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back to the Peking Yona show, Carl Dollas back. They
don't Carl.
Speaker 2: Doing great, Pete, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, we seem to be a hadding a very
good response from your your talk at the OGC conference
this year that was turned into a video at slide presentation.
Have people been reaching out to you about that?
Speaker 2: They have been, you know, my love of visuals. So yeah,
it's been well received, and I've gotten some invites to
come meet with people and talk to So that's that's great,
that's the whole idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will link in the show notes to that,
because that is a good twenty less than twenty five
minutes on the power of friendship.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, let's just keep at that, all right.
Speaker 1: We didn't really get together today to talk about anything
too serious, so let's just let's just jump right in.
I think our I don't know, maybe people who've listened
to us can figure out our love of weapons before
oh let's say nineteen five, right, Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I I carry more modern stuff
and use more modern stuff, but the old stuff is
so cool that it's just there's a compulsion to collect
it and study it and talk about it and share
pictures and send links of them to Pete so that
he can buy them.
Speaker 1: Well. Also the the idea that just if you run
out of AMMO, if you brain somebody with even a
pocket pistol from that period, you know, you probably fracture
their skull because it's actually made with like real materials.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, the it's amazing the craftsmanship as well of
those older early pistols, and you know sometimes they have
what what we see as kind of cokammie operating systems
because it was all being kind of explored and figured
out in the old days, and there are standards like
the nineteen eleven is basically a design from nineteen oh
five from that, you know, the earliest big bore auto
that I mean, it's slightly different in the nineteen eleven
that John Moses Browning came up with, but he pretty
much had it down. He also had it down with
you know, his blowback operating mechanism for thirty two ACP
and three eighty and cartridges like that. But there were
a lot of interesting evolutions and explorations all over the world,
but especially in Europe with these very small, intricately made
pistols that are just fascinating to dig into.
Speaker 1: Well, let's be honest here, I think there's only one
that you ever you ever linked me to that I
actually went out and purchased. So, I mean it is
the caliber that we both of us have a U
I would say probably a fetish for Yeah, probably wouldn't
be that probably wouldn't be an unfair term to use.
But the piper Beard is in nineteen oh eight, having
in my hands right now, which is one of the
original pocket pistols with a low boar, with a low barrel,
low bore axis, low bore access. Yeah, let's start talking
about about thirty two ACP. I remember a buddy of
mine that I that I used to hang out with
every once in a while, and when I lived in
the Atlanta area. He was a fanatic for thirty two ACP.
He would try to get every like by every old
pistol and convince people to thread barrels for them, which
some they were like, I'm not writing a barrel on that.
There's no way I'm not going to be responsible for that. Yeah,
there's no meet But yeah, I remember him telling me
at one point He's like, it's really hard to figure
this out, he said, but I'd be willing to bet.
In the twentieth century, when it came to pistol calibers,
more people were killed by thirty two ACP than any
other caliber.
Speaker 2: That's probably that's in war not far off when you
take into account World War One, China, World War two,
Interwar period, Spanish Civil War, even thirty two ACP was
doing it. And handguns, especially at the time, handguns were
more of a well there it's like a personal defense
weapon and a symbol of rank. And then frankly, in
the old days, officers would you know, often be arming
themselves with non standard but compliant weapons as long as
it's in the cartridge that that is issued by your military,
it's a it's a good idea to just pick up
an extra pistol, or you know, the British, for example,
they would even buy their own like Lee Lee model
rifles that used the three zero three cartridge, for example,
but they'd get these more elaborate commercial versions that were
that were like military approved, and the same thing happened
with handguns. All kinds of crazy stuff. Smith and Wesson
made there is it the Model sixty one that was
a twenty two LR that was based on this mechanism.
You can see it in gosh, what's the movie The
New York shaves his head to go assassinate a taxi driver. Yeah,
taxi driver. He uses a Model sixty one pocket pistol.
That's that's based on this mechanism. Twenty two lr bor
right above, right above the trigger. That's as low as
you can get it. Super cool pistol. There's another one
that I I was scratching my head about this Pete
because when I was writing With the Crusaders, which is
my second novel, which takes place in and around the
Spanish Civil War, I was trying to think of what's
the deep cover pistol that my character is going to carry,
and it had to be thirty two ACP seven sixty
five Browning, but because that was what was available in
that theater. But I didn't want to just have a
Spanish pistol. I wanted one that was in these like
super tiny deep covers. So I considered the Bayard because
you can suppress those. And I kind of had this
thought like he could have all this gear, and then
I'm like, no, that's kind of that's kind of stretching
it as a deniable pistol that you get, you know,
for self defense when you're undercover as a journalist, Like
if you have a suppressor, like you're gonna be treated
as a spy and get executed. Like it's there's there's
no way, there's no way a journalist would have a
suppressed custom Suppress thirty two automatic. But what I did
was I got a Fromer Baby. I gave him a
Fromer Baby, which is an incredibly cool pistol. It's a
it but it's not a conventional blowback. It has a
very strange like multi reciprocating mechanism where like the bore,
the barrel and the kind of slide, but it's it's
a it's a tube that goes inside the receiver and
it has a basically a gas operation. It's this crazy
recoil and gas combo in shorthand that sharing it, you
are sharing it. That is a Fromer stop Baby in
seven sixty five, and it's a Hungarian pistol. Incredibly cool.
They didn't make a ton of them, but they made
a fair bit. I want to say they made around
twenty thousand of them. The full sized gun was actually
Hungarian military issue, and they also had a three eighty
version that was adopted by various militaries. I think it
was an option in the Austro Hungarian Empire as a
as a handgun, but you know Austro Hungarian Empire hodgepodge
of weapons because there's all these kind of subnations beneath it.
