A firearms expert “traces the history of the ‘one hand gun’ from its 14th century origins … surveying changing technology, techniques, and design” (Midwest Book Review).

Ideally suited for both attack and self-defense, handguns have gotten smaller and deadlier. But the earliest pistols had a tendency to misfire. This was cured by the cap-lock, which proved a massive success in the American Civil War, with hundreds of thousands of cap-lock revolvers used on each side. Self-contained metal-case cartridges were to bring a fundamental change to handgun design: not only by allowing the introduction of revolvers that ejected automatically or were easily reloaded, but also by paving the way for the automatic pistol. World War I provided the handgun with a proving ground. At the end of the hostilities, with so much surplus weaponry, work on the handgun could have ceased; instead, a new developmental phase was begun by the nations that had emerged from the crumbling Imperial empires. During World War II, the efficiency of well-established designs was confirmed and new designs, such as the Walther P. 38, showed their potential. The emergence of the submachine-gun in 1945 reduced the status of the handgun—but only temporarily. The need for efficient self-defense shows no signs of lessening; and the rise in shooting for sport, particularly with the revolver, has sharpened the quest for efficiency.

The never-ending search for advanced production techniques shows that the handgun has as much a future in the twenty-first century as it had in the heyday of the Wild West, or in the trenches of Passchendaele.

© 2008 Frontline Books (Ebook): 9781783469741

Release date

Ebook: June 30, 2008