When Smith & Wesson introduced their Model 3566 pistol for USPSA use, the company shooting team needed six of them for use at the 1994 USPSA Nationals. The Performance Center made these six guns, and they are magnificent examples of custom gunsmithing. This is the first of them, and designed for use in Limited Division. It has a six-inch extended barrel, brass barrel bushing ring, extended 20-round magazines, and fantastic single action only trigger.
Book review
Book Review: The Guns of John Moses Browning, by Nathan Gorenstein
John Moses Browning is, without argument, the greatest firearms designer in history. While we have had many brilliant designers who had their names forever connected to guns (Maxim, Luger, Kalashnikov…), Browning invented whole *categories* of […]
Single-shot Pistol
Colt’s .41 Derringers: Buyout and Innovation
When Colt decided that it wanted a piece of the Derringer market, it used a tactic we are used to seeing today: it found an existing manufacturer and just bought them outright. This was the […]
Competition
New .44 AutoMag Behemoth at the BackUp Gun Match
Yesterday we were looking at the new resurrection of the AutoMag pistol, and today I have it out at the monthly BackUp Gun match. Is it appropriate to bring this behemoth of a pistol to […]
It looks amazingly like an MAB PA-15 M1 Target.
https://investmentsinarms.com/product/mab-pa-15-m1-target-557446-a-1531/
clear ether
eon
Wow! a S&W auto that doesn’t use a bell-end on the end of the barrel instead of a bushing. Possession of that pistol takes more than money. The owner must have some SERIOUS connections.
I remember when USPSA did that.
A connected guy showed up at a match with one, and let us try it.
Those of us with small hands loved it.
Then we heard USPSA changed the Limited rules for major caliber, to 40 minimum in addition to 175 power factor.
There was much cursing of USPSA amongst us non-fans of 1911s.
Gamification of anything is going to result in things like this. My own take on the matter is, if you’re going to do anything like what USPSA purported to be doing, then the entire idea of custom-made gear dedicated to that match is outright BS.
I’d strongly suggest that the matches should have been held using match-provided generic weapons and match-provided generic holsters, with zero scope for anyone to sneak in “cool kid” stuff that would “give them an edge”.
The whole point of USPSA was for it to be “practical”. You have multi-thousand dollar “race guns” and holsters you’d only dare use on a match course…? Not at all “practical”. It should have never been allowed in the first damn place, and if I were running the whole show, I’d have banned anyone showing up with “special gear” from ever competing again. The point wasn’t to evaluate special-use handguns and other gear, it was to do practical shooting. “Practical” means you show up with and shoot that which you’d actually be carrying on the daily, the way I see it. Special toys don’t cut it.
You want to game the system with your gear, go somewhere else. And, stay there.
I think this is why IDPA is more “practical”- People still play games but far fewer.
Don’t get me started on some of the things I saw on the Practical Pistol Course going back to the late Seventies. That’s where the whole “race gun” thing began.
They’re now calling it Precision Pistol Competition, and absolutely everybody is using revolvers that you’d never carry on your belt on duty;
https://americanhandgunner.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/HJF20-PPC-7.jpg
Never ask them how many LEO still carry revolvers, either; they’ll hoof you out with the full and complete blessings of the NRA, who are largely responsible for this nonsense.
An actual Practical Pistol Course shot today should probably be restricted to 9mm Glocks and SiG .45s, because those account for 95% of the sidearms carried by peace officers in the United States today. (Our local PD carries SiG P220 Elite .45s; our local Sheriff’s Dept. prefers Glock 17 Gen 4 9mms.) With no laser sights, holo sights, or other Star Trekky gadgetry under, above, or on either side of the bore.
If you can’t hit what you’re aiming at with iron sights, you’re probably not qualified to be in law enforcement.
Of course, I’m an old coot who carried a Colt MK IV Series 70 .45 on duty, backed up by a Colt Police Positive Special .38 Spl. 6″. Contrary to Col. Cooper, that .38 loaded with Winchester-Western .38 High Speed 158-grain LRNs at 1,050 F/S for 380+ FPE actually was probably a better “stopper” than that .45.
clear ether
eon
ctually you’re backwards, aren’t you? I thought the original idea of practical pistol was to allow anything within only the broadest parameters, so we could all learn what worked and what didn’t.
That almost appears to have the build quality of a Roth Steyr, made by ten folks hammering stuff out etc and hand fitting them all together; not an especially expensive thing at the time. Need it be now? I mean has anyone tried.
Would it really? Should someone try, to actually get ten folk to machine bits of this and then put them together and sell it for a grand. Consumers are given consumerables; but it surely must now be, becoming apparent “CNC machines” for making guns, good guns out the box; may not be the answer.
Do you really get a good product, really? Or are we just devaluing cash is essence I.e. You pay said amount for “Something which is ok” as you are forced to as everyone else does.
Be the undoing of everything that one day, the undoing of everything; accept everything being worse, as it just is… And so on, right back to the stone age.
Look at those Boeing passenger aircraft now, we call this progress! Progress, un- airworthy shit. Vomit inducing; they just crash and kill everyone.
(Not Luddite’ish) The Eurofighter “Can’t fly stable without computers apparently” but I mean come on… A passenger plane; I think consumers would like it to be able to just fly, and if an engine broke; still hope… Risky, but… A chance.
You don’t even get that with Boeing now, out the sky the go; as someone missed a software update, I mean please. This is not progress.
“(…)Boeing passenger aircraft now, we call this progress! Progress, un- airworthy (…)”
Accidents can happens, but more telling might be *reaction* to accident that accident itself. So what they did to ameliorate said problem and is this progress or regress in comparison against Trans World Airlines Flight 2 in 1956, where all on-board perished after being rammed during flight by another aeroplane and apparently such events must be considered totally acceptable by U.S. dwellers, considering they did not make countermeasures for that and again lost all on-board in Trans World Airlines Flight 266 in 1960.
Tut, fuel was cheaper… These modern planes are not up to standard. Because of fuel prices. Well thats some excuse isn’t it; not.
“(…)not an especially expensive thing at the time(…)”
How do you know that, considering that according to http://www.hungariae.com/RothStey.htm
…Roth-Steyr was never marketed commercially…
?
Well,on the premise; everything had to made such… Thus. See…