So you can find those fromer stops, like one in
good quality is not inexpensive, but it's less than a
thousand dollars. The babies are like they used to be
something that you know, pre inner at pre gun broker,
you could get them for three to four hundred dollars
in pretty decent condition. But ever since it's they're they're
very desirable and they go for a huge amounts of money.
Like I saw a beat one for five hundred and
it was gone instantly, So I'll get one someday. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's the thing is when you're trying to find these
I don't know if you've you've experienced this. When you
get the idea to look for something that is out
of the ordinary for some reason, it seems like seventy
five percent of the time, it's become popular in some
little circle, yes, and then you go to look for
it and it's like, oh so the price and a
year ago was five hundred dollars and now it's fifteen hundred.
Speaker 2: Dollars exactly, because there's also.
Speaker 1: Or ten years ago when you could get H and
K and like things in the P seven series between
twelve hundred and fifteen hundred dollars. Yeah, and now it's
become so popular because I guess maybe because you know,
people have figured out that Diehard is a Christmas movie.
Everyone has to have one that's hilarious.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, absolutely, it's the more that you see it
on TV and in shows or in anything else, you know,
the more desirable desirable it becomes. I just sent you
a picture in excuse me, a link to an image
in the private chat for you to take a look at.
This is the frommer Baby mechanism. It's broken down and
you can see how complicated it is, which is where
it got it's totally over designed reputation. It has a
basically a rotating bolt and then like I said, the
barrel and kind of like the chamber area which is
milled to be essentially the track that that bolt and
kind of charging handle type piece. You can understand where
they get a.
Speaker 1: Barrel in the chamber, the barrel in the chamber being
being the same piece is insane.
Speaker 2: It's insane. And it's based on a semi automatic rifle
that was developed in Hungary and used in military trials
in like nineteen oh seven or something like. It's very early,
maybe nineteen twelve. I think it might be around. It
might have been developed around the same time. But man,
like just the design and then the fact that the
receiver and tube and kind of that, the track for
the spring above it and operating mechanism reciprocation is all
milled out of one piece. It's it's bananas, but it's
really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the I think you know that when it comes
to thirty two ACP, one of my favorites is share
it right now. Oh yeah, the nineteen twenty two Browning FN.
Speaker 2: Which is based nineteen ten. It's just extendo. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know where there's a nineteen ten actually for sale
around here, and it's like, uh but the yeah, this
is I have one of these, and this thing shoots.
This may be the smoothest shooting pistol I have. There's
a target, just don't feel it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a target version that was developed up
by fn So it's manufactured by Fabric Nacional in Belgium,
and they made a target version of it that is
shockingly accurate. It has a fixed barrel and again, if
you're shooting thirty two or even three eighty, this is
a good sized gun. There you go, it's straight blowback.
So yes, it does suppress well. It was used by
all kinds of players as a suppressed pistol in World
War Two. Just a laser it's just a laser gun
because it's a real sized grip profile. But then the
bore is real low in your handle. There's a lot
of meat there. So it's not a heavy gun. This
is the way I describe it, Pete, and you probably agree.
It's not a heavy gun, but it's heavy enough that
it just soaks up that recoil. Not that there's a
lot of recoil in a thirty two, but it soaks
up the mechanisms cycling to where it's just incredibly smooth.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I mean, of course, when you're shooting thirty two,
you're you know, you're not going to get in, You're
not going to get an insane amount of recoil. But
the uh, yeah, this just there's no muzzle. There's no
muscleflip on this at all. You just keep it on
target all yep freaking.
Speaker 2: Day, which is the name of the game, and controlling
like you're shooting is the muzzle. The muzzle flip determines
like how your ability to repeat shots quickly on target?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's uh, thirty two is a lot of
fun to shoot. Mainly, I don't know why is it.
It seems like like I keep coming back to the
word fetish because once you start getting into it, and
why don't you talk a little litle bit about just
how odd this round is that it's.
Speaker 2: Roomless so or semi rimmed?
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I guess it's semi rimmed.
Speaker 2: So. The long and the short of it is, it's
one of the first semi automatic cartridges that were was
ever made, and I'm pretty comfortable saying it's the oldest
that's still around. There was some very odd or you know,
experimental ones from the like eighteen nineties, and people were
just kind of arriving at what the profile of the
you know, of what of a reliable auto loading cartridge
would be. You know, there's still there's still rimmed rifles
like there's seven sixt two by fifty four is used
in like the Dragon of SVD sniper rifle or you know,
designated marksman's rifle is probably more accurate. You know. It's
that old, you know, nineteenth century Russian cartridge that has
the big fat rim on it. It doesn't have this
rebated you know what we call rimless, where there's basically
a milled section for an extractor to grab onto. And
the thirty two ACP is kind of in between, where
it has a rim that's wider than the base of
the rest of the case, but it is rebated to
give the extractor something to grab. Interestingly, it's essentially the
same diameter as a three eighty ACP rim, which is
a rimless cartridge, you know, completely in line, which is
why conversions from thirty two to three eighty are so
easy because they essentially have the same rim diameter, and
so in an awful lot of guns, like my Bretta
eighty one, if I want to shoot three eighty in it,
you know, depending in the single stack, the three eighty
and the thirty two can load from the same magazines
regardless of what its markings are. It just won't match
up necessarily to the cartridge counter that's in the back
of the magazine, the little hole you know, that indicates
how loaded it is. You get an extra cartridge, typically
maybe two in a thirty two version over a three eighty,
just because again the case diameter is lower. But for
that conversion you change out the barrel and then maybe
the recoil spring, depending and then again maybe the magazine,
maybe not. But you don't have to mess with like
the extractor or the ejector or anything like that. They're
the same. And there's an interesting article from nineteen thirty
one in American Riflemen, and I learned about this from
Ed Harris, who I can circle back to shortly. Let's
circle back. It's called almost the Best Small Pistol by JVK.
