Quick Posts, Part 2
Are you talking about the Steyr-Hahn or the Mauser C-96?
Nevermind, it’s the C-96.. They Steyr-Hahn 1912 was also a stripper clip auto..
That would be the Calico 950 - and the movie would be I Come In Peace
Oops. Maybe not…
There is another part where she goofs. She wrote, “In fact, high-capacity mags put a predator like Loughner at a disadvantage because they are so long, unwieldy and difficult to conceal.”
That’s true for single stack mags like the .45 (I have a 15 round mag that sticks out waaaay too far to be concealable), but double stack mags like that used in AZ, especially for the .9mm, are not too unwieldly or too long.
She should know better.C’mon, it’s the c-96 otherwise known as the broom handle mauser.
Posted by Steve_in_CA
02/03/2011 at 09:33 AM
Of course it’s the old broom handle mauser. This one was a no-brainer for my gun savvy readers. The movie gun that was made from it was Han Solo’s blaster; the props department hung the flash hider from an M1 carbine off the end of the barrel and screwed one of those $3 Norinco scopes to the top.
McGoo, the Calico used an interesting spiral magazine, a bit like the rotary magazines like the Ruger 10-22, the Savage 99, or the M1941 Johnson rifles, but in a spiral instead of a single loop. This gives it amazing capacity with short and thin cartridges (.22LR - 100 shots, 9mm Luger - 50 shots). While the Calico guns were naturally spacey, futuristic sci-fi looking pieces, they could not be loaded via a stripper clip. A very similar helical magazine is used for the rotating cannon on the A-10 Warthog aircraft. The Calicos used the same kind of roller block breech lock that the H&K MP5 machine pistol uses, which limits them to pistol strength cartridges. Had they used a rotating bolt like the BAR or the M1941, the design could have been enlarged to allow full power rifle cartridges, but with 50 rounds of .308 on a top mounted magazine that would have made for a very top heavy wobbly rifle.
Doc DETH -
SUPERB!! I absolutely love it when I get schooled on gun stuff, because that lets me learn something new.
You are 100% correct that the Steyr-Hahn M1912 was a fixed magazine pistol that could ONLY be loaded via stripper clips (or 1 round at a time manually)
Steyr Model 1911 / Model 1912 pistols use integral, non-detachable single stack magazines in the grip, which are loaded from stripper clips through the loading / ejection window on the top of the slide.
It was an offshoot of an even earlier pistol, the Roth M1907, which ALSO used the fixed magazine/stripper clip loading method. AND it was the very first self-loading pistol adopted by any military anywhere. By all rights it should be much more famous than it is.
Another one on the list is the old “backwards gun”, the Steyr Mannlicher M1894.
The very first self-loading pistol, the Schonberger-Lauman 1892 used a very Mauser-ish clip, but from what I can tell, it may have been loaded from the side, by opening a side plate. Very strange pistol. Wiki has the only internal drawing, and it shows the clip residing inside the pistol, so it’s not a stripper clip design; more likely the empty clip was ejected after the last shot, like on the M1 Garand rifle.
So Drew was WRONG. There were FOUR pistols that used this design. [but only 1 that got used in movies?] Perhaps there are more? If I were going to do the research, I’d look to Germany/Austria (and then to copycat France) at the turn of the 20th century. This seems to be their idea ... probably influenced by their boy Paul Mauser, who had such success with his M95 and M98 rifles, which of course used the same loading system. And while it does save money compared to building extra magazines, the idea seems to have sputtered out by the beginning of WWI. I’d bet durability or maintenance issues outweighed the cost savings.
I should have known better than to say “there was only one”. ANY new idea in the firearms world gets copied and modified by everyone, trying to find a better version. But I don’t think this idea was ever big enough to become anything close to universal. It would make for a cool, really esoteric collection if it weren’t for the fact that broom handles are already eagerly sought by collectors.
Another oddball pistol I ran across is the Webley-Mars Automatic. Terrible ergonomics doomed this one to an early death, but it was one seriously powerful pistol. Available in 8.5mm, 9mm, and .45, it was the .32 Magnum, .357 Magnum, and .44 Magnum of it’s day, which was 1897, which predates Elmer Keith by an entire generation. Horry Clap!
Corsair - you can get 30 and 40 round magazines for Glocks. They do stick out about 10” and mess with both concealability and balance. I don’t think they’re worth it since one 30 round mag takes just as long to load as two 15 round mags.
Yes, Drew! I re-read the quiz question and realized the Calico was not appropriate. I have a few hours of trigger time with one: fun, but a pain to load, and susceptible to jamming and misfires.
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