For almost the entirety of the 19th century, “repeating handgun” effectively meant “revolver.” Toward the close of that era, however, various mechanisms were employed to harness the energy of a fired cartridge to eject the spent case and feed a new one into the chamber in its place.
Considering that the single most prolific originator of those mechanisms was one John Moses Browning, a citizen of the United States, it’s a matter of high irony that the U.S. domestic handgun market largely remained revolver country until well into the 1980s, nearly a hundred years after Browning ironed out his basic self-loader mechanisms.
A large part of the reluctance of domestic shooters to wholeheartedly embrace the semiauto was because of Browning’s most iconic design, the M1911 (known in its civilian guise as the…
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RECOIL Presents: Concealment (Digital) - 1 Issue, Concealment #34 2023