Wagar And this guy is extolling the virtues of the
cult nineteen oh three in thirty two ACP. And he's
a He does a lot of backcountry, you know, hiking
and planking and ranching, and it's his favorite handgun because
of its accuracy, it's affordability. He talks about a lot
of stuff in this article that isn't the case for
us anymore in terms of like being able to like
order another another barrel and then like hand filing it
until it fits in your gun and stuff like that.
But he makes the case that the that the thirty
two ACP is more popular and more reliable than the
three eighty because of that big ram. And my guess
is that's more it's more based on the time that
it was written. I can see how that's feasible. I
can see that that's a feasible statement. Yeah, just an
incredible pistol. It's smooth, it has all the it has
all the features that we would see as Carrie became
like really took off in like the nineteen nineties, where
you want that kind of smooth, melted slide. It's like
one of the old indicators is like you could rub
the gun on your face without carving yourself up. Other
than like the sites right as a as a good
indicator that this is a good carry gun. That's not
going to be like.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, every like every time I neck every time
I neck myself on one of these pistols, is what
the sites?
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly exactly. So, yeah, very very nice pistol. And
it's also very cheap to reload it because it's incredibly efficient.
It requires a very small powder charge.
Speaker 1: So if you go forward a couple of years, last
one I pulled up wash was the Browning Oh also
showed the nineteen oh three cult there, but this one,
this is not the more popular version of this, but
this is the one that came out first in nineteen
twenty nine. Let me share this here, here we go. Yummy,
you recognize that pp Walter pp pp. Yeah, you don't
even need What most people don't realize about this is
unless you have absolute gorilla hands, you don't need a thumb.
You don't need the magazine plate with the thumb thumb
rest on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's more for like the PPE which is very tiny.
That the grip is shortened and the barrel and slider shortened.
Speaker 1: That's coming next. And this one doesn't even have one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Now those are incredible. Those are incredible pistols.
And the you know, the provenance is something that that
people enjoy, and that was the you know, it's funny
the first time, you know, back in the nineties when
I was getting into guns, it kind of blew my
mind that people wanted, you know, being young and you know,
raised by television and boomers. I was amazed that the
German marked ones would command a premium, and I just
kind of didn't get it. And later on I'm like, oh,
I get it. It's the provenance, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, also you don't know where it's
kind of hard. What's funny is on the Walter pps
and the ppks, you can actually tell if they went
by certain serial number ranges. You can tell whether they
went to like high command or not. Yes, yes, So
like this one on the this one on the screen,
has this PPK on the screen has the markings. You
could see it on the barrel and right below the
right below the ejection chamber.
Speaker 2: And the interesting thing is there was there were specific
variants for the NSDAP members where they would order I
want to say, based on their their district that they
would have. You know, the party was organized nationally and
then in these kind of subdistricts, and there are all
these interesting variants. I want to say, there's essay variants,
there's it's really interesting. And of course those things command
crazy premiums. If you can associate it with anyone, I
think is it is that is that one kind of
higher end guy where you got your bayard was that?
Is it historic investments or something like that. Legacy collectibles,
legacy collectibles, Yeah, the same concept, totally different words. Uh,
they had a whole bunch of those with Yeah, the
grips will have, you know, be a little more elaborate.
Some of them are engraved that it's it's it's really interesting.
Have you ever shot side by side a PPK in
three eighty versus a PPK and thirty two ACP?
Speaker 1: I have not, No, I've only ever shot thirty two.
Speaker 2: A CP three eighty is I don't want to say
borderline uncomfortable. Yeah, I'll say it's borderline uncomfortable for a
lot of people. And it's just really snappy, whereas the
thirty two ACP is like bam, And there isn't a
real there isn't a in real life power differential that
really justifies that. Like on paper, you can come up
with equations, you know, the muzzle energy equation is pretty simple.
It's it's weight times velocity essentially, right, and then you
get an energy number, which makes sense. But thirty two
ACP performs way above what on paper it seems like
it should, and some of that is probably related to
the the longness and aerodynamic nature of the projectile versus
like a three eighty, which is very blunt. A three
eighty is the same a cartridge. A three eighty cartridge
in the thirty two cartridge are exactly the same length
and the case. The cases are just as long, and
so you get this as a you know, narrower cartridge.
The thirty two has this taper to it, or you
can get kind of like flat nosed lead hardcast bullets,
which I advocate and I know you're an enjoyer of
as well, and three eighty all have that kind of
truncated short bullet extending out of the case, so they're
a little less aerodynamic. And when you look at penetration,
thirty two beats three eighty pretty much across the board.
It's and then even in those kind of you know,
remember in the nineties, they there would be all those
I can't think of the name of the authors that
that would do these, but they would constantly be doing
these comparisons of like shootings and comparing cartridges and coming
up with like one shot stop percentiles and things like that,
and the three was performed much more poorly than the
thirty two ACP, and that could be for a variety
of reasons. My theory is that thirty two was probably
more in the hands of someone who knew what they
were doing versus a three eighty, although there's exceptions to that.
