Forgotten Weapons
Published 29 Sept 2025Today we are taking a look at an interesting silenced Bulgarian Makarov with a mechanism added to lock the slide. This sort of feature is usually thought of as a sneaky way to avoid ejecting brass and leaving it behind, but it actually serves a much more practical purpose. One of the loudest elements of a suppressed pistol firing subsonic ammunition is actually the noise of pressurized gas escaping when the empty case is extracted and then the slide chambering a new round. A slide lock eliminates these sources of noise by preventing the slide from opening. While this is not a factory-made variant of the Makarov, it is an interesting mechanism that I thought worth covering.
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February 22, 2026
An Interesting Silenced Bulgarian Makarov
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January 15, 2026
Pauly/Roux Pistols: The First Self-Contained Cartridges
Forgotten Weapons
Published 22 Aug 2025Samuel Pauly is the largely unrecognized father of the modern self-contained cartridge. In 1808 he patented a cartridge with a metal base that held a priming compound and attached to a paper or metal cartridge body holding powder and projectile. He followed this with an 1812 patent for a gun to fire the cartridges. What makes Pauly’s original system particularly interesting is that he did not use mechanical percussion (ie, hammer or striker) to ignite the primer compound, but rather a “fire pump”. A spring loaded plunger compressed air on top of the primer, heating it enough to detonate the compound in the same way that a diesel engine works. This was not a commercially successful system, though, and Pauly left Paris for London in 1814.
Pauly’s shop was taken over by Henri Roux, who continued making guns under the Pauly name while also improving the cartridges. These two pistols were made around 1820 and use a Roux cartridge with a mechanical striker hitting the primer compound in a Pauly-style cartridge case.
For more information, I recommend Georg Priestel’s free book Jean Samuel Pauly, Henri Roux, and Successors – Their Inventions From 1812 to 1882 available here:
https://aaronnewcomer.com/document/je…
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January 12, 2026
A Modern Integrally Suppressed Pistol for Everyone: The SilencerCo Maxim 9
Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 Aug 2025SilencerCo announced the Maxim-9 pistol in late 2015. Having gone through some huge growth of the past few years, the company wanted to expand its capabilities and thought that the time was right for a modern integrally suppressed pistol. It was a unique new design of modern semiautomatic pistol build from the ground up to be integrally suppressed. The action is a proprietary delayed blowback system with all of the moving parts in the back half of the slide. This leaves the front of the gun dedicated entirely to suppressor volume.
The guns were released at SHOT Show 2017, and were relatively slow sellers, because of the high price and the required NFA registration. The expected passage of the Hearing Protection Act around that time would have been a huge boon for sales, but did not ultimately happen. Still, production continued until tapering off in early 2021 as SilencerCo shifted priority to regular suppressor manufacture in the face of a boom in demand.
The project may not have been a massive success for SilencerCo, but it was still a worthy endeavor that they do not regret. It helped mature the company, forcing them to embrace new proficiency in things like GD&T and advanced quality control machinery. And the pistol is, in fact, very cool.
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December 2, 2025
H&R Handy Gun: A Smoothbore Pistol Killed Off by the NFA
Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Jul 2025The Handy Gun was introduced by Harrington & Richardson in 1924. H&R took their Model 1915 single-barrel break-action shotgun and cut it down into a handgun. It got a pistol grip and an 8″ barrel, and was offered in both .410 and 28 gauge (the .410 model also able to fire some .44-caliber single-bullet cartridges). A 12″ version was also made, to be legal in a few states that had length restrictions. It was advertised specifically for personal protection, probably exploiting the common belief that one need not aim a shotgun at close range.
In 1931 H&R attempted to pivot the Handy Gun into the target pistol space, introducing .22LR and .32 S&W models with rifled barrels. These didn’t sell very well, as there were many other, better options for target pistols. A detachable wire stock was introduced in 1933, but this didn’t help much either.
Ultimately the National Firearms Act of 1934 conclusively killed off the Handy Gun (along with similar products from other companies, like Ithaca’s “Auto & Burglar”). That law categorized smoothbore pistols as “Any Other Weapons”, and subjected them to NFA registration with a $200 tax on their manufacture and a $5 tax on their transfer. This overhead destroyed demand for the gun, and the company simply ceased to offer it commercially. It did continue to be sold in Canada until World War Two however as Canadian law did not restrict it at that time. Total production was about 54,000.
