April 03, 2013
Take a close look at your handgun barrel the next time you are cleaning it. Since we never clean loaded gun, it will have been carefully unloaded and the ammunition put away. As you check the bore to be sure you have done a proper job of removing the debris, take note of its spiral grooves. They weren’t always there.
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March 28, 2013
To my admittedly prejudiced hand and eye, the classic handguns are great examples of the saying that “form follows function.” Shaped for completely practical reasons, they are as efficient as they are beautiful. Like many tools, they exist for immediate but specific needs and are more often carried than actually used. As such, it is not surprising that some shooters decorate their tools. Some employ the services of artists who engrave the handgun’s surface, others like to use various forms of etching. I personally like to take advantage of a classic handgun characteristic that is fast disappearing. For me, fancy handles, scales, stocks or grips are the thing. In a world of very nicely shaped butt sections of moulded polymer, my eye—and hand—turns to the pistol or revolver with custom grips.
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March 26, 2013
Back in the 70s, there was a great deal of experience behind police trainers and the procedures used to make competent handgunners out of rookie cops. For the most part instructors were teaching the use of wheelguns, one of the more forgiving handguns ever made. But the move to automatic pistols came along in that period and things changed. Police adopted autos, quickly deposing the DA/SA revolver. SigSauer/Beretta/S&W and a few other autos were the first guns of choice. Most of the guns of that day were cocked for the first shot by trigger pressure, with subsequent shots cocking when the slide recoiled and returned to battery. A first-class trainer, whose experience spans those early years to date, recently commented to me that it was actually easier to teach DA/SA autos when everyone was coming off revolver skills.
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March 20, 2013
Guns are rarely worn out through normal use. Given reasonable care and shooting only with the proper ammunition, most quality handguns will last for decades. Abuse, on the other hand, can destroy a nice gun in very little time. And sometimes the abuse can be ill-conceived modifications to a gun that could not possibly be improved. Take the case of the Smith & Wesson M&P revolvers made for the United Kingdom forces during World War II. The British service revolver cartridge was the .38/200, which is interchangeable with the .38 S&W (not the same as the .38 Spl). Tens of thousands of these fine revolvers were made and shipped to Great Britain, used by various British Army forces and put in storage after the war. Some may have never been issued. Most of them eventually came home via the war surplus route. More than a few were absolutely ruined before they were sold to American handgunners.
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March 12, 2013
Manufacturers discontinue handgun models for a variety of reasons, all of which are based in the market. It’s as plain as the laws of supply and demand, to which I was once exposed in Economics 101, many years ago. I hope that long ago professor will excuse my clumsy summary of how it works, but here goes. A handgun is a product just like a box of matches or an exotic silk scarf. The handgun, match or scarf maker produces these things at some expense, in the hopes that he or she will sell them for more than it cost to make them. He’s free to ask any price, but is well advised to set the price with care. Too high and the product won’t sell; too low and he’s literally giving his profit away. If enough people want the handgun, matches or scarf, and he prices accurately, he will prosper. He has to consider many other factors, such as the cost of selling the product, a mercurial market and politicians messing around with the conditions under which he is allowed to sell his wares. Let’s take a look at a couple of guns that were discontinued, and then later revived.
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March 05, 2013
Even before I was a peace officer, I was a little suspicious of people who used nickel-plated guns. The high shine never appealed to a guy who grew up with Parkerizing and tung-oil finished walnut. As it happens, I may have been unfairly prejudiced against this old-time gun finish. But the arguably unfounded calumny against the nickel-plated handgun is still part of my thought processes. So much so that I count only a single nickel-plated gun in my assortment of arms—a very nice Smith & Wesson DA Frontier .44 that was re-done at the factory in the 1970s.
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February 28, 2013
On a recent trip back to my where I was once a police officer, I dropped by the gun store where I used to spend a lot of time—The Stockade, in Westminster, Calif. Tucked back in one of the display cases was a type of Smith & Wesson revolver that I had never handled. A conversation ensued, money changed hands, and I now own yet another S&W revolver. The little gun—a S&W Model One-and-a-Half, 2nd issue—is far too old to ever fire. I got it as a piece of history, and it is easily the oldest handgun I own. In its day, the 1 1/2 was a big seller for the Springfield plant, with over a 100,000 units made. Its day was right after the Civil War (1868-1875).
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February 22, 2013
Several months ago, I invited the readership of this column to participate in what amounts to a debate. The subject was the status of the two most popular service pistol calibers—9 mm and .40 S&W—and how they compare, why they are chosen. The response was overwhelming and not only in numbers of participants, but also in the quality of their contributions. We heard from many shooters with a variety of carefully reasoned and clearly written comments on their feelings about these two rounds. I truly appreciate the effort that went into this and I hope that all readers who responded would be willing to do so again and on other topics. So, what did we learn?
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February 20, 2013
To a handgun specialist, the 1911 is a familiar pattern. For Americans, the handgun of the 20th century is Colt’s Model of 1911, caliber .45. The majority of competitive handgun manufacturers offer some variation of this classic design, so gun reviewers deal with the terminology frequently. Not surprisingly, they have become a little sloppy about differentiating between the 1911 pistol and the 1911A1 variant thereof. So let’s review this classic handgun information once again for those who came in late.
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February 13, 2013
It seems obvious that the muzzle end of a handgun barrel should be cut square with the bore. But some shooters seem to be unaware of how critical a proper crown is to the overall performance of a gun. As a bullet leaves the cartridge and heads down the barrel of the gun, it picks up speed very quickly, because the powder charge is burning at a high-flame temperature and producing violently expanding gas. The gas exerts pressure on the base of the bullet, which drives it forward. It is a really hostile world in a handgun barrel as all of this happens. The bullet is a snug fit in the barrel and spiral grooves (rifling) cut in the bore cause the bullet to rotate. Then the moving bullet, which has been stabilized in the barrel, comes to the end and launches free into space.
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