I know people that would carry the absolute most powerful
cartridge and the smallest gun that they could get as
again almost as like a fetish, But typically thirty two
ACP is just easier to shoot because it's a milder,
milder recoil, muzzle, flip, et cetera. In the same size
of a gun, especially the tinier that you get, you know,
they become less controllable, even though we're not talking like
major energy, right. So it's interesting, but that's a consistent
story that you see even going back into like the
teens and twenties from the people talking about them being
used by police and military, is that the thirty two
was just as good. And I'll explain to you the
reason I got into this cartridge, and it actually wasn't
because of pocket pistols originally, even though I did have,
you know, I had a thirty two and three eighty
version of the celtechs that I was showing you before
we started recording. When I was looking at and thinking
conceptually of like deep cover espionage type weapons, I came
across this fellow named Ed Harris. Ed Harris worked for
I believe he worked for the NR. Yeah, he worked
for the NRA for some time doing all kinds of
interesting things. He did a lot of research and handloading
when he was with the NRA. He started doing He
got into thirty two ACP because there was a CIA
operative who approached then NRA headquarters in Washington, DC and
essentially said, I need your help because there are these
cartridges that we can't get anymore, and so would you
be able there we go, So would you be able
to handload a reliable cartridge that uses a hard cast
flatnose lead bullet and thirty two ACP that will run
in European pistols And he preferred the cult nineteen oh three,
but because he was operating in Central Europe, he wanted
to use the same kinds of guns that were being
used on the ground there. And again at that time,
even the police we're still carrying thirty two automatic a
lot of the time. It wasn't until like the seventies
and the eighties that they definitely moved the vast majority
over to nine millimeters. So Ed Harris started handloading and
experimenting with these cartridges so that he could equip these
guys with high performance thirty two ACP cartridges that had
been made previously. So like if you go back to
the twenties, thirties and forties, there were these you know,
lubed hard cast lead bullets that were being used and
people knew what they were talking about. But at you know,
modernization resulted in commercial support for those kinds of cartridges
kind of going away as people started getting into you know,
full bore stuff, et cetera in the civilian market in
the United States, and a lot of energy going in
that direct, so you could only really get ball ammo,
meaning you know, full metal jacket thirty two acp. And
as he was talking about this, my mind started wandering
because I was also aware of the fact that like
three eighty acp in a blowback pistol is a very
poor platform to use for suppressors. Same with nine x
eighteen macroovs. So even if you have a subsonic cartridge,
which they these are generally subsonic cartridges, these straight blowback
you know marginal in my terminology handgun cartridges. The problem is,
by the time you have a nine milimeter bore, like
you need a nine milimeter like a nine x nineteen
NATO sized suppressor just because the bore is so much larger,
and so you need a larger bore in the suppressor,
so you need a larger body to have volume. There's
all these equations for that tend to correspond to performance
in suppressors in shorthand there's other stuff that you can
do internally that really moves the needle, but there are
these basic equations. So by the time you get a
suppressor that will work with like a three eighty fairly reliably,
it's very large and you might as well have a
nine x nineteen shooting you know, one hundred and forty
seven grain subsonics. And then the other side of the
equation pete as you probably remember this is suppress twenty
two pistols like as like a spy gun. We're like
a huge topic of conversation and people talk, Yeah, you have.
Speaker 1: To use those real close because you remember, if anybody
knows anything about the history the mob it was twenty
two long rifle was a number one mob caliber because
they'd go right up on somebody, press the press the
barrel against their head, shoot and it had enough power
to penetrate, but often not enough power to exit, so
it just scrambled the brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the mob was using suppress twenty two's a
lot in the sixties and seventies, and that this was
the speculation was that this had been learned due to
like mob involvement and espionage type operations World War two,
you know, through Vietnam, and so if you know the
history of those relationships like drug trafficking, et cetera, like
that makes total sense that there would be this overlap.
So yeah, so that's that is a point blank kind
of operation, especially when even with like optimized like forty
grain subsonic out of a pistol Cartridge's stuff totally optimized
to just perform and have the lowest sound signature while
still having the maximum energy that you can get out
of a twenty two LR and a suppressed pistol, the
energy levels are quite quite weak. And I had a
friend who got shot in the face with a twenty two.
It actually was right between the eyes and it didn't
kill him. It entered and again bullets do weird things.
It essentially turned as it as it broke through the
skull and just like skipped along the edge of the
interior of the skull and almost basically went around his
brain and then stopped. And so he lived. He lived
for another like fifteen sixteen years. Died for other reasons.
But after that, I was just like, and that was
pretty much point blank range. It was within like a
foot and I was just, you know, as I was
thinking for writing my first book, Faction, I was like,
what did they actually use because you know, when you
when you look at the stories from Vietnam and stuff,
they would use those for like taking out geese and stuff.
But they even had because because the the Vietnamese would
use guard geese because geese are loud as hell, so
you know, as a little alarm on the edge of
like villages and encampments. So when you looked at what
they actually used for taking out dogs and sentries, they
used what they called the Hushpuppy, which is a Smith
and Wesson Model fifty nine that was modified to be
double stack and use express and everything like that. And
so I as I was thinking about that, I was like, well,
thirty two ACP is dead center midpoint energy wise between
a subsonic twenty two LR. Let's just if we round
up and say a thousand feet per second to just
barely be subsonic in a twenty two l R and
one thousand feet per second nine millimeter one hundred forty
seven cartridge, the thirty two ACP is dead center on
thousand feet per second, seventy three grain, seventy five grain,
right still subsonic. And so I was thinking about it,
and I was like, this is this is the only
way you can actually still have a small, you know,
simple technology suppressor that is actually going to be in
an effect of cartridge, because like if you look at
the penetration numbers and everything of thirty two ACP, you
can actually it'll actually do the thing that you're trying
to do one hundred percent reliably or ninety nine point
ninety five percent reliably. There's no one hundred percent versus
a twenty two without being this giant nine millimeter. So
that that's where I got into this. And as you know,
you go back in time and this this story just
plays out all throughout. Like the people that actually use
these guns, they need a gun and so having a
small pistol, you know, even as a deterrent, is better
than than not having one. It reduces your need to
actually shoot, you know, you know, from a defensive perspective,
theoretically in certain circumstances, or it's good enough, like you
just need to be trading shots to make problems go away,
or you need to have a pistol that just meets
these minimum standards of performance, and to make them more
reliable you have to jump up to a much larger
and much more powerful gun. When I say reliable, I
mean in terms of like effectiveness on target, because all
pistols are fairly marginal. Unless you're talking like forty four
magnum or something, then it has performed. It's equal to
rifles in many cases, so just harder to shoot than
a rifle because it's a handgun. So that is how
I kind of arrived at it. And like I said,
as you go back, that's why thirty two ACP lasted
for so long is because it just checked enough of
these boxes. It was effective enough to do the job
that it was intended to do for a very long time.