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November 6, 2025
Galand de Guerre Model 1872: Too Good for the Military
Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Jun 2025Charles François Galand is best known for his simultaneous-extraction Model 1868, but he also developed a very good solid-frame revolver. This was specifically for the French 1871 military trials, which specifically required a solid frame. The Galand was chambered for 12mm Galand (with its distinctive very thick rim), held 6 rounds, operated in either single or double action, required no tools to disassemble, and had very simple but durable lockwork. The gun was very good, and was a very tight competitor for the other trials finalist, the Chamelot-Delvigne. Ultimately, it lost out because it was the more expensive of the two options.
For more information on the Model 1873 Chamelot-Delvigne that won the French trials, I suggest the C&Rsenal video on that model:
• History of WWI Primer 061: French and Ital…
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October 25, 2025
A Modern Stocked Pistol: B&T’s Universal Service Weapon (USW)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 9 Jun 2025The 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 on the 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:
• Evaluating the Modern Stocked Pistol: USW-…
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October 7, 2025
C93 Borchardt: the First Successful Self-Loading Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
Published 29 Nov 2015Hugo Borchardt was a brilliant and well-traveled firearms designer. He was born in Germany but emigrated to the United States at a fairly young age, where he became engaged in the gun trade. He spent time working with Winchester, Remington (where he patented improvements on James Paris Lee’s box magazine idea), and Sharps (where he designed the M1878 rifle and worked as Superintendent). With this experience under his belt, he returned to Germany and worked with the Loewe/DWM corporation.
Borchardt’s seminal invention in Germany was his C93 automatic pistol, which was the first of its kinds using a reasonably powerful cartridge and a locked-breech action. Unlike the other designs extant at the time, the C93 went into commercial production, and 3000 were ultimately made. The gun was safe and reliable, and it set the standard for locating a detachable box magazine in the grip, which remains the standard today. However, its very bulky mainspring assembly led to it being a rather awkward handgun to use (although it was a quite nice carbine when used with its detachable shoulder stock).
Borchardt’s talents came hand-in-hand with a fair amount of hubris, and he refused to consider the possibility that his pistol could be improved. Several military trials requested a smaller and handier version of the gun, and when Borchardt refused to make those changes, DWM gave the job to a man named Georg Luger. Luger was very good at taking existing designs and improving them, and he transformed the basic action of the C93 into the Luger automatic pistol, which of course became one of the most iconic handguns ever made.
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September 23, 2025
Beretta Model 1934: Italy’s Unassuming Workhorse Service Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
Published 16 May 2025The Beretta Model 34 was basically the final iteration of a design by Tullio Marengoni that began all the way back in 1915. That pistol was updated in the early 1920s, and that one was updated in 1931. The Model 1931 was converted to .380 ACP (aka 9mm Short) as the Model 1932, which became the Model 1934 with the addition of a hammer half-cock notch and steel grip panel backing. Police and military contracts began in 1935, with the Italian Army formally adopting it in 1936 and purchasing nearly 400,000 of them by 1940. It would ultimately see service with basically all the armed elements of the Italian military and civil security services as well as foreign nations including Germany, Romania, and Finland. As a souvenir for British or American troops, the Model 1934 was also a prized piece.
Essentially, the Model 1934 is compact, simple, durable, and reliable. It is an excellent military pistol; easy to carry unobtrusively but dependable when called upon. After World War Two it stayed in production until 1980, despite introduction of many other more modern options by Beretta. Today a bunch of the pistols have become available on the US collector’s market. Thanks to Royal Tiger Imports for sending this example for me to film!
Beretta Model 1934 serial numbers and dates (source: “1915-1985 Settant’ Anni di Pistole Beretta“):
1934 – 1942 – from about 500073 to 999996
1934 – 1942 – from 1 to about 40000
1943 – 1945 – from F00001 to F99997
1943 – 1945 – from G00001 to G57486
1943 – 1945 – from 0001AA to 9997AA
1943 – 1945 – from 0001BB to 9971BB
1946 – 1949 – from C00001 to C99998
1949 – 1954 – from D00001 to D99999
1954 – 1967 – from E00001 to E95760
1967 – 1973 – from F50001 to F61693
1970 – 1975 – from G00007 to G49620
1972 – 1974 – from H00001 to H25000
1971 – 1980 – from T 1 to T 10217Other pistols in the Beretta development series:
Modle 1915: • Beretta 1915: the First of the Berett…
Model 1923: • Beretta Model 1923
Model 1931: • Beretta Model 1931
Trials Model 1934: • Military Trials Beretta 34 – Can You …
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September 20, 2025
Dutch Navy Luger: From World War One to the End of Neutrality
Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 May 2025The Dutch Navy first acquired Luger pistols in 1918 specifically for its aviators. They had 12 German P04 Lugers taken from a German submarine stranded in the (neutral) Netherlands, and 28 more were purchased from DWM in 1918 to round out the 40 guns needed to equip the Naval Air Service. The pistol was formally adopted as Automatische Pistool Nr.1. In 1928, the Dutch Army adopted the 1906 New Model Luger for its own service, and the Navy decided to update its revolvers at the same time. The Navy opted not to get grip safeties, and so took a copy of the German P08 model instead of what the Army had. The first order was placed in 1928 through BKIW in Germany, and deliveries would run until 1939 with a total of 2654 delivered before German invaded in May 1940.
