistols, where 5 rounds are fired at 100m with the stock attached and 5 at 50m without the stock. Having said this, we are currently considering changing this to 50m and 25m, to improve the scores, though this is more likely due to the increasing age of the shooters, rather than the ability of the pistols.
As we are only allowed muzzle loading revolvers in the UK, I have recently fired a Colt 1860 replica with a shoulder stock and found it much more accurate than a two-hand hold at 50 yards. So, the concept does work but only for target shooting. In a combat situation, a carbine would be far more effective.
In and of themselves, shoulder stocks absolutely do work as “accuracy enablers”. The issues with them come into play during the actual “use phase” of their existence.
The transition between “pistol that operator can have carried easily and conveniently in holster” to “half-ass carbine” is where the problems come in. You do like B&T did, and build all the carbiney goodness in permanently, and the pistol becomes something that is so unwieldly as to be useless at the “draw quickly and discourage bad guys” job that basically justifies the existence and issuance of said pistol in the first place. If you are going to go to the trouble of issuing a separate stock like the old-school Mauser Broomhandles or the VP-70, then the problem becomes getting your target to hold still whilst you do the necessary transformation from fish to fowl. And, on top of that, the separate stock is either something that precludes a speedy or easy draw of the pistol, or it’s about as convenient as carrying a second weapon, a real carbine would be…
All in all, this is and has been a horrible idea that practical experience has taught the wise “This don’t work…” with innumerable examples. Outside of Chinese warlords, nobody has actually bothered with issuing stocks for pistols and then using them in combat; the first thing most soldiers do is discard the stocks or leave them in the arms rooms. Police, when faced with the same choices? Same actions.
Pistols should do pistol things; when and if you need a carbine, get a carbine. Need a sniper rifle? Get a sniper rifle; need a machine gun? Get a machine gun. There are reasons that all these weapons are designed differently, and that boils down to “mission”. You don’t rent a Maserati sports car to move house; you don’t enter a 24-foot box van (one configured like a U-Haul, for you quibblers out there…) into the Dakar rally.
Consider having actual experience with the gun before speaking. Perhaps you’re referring to the thumbnail with the enormous suppressor attached, but otherwise the gun is not at all unwieldy. It’s a CZ75 with a longer back end. There is an unobtrusive stock on the side that doesn’t get in the way for any normal pistol shooting – one handed or two handed. The holster is a bit wider than a normal one to fit the stock, approximately 9mm wider. This is meaningless for a duty holster but might start to matter for concealment.
This is a 9mm pistol that behaves just like any full size 9mm pistol for shooting from retention, shooting up close, shooting with one or both hands. It has an easily deployed stock that is otherwise out of the way that allows for better performance at a distance. It is carried in a holster like a full size 9mm pistol.
It is not an M4, it is not trying to be. It is trying to be a better service pistol, and there it succeeds. When the beat cop doesn’t have time to grab the M4 from the car, this provides a superior option to a stockless 9mm pistol in the same footprint.
The thumbnail setup with the suppressor and giant magazine? Yes, that’s a bit silly. One can invent a use case for it, but for regular use it would be a standard 17rd mag and no suppressor in a holster.
In June 1994 at Fairchild air base, a schizophrenic went to a hospital where he’d been evaluated as unfit for military service with a 7.62x39mm MAK-90 rifle and a 75-rd. drum with mass murder on his agenda. He shot and killed 5 people, and a further 22 were injured. A responding staff sergeant, Andy Brown, pedaled his police bicycle furiously to the scene and engaged the mass murderer with a Beretta M9 pistol. Over the course of his 5-years in the USAF he’d been disatisfied with the level of training he’d received with the pistol, so he’d privately purchased a mechanically identical handgun for additional practice. He engaged the gunman and fired four times, hitting him in the bridge of the nose, aka. “right between the eyes” at 70 yards, ending the killing spree.
Many years ago, the LAPD recognized that the first officers to respond to armed threats were almost invariably motorcycle patrolmen (or women too, one supposes) because the iron horse was much more nimble moving through congested traffic and so on. So the initial idea was to have a bracket where the Ithaca M37 with 16-in. barrel could be stored on the motor bike. These days, of course, there is a similar bracket for the ubiquitous AR carbine/ patrol rifle.
Ian M’Collum did a highly informative video short about the 1880 shoulder-stocked No. 3 revolver procured by the South Australia Police here:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/sws-pistol-carbine-for-the-south-australian-police/
Couple of things about that Fairchild AFB incident…
I know a guy who was on the same Air Force Security Forces team with Andy Brown. He was junior to him, didn’t work for him, but did work around him.
Most of Brown’s peers thought he was nuts; from what I was told, they referred to him as “Tackleberry” behind his back, after the character in Police Academy. That he did what he did was entirely in his character, but outside the box for your usual Air Force Security Forces guy at the time. At least part of the reason, from my informant’s perspective, that they moved Brown to Hawaii was that he was making the rest of the Security Forces detachment at Fairchild nervous; they didn’t like that he was that “switched on”. My informant thought that Brown was on the way towards being effectively ostracized, and that a lot of the people running the base would have been happier had he just disappeared; the B52 crash that happened a few months later was part and parcel of the whole thing, in that the base command climate was seriously “off”; the Security Forces thing was just a precursor to the whole deal where that idiot showboating with the B52 thought he could get away with it all.