And tell, I think honestly, and tell, technology evolved enough
that it totally made sense to just pretty much move
other than like deep cover kind of guns, moving all
the way to nine millimeter for this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So two things. So if people want to get an idea.
On thirty two, Paul Harrell Rest in Peace probably one
of the greatest voices to. I mean, you could follow
us sleep listening to his videos. It's not that they're uninteresting,
it's just he had a voice that you wanted to
fall asleep to. Yeah, he has many videos on thirty two.
He's got his thirty two ACP and African Sealed Carrie
twenty two long Rifle twenty two twenty five versus thirty
twenty two versus twenty five versus thirty two ACP. He
has an AMMOS selection. He actually has a video with
plus P Buffalo Bore So that one's actually called will
the Guns Survive? So yeah, rest in Peace one of
the most heartbreaking farewell videos I've ever seen. Yeah, but yeah,
Paul Harrell a legend, A legend, all right, So let's
go back in time a little bit. I will I
will share this because there's pretty much no way where
we're going to be able to get away with talking
about pistols without bringing this one up. See that guy.
Speaker 2: Two world wars, right.
Speaker 1: Two world wars and what was the I actually heard
the number yesterday listening to listening to a video a
Milin just catching up on all the sag drama. Someone
was saying that when they tested this against the Barretta,
it was one in one hundred and thirty seven rounds
had a stove pipe or a missfire, some kind of
malfunction of sorts. It was like with the Bretta it
was like ten times that it was like one in
like sixteen hundred or even higher. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there, you know, you and I are of
close enough in age that we remember in the old
days when hallow point cartridges were coming online that the
every article that you read about a cool Carrie nineteen
eleven from some authors, they would they would get the
barrel throated, which means that they, you know, would modify
basically the chamber area a little bit to make sure
that it could feed hollow points and their and their profile.
So instead of this rounded nose bullet that the blunter,
you know, edges of hollow points were catching on the
on the feed ramp and just in general, especially as
these things got shot out. My dad was saying in
that when he was in the army in the you know,
late sixties, early seventies, every nineteen eleven he ever fired
was a rattle trap. It was just thirty years old
and shot to pieces. So yeah, they really started having
major issues with it. And even a high end, tight, accurate,
reliable nineteen eleven needs the loving care that often doesn't
happen in a military setting. So yeah, but still a great,
a great pistol, a great ergonomics.
Speaker 1: Well, the you know, one thing I will say is
that when you look at the progression of the nineteen eleven,
I mean you come all the way up till today
and wider trigger, more longer tail, different hammers, smaller have
to get it throated special magazines. I mean, okay, yeah,
if you you know, if that's what you want, because
I mean, anyone who's ever shot in nineteen eleven knows
it's an incredible experience. Oh yeah, the trigger is just
everything about it is beautiful. But you know he didn't
stop there when it came to designing pistol. No, oh no,
he came you know, it got to the point where
he was like, okay, yeah, we need to put this
out the Browning High Power or the P thirty five,
and there's I mean, I have one. There is nothing
that needs to be done to this.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, when FN reintroduced it
did an updated version of it in recent years, everybody
was like, what are you doing? Yeah, why would you
do that? Yeah, the I mean the only thing that
you really saw change. I mean, there were some minor changes,
but really grips were really the only real difference that
you saw.
Speaker 2: And I think that you know, yeah, the sites on
the original ones are small, and so sure it makes
sense to have higher profile sites, you know, maybe tritium dots,
et cetera, for you know, defect of use in low light.
And it's nice to have an ambidextrous thumb safety if
you're left handed. If you're not, it's not necessary or
even you know, beneficial at all. It really doesn't need
very much. It's it fits the hand marvelously, and it
took something like I'm comfortable saying so. Nineteen thirty five
is when this pistol was released. It was the first
double stack of any commercial success, the first double stack handgun.
Thirteen rounds of nine millimeter and it took a very
long time for it to be surpassed. And I'm comfortable
saying maybe it hasn't really been surpassed. It's just the
compromises that need to be in place for like safety, reliability, accuracy, maintenance,
et cetera. That whole conversation that there there are modernizations
that don't improve the operation of the gun for the
end user until like parts start breaking, you know, from heavywear.