Dutch Army Luger trials:
• Politicians Ruin Everything: Dutch Lu…Dutch East Indies Lugers:
• Lugers for the Dutch East Indies Army
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September 13, 2025
Jennings 5-Shot Repeating Flintlock Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
Published 9 May 2025Isaiah Jennings patented an improvement to the Belton repeating flintlock system in 1821 — but we don’t know exactly what his idea was because the Patent Office lost his patent (and many others) in a large 1836 fire. Jennings’ system was used by several gunsmiths, though. In 1828/9 the State of New York contracted to convert 521 of their muskets to Jennings’-pattern repeaters. We also have a few examples like this custom five-shot pistol made by John Caswell of upstate New York.
Jennings’ system uses superposed charges loaded in the barrel along with a movable lock. Each charge has its own touch hole, and the cover plates for them act as stops for movement of the lock, to ensure proper alignment. The trigger will fire the lock in any position, and it is also fitted with an automatic magazine frizzen — so cocking the hammer automatically charges priming powder into the pan and closes the frizzen. These were very advanced arms for the early 1800s, and expensive to produce.
Belton Repeating Flintlock:
• Belton Repeating Flintlock: A Semiaut…
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September 3, 2025
German Occupation FN High Power Pistols
Forgotten Weapons
Published 28 Apr 2025When Germany occupied Belgium in the summer of 1940, the took over the FN factory complex and ordered production of the High Power pistol to continue. It was put into German service as the Pistole 640(b), and nearly 325,000 of them were made between 1940 and 1944. The first ones were simply assembled from finished Belgian contact parts, and included all the features like shoulder stock slots and 500m tangent rear sights. As the war continued, however, production was simplified. The stock slots disappeared first, then the tangent sights, then the wooden grips (replaced by bakelite) and eventually even the magazine safety was omitted. Resistance among Belgian factory workers increased as well, with deliberate sabotage in the form of incorrect heat treating, errors in fine tolerance parts, and sometimes even spending lots of time to give a very fine surface finish instead of making more pistols.
These are a particularly popular subject of collecting, and there are a lot of nuances of the production and inspection marks that are worth understanding if you want to take them seriously. I highly recommend Anthony Vanderlinden’s 2-volume book FN Browning Pistols for very good detail on these, as well as other FN handguns: https://amzn.to/42Bc541
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August 16, 2025
Stocked FN Model 1903
Forgotten Weapons
Published 26 Aug 2015The FN Model 1903 was a Belgian-made scaled-up version of John Browning’s model 1903 pocket hammerless pistol. The pocket hammerless was made in .32 ACP and .380 calibers for (primarily) the civilian market in the US by Colt, and the FN model was chambered for the more powerful 9x20mm Browning Long cartridge, with military and police contracts in mind. The most common source of the FN pistols in the US is from the Swedish contract for the guns, but they were sold to a number of other nations as well.
This example is from the Russian contract, which included shoulder stocks with the pistols. Many military automatic pistols from this time were offered with the option of combination holster/stock units, which could be used to provide improved accuracy to the shooter. The stock for the FN 1903 is a bit different than most, in that it requires the use of an extended 10-round magazine instead of the standard flush-fit 7-rounder. As with most such original guns, these have been specifically exempted from NFA regulation in the US.