Brown had a lot of the same attitude I had, in that he identified fairly early on that the training wasn’t sufficient. That’s why he bought and “obsessively” practiced with his own M9, and why I had my own AR-15 and M92FS for awhile. I sold the M92FS, went to Glock, but kept the AR-15 so I could do my own practice on my own time. I was regarded as nuts for this, by one and all. During the long interregnum of the Clinton years, I was probably the only senior NCO in most of my units who shot live ammo regularly; the rest of us were forced to give up their shots at annual qualification so that junior NCOs who had a bad day on the range could re-qualify with higher scores. The ammo was that short, that tightly held. I recall getting my ass chewed hard, for “diverting” ammo from a ROTC qual range to get some of my range cadre qualified with higher scores than they’d had. The cadets weren’t using it, but it wasn’t “ours”, and I was wrong for firing my guys with it. I also got in trouble for going over to the SF group there at Fort Lewis, and scrounging ammo to do the same thing with.
The early and mid-1990s was ‘effing nuts. Brown would have been a distant outlier in terms of mentality and skill, and I can easily see why he later left the Air Force. They provided him with zero real support, behaved as though he were some sort of monster, and like I said, the other Air Force Security guys thought he was “Tackleberry”.
Sad commentary; most of the Infantry or other combat arms in the Army would have treated him better. Maybe.
The unfortunate thing about that incident was that while Brown did the necessities with a handgun, what he really needed was a carbine with a scope on it… Which was, per my informant, literally hours away from being issued from the Security Forces arms room, that day. The guys who went out on initial response, with rifles? Supposedly, no ammo to go with; the weapons were empty, where my guy was. All for show. Live ammo for the rifles showed up at his point on the perimeter sometime after dark, by what he remembered.
If you find yourself having to make a 70-yard shot with a 9mm pistol, I’d submit that your leadership has suffered a failure of duty towards you and the people you’re tasked with protecting.
For a good long while in U.S. police circles, uniform patrol officers had to be regularly berated and encouraged and propagandized to so that they’d take the 12-gauge shotgun with if there was any possibility of shots being fired in a given call. It was cumbersome, heavy, and usually was left behind in the cruiser…
If someone is in, say, Europe, and there is some kind of appalling incident like the several instances of Islamist or other deranged death-cult terrorism, the responding police are very likely to have just a pistol. In the UK, as you note, there’s probably a (s)quad of 4 armed officers racing to the scene in a souped-up BWM with rifles–G36 5.56mm–and Glock handguns, or even something like 28 of them. Or maybe 32. Or maybe even more? The vast majority of British police pride themselves and their service as being unarmed. But something like a quarter of cops in London are armed to the teeth. “Back in the day” it was the residual “cotty lie down” attitude toward the Irishry and generalized contempt for the “yobs” and the rabble… These days we can add the whole “Londonistan” immigration scenario, of course.
The bad hockey game aside, I think that the ddevelopment of this “improved” police service pistol was a reaction to various grim incidents in then contemporary Europe and the notion that the first responder would have just a 9mm pistol.
A 9mm pistol-caliber carbine–typically a SMG in much of Europe outside of 1990s-early 2000s Britain–offers a typical shooter three points of contact and a much more accurate firearm choice than a pistol, particularly under duress. In the United States, issuance of such a firearm to police is universally derided and despised. The St. Louis, MO police, for example, did not take well to a Beretta 92 pistol and a magazine-standardized Cx4 “Storm” carbine, for example. It simply had to be a 5.56x45mm rifle. The arguments about the generally wide-spread availability of body armor are usually raised, for example. Nowadays, the AR is practically ubiquitous in the US, and in rather a lot of other police departments worldwide. “Someone sold them something,”
Interesting aeon to live in. The individual who pursues excellence at his vocation is officially typed as aberrant. This reminds me that the FBI agent who ended the 1986 Dade County shootout has been described in some circles as having ‘anger management issues.’ I guess ‘courage’ is too terse and laudatory a word.
Long though isn’t it, and it’s not a good club; a Ppsh… Well if you, really didn’t like; folk. Well. Quite like tge idea of aload of 20g cartridges aligned fn90 fashion above, now… I was looking at a stamp “You know those things libary books used to get stamped with” Aye, well… If imagine a case sat on top, when you depress it (Stampy thing, looking at it from above) That would drop a case; if you made room at the sides – For a bolt below.
…In that “I hadn’t finished” recoil… could with that (stamp) as a rotating piece, the whole thing. “I will just check that, brain says; yes.” It will move back, long recoil part… I will type this aside “To condense it” it was actually quite good, bare with…
Basically… The idea is 20g shot/slug arranged FN90 style “Whats not to like” said cartridges arranged thus; feed via a spring to the front, quite. The “Stamp” see this is going be hard to explain…
Ok… Said stamp! “The libary, type, stamp.” Is mounted as one piece… Actually this is going to go on and on, I will condense. Its not a bad idea mind.