It's or like in a you know, a military kind
of armory type setting, it does make more sense to
have certain kinds of evolutions, but very hard pistol to surpass.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And people a lot of people like to say,
you know, in this I guess the boomers really did
start this discussion, but I'm not going to blame it
on them. As the whole forty five versus nine millimeter,
you know, the nine millimeter will kill you, but the
forty five will destroy your soul.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the biggest problem with nine millimeter was
ball ammo because it high velocity and the ball ammo. Yeah,
I mean a handgun is a handgun too, Like the
the power of the forty five is overrated. I mean
it's a great cartridge, but it really was the development
of hollow points that where the energy of the nine
milimeter could really reliably be harnessed in transferring that energy
into a target. And again, the other value of the
nine millimeter is that it's lower recoil and flatter shooting,
and it's easier to carry more of them or to
fit in the gun that will still fit your hand
are a wider variety of hands, and so shooting someone
two or three times with a nine milimeter loaded with
hollow points that won't just zip right through is extremely
effective and easy to do versus like a forty five
kind of a setting. So it's it's really a lot
of it is this overlap of technology in theory and practice,
all kind of interacting with one another well to change
the way things you're done.
Speaker 1: And the whole thing with the forty five is, is
that okay carrying a nineteen eleven? Yeah, come on, it's
it's a really big carry gun. I know, people, I mean,
and sometimes I carry a really bit. I carry my
high power sometimes, so I'm not but to carry that
all the time. And yes, you also have this issue
of hollow points feeding. Now somebody who has a you
know somebody who has a thirty five hundred dollars nineteen
eleven screaming at me right now, I don't get any
malfunctions out of mind. Yeah, you got a thirty five
hundred dollars. I mean, you've basically done everything you could
to make this thing run when you could have bought
a glock thirty. Yeah, and yeah, it's the size of
a glock nineteen basically.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 1: And the arguments and arguments over as far as whether
you have whether you know, And I'm just saying glock
thirty just because I know it will piss a lot
of people off that I mentioned clock. But I mean,
you have a gun that's going to run all day
and another week. And you know famously, I know you
heard the story about the like it was an Arizona
I think he was an Arizona Highway patrol guy who
was like not he wasn't the biggest gun guy, but
they make them practice out there, and he had run
his like glock twenty two, like twelve thousand rounds without
cleaning it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So sure you can still carry forty You could
still carry forty five, but there are better weapons out there.
There are more modern weapon bins are going to be
better for concealment and more reliable.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. There's a I was trying to find it.
There was there's an image that I saw in a
gun magazine a long time ago, and I was just
searching for it and I can't find find it. But
someone laid a high power on top of either glock
seventeen or glock nineteen, and it showed how fat the
glock nineteen was in all of its dimensions versus the
sleekness of the high power, and that actually makes a
major difference when it comes to when it comes to
carryability and fitting in your hand. So this is this
is a pretty good comparison that I just put into
the chat. If you want to pull this image up.
Speaker 1: It's just blow this up first. Yeah, here we go.
Speaker 2: The single action and nature and all metal milled action
of the high power the P thirty five allows for
it to be a lot more compact. And again that
the glock is very economically made and that you just
have this pretty basic slide with as little, you know,
as few milling operations as possible. And so when you
look at that, if you've if you've never handled a
high power like it feels elegant in your hand. And
the magazine you.
Speaker 1: Said, I think you said one time to me that
it probably fits ninety fits ninety five percent of the
male hands in the world perfectly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much, Yeah, exactly exactly. It's it's just very
it's very nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can you can go out there and
get them for and not you can get one used,
not more expensive than you can get you know, the
newer glocks blocks with all the you know, like mos
clock or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly not as much.
Speaker 1: But so let me, uh, since we're talking about nine millimeters,
let me share this one. See what you have to say.
Speaker 2: Oh, po eight luger, I have a question for you.
I think you have one.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, uh, that is a that is a grip
angle that works wonderfully for one hand shooting and not
two hand shooting, right, correct.
Speaker 1: I don't for the sake of my for any of
my channels, I will not say why. I believe that
you know, certain people liked it for one handed shooting. Yes,
that's fair and probably aiming, probably aiming in a downward direction.
Speaker 2: Well, so here's the thing though, is is in In
ye olden days, shooting handguns with two hands was just
not done. It was the one hand gun and all
there's exceptions. So the great John Fitzgerald of Colt Handgun Company,
he was He was the guy who came up with
the FITS revolver concept, which I advocate and think is
very cool. But he actually wrote in a book called Shooting,
which he authored, I want to say in the twenties
he talked about shooting with two hands and the what
Sykes and Fairbairn who were working for that, they essentially
they did all the combat training for that for the
Britgin Soe Special Operations Executive. They had come out of
the Shanghai Municipal Police and had developed some two handed
some limited two handed shooting techniques for longer distances, et cetera.
But otherwise it was done one handed and the sweep
that angle of the luger is beautiful for one handed shooting,
but what happens is you kind of break the wrist
and it makes it a very natural point of aim.
But over time it like you can't shoot super high
volumes because the musculature of the wrist is less engaged
versus like a nineteen eleven grip angle is or a
glock or something like that. The steeper or I should say,
the more vertical grip angles suit themselves really well to
like a support hand. I had a styre. Uh, I
think it was a I had a forty caliber version
of it because it was hey, it was the aughts,
or maybe yeah, I think I bought it in the
aughts and forty was all their age, and you had
magazine capacity limitations and stuff. So yeah, so I'll get
a you know, ten rounds of forty instead of ten
rounds a nine millimeter and it shot beautifully, but it
had a similar steep grip angle, and it wasn't great
for two handed shooting, but it was great for one
handed shooting. And you know, that was the style of
the early twentieth century, like even the the Cult single
action Army and the you know Cult eighteen sixties, you know,
all those those old pistols with these kind of crazy
handles that they were designed for shooting with one hand.
And then the Coult single action Army had that angle
because your thumb cocking and so the design is that
you fire it naturally kind of flips in your wrist.
