Category: All About Guns

Hollywood would have us think that back in the “Wild West” every man went about his daily affairs packing a big sixgun in a leather holster on his belt. NOT! Drovers, Frontiersmen and Indian Scouts likely did, and of course Texas Rangers and all sorts of other lawmen certainly carried handguns openly.

Not so town and city dwellers. Pocket pistols were a hot item in the Old West. Town dwellers and well dressed travelers also packed iron, at first actually in pockets. As the trend progressed to bigger and more powerful they were often concealed in a holster under a coat. Consider this; Colt and S&W alone produced well over a million concealment-intended handguns between 1848 and 1900. That’s amazing considering the population of the United States in that era.

Concealable handguns were so hot an item that it’s a fact when Sam Colt got his firearms-manufacturing business up and running the second time in the late 1840s, one of his first concerns was coming up with good “pocket pistols.” That was in 1848 and those little babies were only .31 caliber, and five-shooters to boot. Collectors even call them Baby Dragoons, after the huge 4-pound horse-carried Colt Dragoon revolvers they were based upon. Even by modern standards a Baby Dragoon was light at only 22 ounces with a 4″ barrel.

The Bad News

That was the good news. The bad news was they were punch handicapped. With really hot loads, they were popping to break 700 fps with a 48-grain round ball. In foot-pounds of energy that’s sort of in-between a .22 Short and .22 Long. After those five pipsqueak charges were fired it would take an experienced shooter about 10 minutes to get them up and running again. The gun had to be broken into three pieces for reloading. I doubt if many wayfarers gave up their Bowie knives upon buying a Baby Dragoon.

But get this — Sam Colt sold 15,000 of those little .31s in only a year or so and then upgraded to a Model 1849. It used the same frame but with a loading lever beneath the barrel. Reload time was cut at least in half. Hear this too. The Colt factory turned out more than 325,000 of them before production ceased in 1873. That’s 24 years. It took Colt 68 years and several government contracts to produce 357,000 Colt Peacemakers. Who says people in the old days didn’t carry concealed?

Those gun-toters weren’t stupid either. They knew the little .31s were puny. Using the rebated cylinder design Colt eventually put five-shot .36 caliber cylinders on the little Model 1849 frame and called them Model 1862s. (Collectors named them Pocket Navy and Pocket Police depending on their exact configuration.) Those would push an 80-grain round ball all the way to 850 fps. That brought pocket pistol power up to .32 ACP ballistics. Things were humming then.

Metallic Magic

Now think in terms of metallic cartridges. S&W actually got their business up and rolling in the 1850s and 1860s with concealed-carry-type handguns. This was their No. 1, which actually was the introductory vehicle for the .22 Short. Between 1857 and 1881 they sold over a quarter million of those itsy-bitsy little SAs.

Today’s cowboy-action shooters would be perfectly happy with those puny popguns. Heck they even try to make their big .45s recoil like .22 Shorts. But, back in those days when you didn’t smoke up your assailant’s sorry butt with the handgun, a knife fight likely commenced. People really wanted more power from their CCW guns.

For that reason, in 1876 S&W introduced the .38 S&W cartridge for pocket handguns and the revolver introduced along with it has always been known as the Baby Russian. (Gun people of the late 1800s sure liked that “baby” moniker.) It was so called because the design was scaled down from large frame revolvers the company was making for the Russian Government. A year later Colt came up with their idea of a concealed carry, cartridge firing handgun and this one was even DA! The Colt Model 1877DA was made in .38 Colt and .41 Colt calibers. Somehow they then became dubbed “Lightning” and “Thunderer” respectively.

None of these new concealed weapon calibers struck like lightning. The .38 S&W had loads with 145- to 150-grain bullets over 14 or 15 grains of black powder, while the .38 Colt load used 150-grain bullets over a whopping 19 grains of the same. The .41 Colt was loaded with 200-grain bullets and about 21 grains of black powder. None of these loads could have given over 750 fps, even from a long barreled revolver. Still they were better than a .22 Short. At last people started leaving the Bowie knives at home.

