Category Archives: Historical

Folks had been playing with handgun-mounted optics in competition since the late 1960s, if not earlier. The trick was finding a way to keep an optic securely mounted to a centerfire pistol, all while hoping that the optic didn’t self-destruct first. The first major success came in 1980 when Joe Pascarella used red-dot optics toContinue reading “Rise of the Red Dot in Competition Handguns”

Is there anything the Colt Model M1911 can’t do?  I certainly don’t think so.  I’m not the only one either.  Long before the idea of the PDW ( personal defense weapon) existed for military and VIP protection, there were some men who felt that a full auto M1911 would be just the ticket.   Sad toContinue reading “Lebman’s “BabyMachinegun” Full Auto M1911s”

In the past couple of days I’ve discussed projectiles that look like screwdriver bits and one that looks like a slotted screw. Today, we’re going to discuss some projectiles that literally incorporated screws! The first to appear was the “Ultra Shock”, designed by Alex Goodrich. It was meant to give hard cover penetration, while alsoContinue reading “Ultra Shock and Omni Shock Data Dump”

In my previous article on custom competition handguns, I mentioned previous attempts to make widebody M1911 that predated the Para-Ordnance, Caspian, and STI. The following is one of Jim Boland’s modified frames for Astra A80 magazines. The Spanish pistol was a rough clone of a SIG-Sauer, available as a 15-rd .38 Super. The styling detailsContinue reading “Early/Mid-1980s Widebody M1911 Frame Prototypes”

Interview taken from “Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshall” by Stuart N. Lake “I was a fair hand with pistol, rifle, or shotgun, but I learned more about gunfighting from Tom Speer’s cronies during the summer of ’71 than I had dreamed was in the book. Those old-timers took their gunplay seriously, which was natural under theContinue reading “WYATT EARP ON SHOOTING VS. GUNFIGHTING”