You open up your thumb, you know, and you cock
with your thumb because you're on a horse and your
left hand is holding reins or something like that. And
so you know, it was that's where the kind of
handgun shooting concept came from. Like it was very horseback oriented,
or you would just be using one hand. So when
you look at like bullseye shooting and target shooting and
military shooting really until you know, around Vietnam, it's all
one handed shooting. Actually, I should say post Vietnam. It
was like that modern technique of the pistol that got
developed in the competitive shooting organizations in competition circuits in
Californi or any by guys like Jeff Cooper and these
other pistolos. It. You know, there there were specialty guys
talking about shooting with two hands or for like really
long distance shooting with two hands. Otherwise it was a
one handed thing, which is where you get that kind
of wacky grip angle.
Speaker 1: Let's go, I got two more to ship, two more
to share with you, and and we'll get out of here,
all right.
Speaker 2: So, and I have one last thought on cartridges that
I want to call out that we can we can
visit after we look at these other ones.
Speaker 1: All right, the natural progression, yes.
Speaker 2: Wonderful mechanism. So the beretta uses the same operating mechanism.
It's like a tilting lock.
Speaker 1: So Walter P. Thirty eight form.
Speaker 2: Yeah, beautiful, beautiful handgun, sinister looking very modern and uh yeah,
great pistol. The post war like p ones and P
four's are nice. I really like that. The is it
the K there's like a P thirty eight K where
the front site is mounted to the band on the
front of the slide and then the barrels bob to
just in front of the slide. That is an extremely
cool pistol. Feels wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these were these were steel, the p the p
ones were I think they were.
Speaker 2: Illumined aluminum frames allainum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're but they're great too. And these again
these in the hand or yeah, I mean just they
feel like they belong there. And actually this is one
that is more apt to shooting with two hens because
you just look at the look at the grip angle
on it.
Speaker 2: Yes, one hundred percent. And the really interesting things for
me again, I love espionage type weapons and stuff, and
that the Germans were making suppressed versions of the P
thirty eight pretty much right away. A lot of them
had like massive, massive cans on them because they they
were pretty basic technology. They weren't doing like really shaped
baffles like you would get in like a rifle cartridge.
There was some degree of trying with that. But then
they'd also have to like bleed off the energy because
it's a supersonic round, and so then they would have
specialty subsonic cartridges like way before anyone else was doing it.
Very very cool. And then the West Germans were doing
the same thing because again they had the they had
their previous iterations to go on. So you'll see a
bunch of in like suppress or history books and things
of that nature, you'll see some really cool P thirty
eight and descended versions with cans. And again they run
well even despite these giant cans, because the operating system
is different than like the browning tilting barrel lock. You know,
So the browning mechanism, as the round fires and the
slide starts moving, starts reciprocating, it disengages those locking lugs
and the barrel tilts up. There's a little link that
sort of cams and that means that that gun is
more sensitive to the weight of a suppressor, which is
why you have this device that wasn't invented until I
think the late mid to late eighties that essentially has
a spring in it that helps counteract some of the
issues with the weight of the suppressor on the gun.
And so that's why you have more complicated suppressor that'll
run on like a tilting lock barrel. And the reason
the P thirty eights and burrettas were so popular in
espionage was because they don't require that because their barrel
doesn't doesn't tilt. It stays closer to like it's not
a fixed barrel, but it's closer to that where the
locking mechanism is elsewhere instead of this, instead of the
barrel tilting. So very interesting tidbit I thought I would share.
Speaker 1: I will warrant anyone who wants to get one finds
a P thirty eight doesn't even depend on condition before
you start shooting. It may take it to a gunsmith
who knows what they're doing. The top covers on those
have a habit of popping off.
Speaker 2: You should do that with any used pistol. You're probably
going to want to change out all the springs and
it's not like a glock where any retard like me
you can disassemble them really easily with a guy that
you find online. Like, you need to be very careful
about what you're doing, uh for changing out you know,
like firing pin springs and you know, recoil springs pretty straightforward,
but like the main spring and all those things that
those are where parts, and especially in these older guns,
like there's a lot of stuff that can get worn
out and just break really easily, and you don't want
to do that, so good call out, Pete.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna jump. I'm gonna piss people off
right now and just jump over a whole bunch of guns.
But I said we could keep it in an hour,
and I'm just going to jump to like my you know,
it might be my favorite modern gun, but I know
this will jumping over some pistols will piss people off.
Speaker 2: Mmm mm usp. That's a USP, right, yeah, Okay. I
like usps a lot. They're great guns. There's a they
have an esthetic, they run really well, they're accurate. You
can have some with amazing triggers. It's a it's a
exposed hammer, non striker fired gun, which tends, in my experience,
tends to correlate to a more enjoyable shooting experience in
terms of a trigger pull and the like. Yeah. I
like usps a lot. In fact, you know, you know
that monstrosity, the Mark twenty three forty five that.
Speaker 1: Was don't say bad thing. Don't say bad things about
the Mark twenty three.
Speaker 2: Now I like the Mark twenty three, but damn is
that thing huge. You can get a forty five acp
USP with a thread at barrel and it will do
what you need to do, maybe not lock the slide,
which is a feature I like, but but it'll do
everything else and it's very enjoyable experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The one word that is constantly used if you
if you go down like a YouTube rabbit hole of
USP videos, especially older ones, is over built. Yes, yeah,
it's uh, you have a you have a polymer frame,
polymer frame. But when it comes to the slide, the
mechan I mean, there's there's a reason these are made
to basically last. Is a polymer pistol that'll last one
hundred years or two hundred years if you just take
care of it. I mean, I just don't see, I
don't see how you break these.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, I don't know hk's uh manufacturing process,
but I believe that the slides on the USBs are
fully milled out. SIG does this interesting thing where they
essentially have three separate components. They have the top and
then the two sides of the slide that are machined,
and then they're welded together in a fixture and then
have a final like milling and then polishing. And they
do that because it's very cheap to do like very
simple milling processes and then weld them together that way.