Little Big Guns

Another trend in CCWs got started circa the late 1870s and early 1880s. That was when gun-toters began packing short-barreled versions of big revolvers in holsters under their coats, instead of a diminutive one in their pocket. A for instance would be the so-called Colt SAA Sheriff’s Model with 3″ barrel and no ejector rod or housing. By this time S&W was also making its SA New Model No. 3 with short barrels, and their Model 1881DA was simply the No. 3 adapted to a DA trigger mechanism. It was common with 4″ barrel.

Why the change about that time? Because trouser belts for men became common. Now, I’m no expert on Old West clothing, but my seamstress wife does have some antique pattern catalogs from that era showing men’s pants starting to have belt loops Hence there was finally something to hitch a revolver holster onto without giving obvious notice the wearer was packing iron.

Old West gunmen were also known to have gunsmiths aid them in their quest for concealable handguns, and also to find innovative ways to pack them. For instance around 1881 El Paso City Marshall Dallas Stoudenmire was known to pack a Colt Richards Conversion .44 with its barrel shortened from 8″ to only 3″. Then he had a special leather-lined pocket built into his trousers to house it. By the 1890s shoulder holsters were common. Reformed outlaw John Wesley Hardin was packing either or both a Colt Lightning and S&W Model 1881DA in
such a rig when he was gunned down in an El Paso saloon.

Other Ideas

Some companies got downright brilliant about concealed-carry and self-defense handguns. Merwin & Hulbert for instance offered a Pocket Army .44. It was a normal-sized sixgun and much too large to carry in a pocket. But, they offered the option of two pre-fitted barrels. One was 7″ long and the other 3.5″. They could be switched in a matter of seconds. The idea was for the long barrel to be worn openly on the trail, and then the short one replaced for concealed carry. Then M&H took matters one step further. The revolver’s butt came to a point called the “skullcrusher” for when altercations became more intimate. Wouldn’t lawyers have a field day with that now?

Over the years I’ve managed to add an assortment of Old West concealed carry weapons to my shooting collection of handguns. A Baby Dragoon .31 and both versions of Model 1862 .36s are from Colt’s second generation of cap & ball revolver production of the late 1970s and early 1980s. There’s also an S&W Model 1881DA .44 Russian, a Merwin & Hulbert Pocket Army, and a Colt SAA Sheriff’s Model. Both of those are .44-40s. Some years back I even went to the trouble of having Wisconsin gunsmith Kenny Howell build me a facsimile Richards
Conversion .44 with snubbed-off barrel similar to Dallas Stoudenmire’s favored concealed sixgun. It’s in the original .44 Colt caliber.

The little S&W No. 1s and Baby Russians have eluded me so far but there is a “Baby” Merwin & Hulbert .38 in my collection that is of similar size and power to the S&W Baby Russian. Also, about this time someone is likely thinking, “What about derringers? The dummy is forgetting them.” No I’m not. I’ve just never been interested in them, and won’t blow smoke up your wazoo and say someday I’ll do an article covering derringers. Somebody else can do that. This is a revolver article.

Duke’s Opinion

So here’s my take on Old West concealed-carry handguns. The little .31 caliber Colts were better than nothing, but if you had to take on someone with one you better hope they weren’t wearing a lot of clothing or a heavy leather vest. I shot mine into a baffle box and it went through two 7/8″ pine boards and lodged in the third. I think it was these pipsqueaks that gave rise to the legends
of pocket bibles or a sheriff’s badge stopping a bullet. Ditto in spades for the S&W No. 1 .22 Short.

The S&W Baby Russian and M&H .38s were a great step up. They were still compact enough to actually be pocket-carried, and yet have a modicum of pistol power. There are plenty of accounts about wounds from guns like that causing death from infection days or weeks after a gunfight. Unfortunately, often it was the bad guy that expired weeks later while the good guy was beaten or knifed to death at the scene. They weren’t stoppers.

