Comments on: I would never trust my life to one

By: TRW

TRW — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 23:29:07 +0000

John Browning’s original design, and Colt’s productionized version, were in “.38 Colt”, originally loaded *much* hotter than the 9mm Parabellum. The parallel-link Colts had problems with the powerful cartridge, so Colt backed off the loading substantially, to more or less tha same as the 9mm Parabellum. In the 1920s Colt re-introduced the original loading as the “.38 Super.”

Modern commercial .38 Super varies from “a bit hotter than 9mm” to “well into .357 Magnum” territory. The 1928 Supers were that hot.

The .45 ACP wasn’t Browning’s doing; the Army designed that, and Colt insisted on a .45 version to bid on the new Army pistol contract. Supposedly Browning was involved with adapting the gun to take the .45, but Colt’s finished product has always been finicky about feed geometry and magazines. Which the .38 guns are emphatically *not*; they strip rounds from the magazine right into the chamber instead of doing the hoochie-koochie up and over the ramp. Still, it works well enough, when everything is in spec.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 20:24:30 +0000

The problems presented by what the guys in the forces call “sudden jihadi syndrome” militate for the provision of handguns for all hands, to be quite honest. Were it just straight-up combat between peers, I think you’d be right, but so long as you have to worry about your putative allies turning on you at the most inopportune moments, well… Gimme a Glock 19.

By: Lu An Li

Lu An Li — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 19:44:17 +0000

Killing an enemy on the battlefield with a handgun is an extremely rare event. Close quarters combat with a handgun extreme accuracy and range not really a consideration. Stopping power more important. Again, gunfights at close range on the battlefield rarely occur anyhow.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 14:37:21 +0000

I feel your pain, Bob… But, trying to apply any sort of logic or consistency to firearms nomenclature, especially here in the US, is essentially a path to madness. They keep making up crap in the gun rags, and those illogical and idiotic constructions often penetrate deeper into the public psyche and last longer than the actual true technical terms. Look at the idiocy between “magazine” and “clip”: At some point, usage is going to overwhelm technicality, and we’re actually going to be faced with the terms being interchangeable.

English is a wonderfully flexible language, but living with it is maddening for the detail-oriented. As a tool for thought, I sometimes think that it has a negative effect, in that its imprecision and ability to morph all out of shape in any regard influences much of our fuzzy thinking, but then I also wonder if it has made native English speakers more flexible in their thinking. Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other…

By: Bob Sykes

Bob Sykes — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 11:35:36 +0000

I find it interesting that until 20 to 30 years ago, everyone called the Luger and the Colt and all their ilk, “automatic” pistols. There was none of this “semiauto” nonsense, and there was no such thing as a “semiautomatic pistol.”

There were revolvers (double and single action), automatic pistols (like the Colt 1911, almost all single action), machine pistols/submachine guns (like the Thompson). There was even an automatic revolver, the Webley-Fosbery, in .455.

But someone thought that pistol nomenclature had to be the same as rifle nomenclature. And now even the NRA and so-called gun experts talk about semi-automatic pistols.

Getting old.