I'm not aware of it ever having been an issue
in terms of like the robustness of when I'm talking
about six, I'm talking about like this is like the
two twenty, the two twenty five, the two twenty six,
the two twenty eight, twenty nine, that generation not not
the shoot your dick off three twenty, but the the
HK USP slides are beautifully milled. And again it's it's
not a like high polish blued pistol, but it's shockingly
nice for that matt finish utilitarian look. It's they're just gorgeous.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just know that it was built for
the military. Oh yeah, any military in the world can
use this and go to war with it, and it's
going to stand up.
Speaker 2: A military with a budget.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, that eliminates a bunch of them.
Speaker 2: But with the either less corrupt or more corrupt, you know,
procurement system than other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: No ship, All right, man, what did you what did
you want to end up talking about? You want to
talk about cases? You want to talk about? What do
you want to talk about?
Speaker 2: So we were talking about like hollow points and hard
nosed lead and you know, FMJ ball Ammo and I
just want to point this out. So we were talking
about how nine millimeter was made relevant by Holow points,
and I stand by that. I think that if you're
shooting a nine milimeter as a defensive and carrying it
as a defensive weapon or it's your your house gun
or whatever, you should be using the highest quality Holow
point ammunition that you can get. Like one good guideline.
You know that it's kind of fits into like boomer advice,
like Masad Aube type stuff. Find out what your local
police use and just buy that. It isn't like you
get an out because of that. It's just a good
reference point for quality quality ammunition that that should run well.
If it runs well in your gun, keep it. If
it doesn't run well in your gun, find something else
that's high quality that'll work. Thirty two ACP does not
have the energy to be wasting by using a Holow
point because it's not going to overpenetrate the way that
like a nine millimeter ball cartridge will. It still has
a fair amount of penetration. Like the cartridge that I
recommended to Pete that I know that he carries in
his P thirty two and that I have in my
P thirty two and my eighty one is a buffalo bore,
hard cast, flatnose lead seventy five grain bullet. And the
idea here is that this cartridge is too marginal to
be wasting penetration. You need that penetration for the bullet
to do the thing. It needs to be able to
penetrate bone, it needs to be able to penetrate clothing
and flesh. So when you see these videos of people
firing into this gelatin and they have this FBI like
optimal you know optimal math of you want it to
penetrate like this much. The idea is that when the
FBI was developing that they were using like nine millimeter
and ten millimeter, the ball ammo for those things would
just zip right through. So the idea behind having the
hollow points in that context is so that they open up.
And yes, it does more damage and it creates a
permanent wound cavity and all that, and then it stops
without just zipping right through and leaving no wound cavity,
you don't have the benefit of all that extra energy
in a thirty two ACP. You want it to penetrate
three eighty. Is the same way. If you look at
the performance of the hollow points in these cartridges, they
they just don't penetrate adequately and there's often feeding issues.
And so I would say use something that runs, use
something that the flatter nose rounds will do more damage.
And the reason I like hard flat nose lead is
that it's better than ball ammo in that you tend
to get slightly higher velocities versus an equivalent weight for
a full metal jacket cartridge because of the drag that
gets imparted from the being metal versus lubricated lead. It
does require a little more cleaning a little more fastidiousness.
Usually you can use a bore cleaning solvent and just
slop it in there and let it hang out for
a while before you brush it out with like a
brass brush or something. But don't waste your time with
hollow points in thirty two and three eighty. It's a
total waste of time. Good high quality ammunition at the
that will run in your gun at those significant velocities.
And finally, the European pressure cartridges tend to work better
than American or European speck So that means a typically
a seventy three grain bullet, it's going to be nine
hundred to nine hundred and fifty fps in these like
three to four inch length barrels versus the like an
American sixty grain jacketed hollow point or a seventy one
grain FMJ. It's going to be like eight hundred and
fifty to nine hundred feet per second, just not enough
and often not enough recoil impulse to operate like real guns.
Maybe not, Maybe it'll work in your gun, that's great,
Like the sea camps were optimized for these. You know,
I think it's the silver tip hollow points, But you
just don't have the energy in those little tiny guns
to be wasting it trying to get these things to
open up, and if they do open up, they don't
penetrate enough. So I just thought I would share that.
Good luck finding AMMO for thirty two a cp uh.
It's a good opportunity become a fan of handloading so
that you can shoot it a lot like me.
Speaker 1: All right, meh, I appreciate it. It's always fun to
do some gun autism.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely, thanks, great idea for a show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I also have to shout out your appearances on
with Jay Burden on Jay Burden Show talking about guns.
He didn't give me the idea because you know, you
and I have talked about guns before, but he sort
of gave me the idea. So yes, yes, mister Burden,
you get a shout out here for for this. G
your plugs.
Speaker 2: Thanks Pete Carl Doll dot substack dot com. That's k
A R L d a h L dot substack dot com.
That's where I do my my longer form effort posting.
I also post on the platform stupidly renamed X, which
is how I'm always going to refer to it, not
only because it's a great way to put it. But
our dear departed friend z Man coined that phrase, and
so and I hate that platform with a passion, even
though I'm an Internet addict, so I will use that terminology.
I have two books out, both available on Amazon. First
one is called Faction. The second is Faction with the Crusaders.
Faction with the Crusaders is a nationalist, sympathetic fictional perspective
on the Spanish Civil War with lots of fun gun autism,
but only when it's in service to the story. So
thanks for having me, Pete, and happy Friday.
Speaker 1: Happy Friday, and we will be talking soon, all right,
take care, Thanks Pete.