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June 30, 2025
Small Arms History of the Falkland Islands Defense Force
Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Feb 2025Various militias existed on the Falkland Islands since its earliest settlement, but the Falkland Islands Defense Force of today traces its roots to the 1892 Falkland Islands Volunteer Corps. This force was equipped with Martini Henry rifles. With the outbreak of World War One, the Falklands were a strategically important naval station, and the FIDF grew significantly in size and was fitted out with more modern arms. They expanded again in World War Two, with Lee Enfield rifles, Sten MkV SMGs, and Bren, Lewis’s and Vickers machine guns. Eventually in 1972 the force modernized, acquiring British L1A1 SLR rifles, L2A3 Sterling SMGs, and GPMGs (FALs and FN MAGs) and updating its Bren guns to 7.62mm. These were the standard arms at hand during the Argentine invasion in 1982, although the FIDF was not really an active participant in the resistance to the invasion. In fact, the British Marine party on the island was in the middle of being replaced when the invasion happened and twice the normal number of Marines were present. They armed themselves with most of the FIDF SLRs, leaving the FIDF with mostly just SMLE rifles.
After the war, the FIDF was reconstituted. It kept its SLRs until the early 1990s when they were replaced with 5.56mm rifles. Instead of adopted the British L85A1, the FIDF opted to purchase Steyr AUGs. The intention was to replace the GPMG with the heavy-barreled AUG, but this did not work out in practice. Instead, the GPMGs remained in service and the heavy-barreled AUGs were converted to standard rifles. In the post-war years the FIDF also began to acquire more specialty arms, starting with a Parker-Hale M85, a couple of Steyr HS-50s, and ultimately a batch of LMT 7.62mm rifles. They remain a small but quite well-equipped for today, offering valuable reconnaissance and local knowledge to the British Army garrison should conflict break out again.
Many thanks to the FIDF for giving me access to their armory to dig out these arms to film for you!
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May 22, 2025
Landstad 1900: A True Semiautomatic Revolver
Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Jul 2024The Landstad Model 1900 is a magazine-fed, semiautomatic revolver designed by Norwegian Halvard Folkestad Landstad, who lived in Kristiana (now called Oslo). He designed the gun on his own dime, and presented it to military trials in 1901, which it failed miserably. The gun has a six-round detachable box magazine of 7.5mm Nagant cartridges, a two-chamber cylinder, and a simple blowback action. Its firing cycle is to chamber a round from the magazine into the bottom cylinder chamber by manually cycling the action. The trigger is a long double-action type which rotates the cylinder 180 degrees so the cartridge is in line with the barrel and releases the striker to fire the round. Upon firing, the bolt cycles open, extracting and ejecting the empty case, rechecking the striker, and chambering a new round from the magazine into the bottom of the cylinder.
The purpose of this overly complex system was to provide a semiauto action which did not ever leave a live cartridge under the striker, in the name of safety. Only one example was made, and its bolt broke after just 5 or 6 rounds fired. It was repaired almost immediately, but the Norwegian military had was not interested in further development, and nothing more came of the program. A few years later in 1908 Norway would institute a more serious semiauto pistol trials program which led to adoption of the Kongsberg 1914 (a slightly modified Colt 1911).
Thanks to Jan for allowing me to disassemble and film this one-of-a-kind piece for you!
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April 18, 2025
SIG P320 Flux Legion / Flux Raider: The Best Pistol-PDW System Yet
Forgotten Weapons
Published 18 Dec 2024The Flux Raider is a chassis system designed to turn the SIG P320 into a very compact PDW. The design concept began as a desire to improve the practical accuracy of a handgun by adding a collapsing stock while keeping the weapon holsterable. Flux’ first product, circa 2019, was a spring-loaded stock that could be attached to the back of a Glock pistol. This had some clear shortcomings, and it led to development of the MP17 in 2020. This was a SIG chassis, something made feasible by the use of a serialized fire control group in the P320 pistol. The MP17 used the same basic stock design as the original Flux brace, but added an optics mount and a space to store a space magazine.
Less than 400 MP17s were built before the design was refined into the Flux Raider, and the manufacturing changed from printing to molded polymer. Of particular significance was the choice of polymer compounds to use, as the typical glass-reinforced nylon is not rigid enough to keep a good optics zero. By opting for a much more rigid material (albeit a much more expensive one), Flux was able to remove the metal reinforcing in the chassis, lightening the system while still retaining an optics mount stable enough to hold zero under adverse conditions. The spare magazine system was also significantly improved in the Raider, and an ambidextrous manual safety added.
Today, Flux has partnered with SIG to produce the P320 Flux Legion. I am excited to see where Flux and SIG take the design from here!
[Published a day later, here’s Ian’s range trip with the P320 Flux Legion Raider.]
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