That leaves us with the short-barreled, big-bore revolvers meant to be holster-carried. Actually they were pretty good self-defense handguns. The .44 Russian would have had a 246- to 255-grain bullet over 23 grains of black powder. From a 3″ or 4″ barrel that load gives 725 to 750 fps. The .44-40 load would have a 200- grain bullet over a full 40-grain charge. It was snorty! Even from a 3″ or 3.5″ barrel it will break 800 fps. If none of that impresses you “modern” guys then just think again. In terms of muzzle energy those ballistics pretty much equal a .45 ACP from one of the compact Model 1911s.

Personally, if I had been walking the streets of a tough town in the 1880s, and had my choice of what to carry concealed, it would be a toss up between the S&W Model 1881DA .44 Russian, or the Merwin & Hulbert .44-40. The Colt Sheriff’s Model .44-40 is attractive but it would be my third choice just because of the slow reload factor. Both the S&W and M&H offer simultaneous cartridge extraction.

And then I would have slipped an S&W or M&H “Baby” .38 in a pocket for backup — and had a knife in my boot too. And if you were a bad guy after me then, you might keep in mind I might have a good friend nearby equally ready. Like Clint Smith says, “Always cheat, always win.”

There’s no debating that the FN Browning/Saive 9mm “Hi-Power” pistol — 1935 — is iconic. It was manufactured and used by both Axis and Allied powers during WWII and has seen military and law-enforcement use in over 90 countries around the globe. The Hi-Power has also been cloned by numerous manufacturers worldwide, some licensed by FN, some not. One of the rarer and more desirable of these clones was the “Detective” Hi-Power, a short-slide variant produced by Fabricaciones Militares of Argentina. Luckily, the short-barreled Hi-Power has been resurrected by Girsan of Turkey as the MC P35 PI — “Private Investigator” — which is being imported into the U.S. by EAA.

FM produced “Detective” Hi-Power pistols and conversion kits you could install on standard Hi-Power frames. Both pistols and kits and their advertisements in Shotgun News disappeared in the early 2000s. Occasionally, there’s a Detective for sale on the ’net, but they’re expensive. Master Hi-Power gunsmiths will shorten full-length Hi-Powers, but like any detailed, precision work, it’s costly. The new Girsan short barrel “P.I.” is readily available and affordable.

Girsan has been producing a variety of firearms in Turkey since the mid-’90s. In 2019 they entered and earned respect in the 1911 market. A couple of years later, they released the MC P35 Hi-Power, available in several variations, including a red dot sight-equipped model. The short-barrel “P.I.” is their latest addition to their Hi-Power line.

The frame of the “P.I.” is standard double-stack Hi-Power fare. The slide and barrel have been shortened approximately one inch — from 4.87″ to 3.88″. This reduces the pistol’s weight from 1.8 lbs. to 1.6 lbs. These numbers might seem slight, but it’s a 20% reduction in slide length and a 12% reduction in total weight. For a pistol that’s carried all day, every day, this is significant. The shorter slide is easier to conceal and clears the holster just a little sooner on the draw. With the factory-supplied 15-round Mec-Gar magazine and one in the chamber, it’s a compact, reliable package holding 16 rounds.

Parts And Pieces

When it comes to non-FN/Browning Hi-Powers, there’s a lot of variation in quality. Some were considered equals in fit and overall character. Others, not so much. Girsan’s P.I. is one of the good ones. The matte black finish is smooth, even on the small parts. The chrome finish on the barrel is a little shiny for my taste but will hold up well in hot, humid environments. The “P.I.” comes with an Mk III style ambidextrous thumb safety, a Commander-style “ring” hammer and Mk III style synthetic stocks. It also retains the original design’s magazine disconnect; it will not fire without a mag locked in place. Blame this on the French military’s “demands” that this feature be included in the original design. The white-dot sights are set in dovetail slots cut into the slide. The front of the slide has a hole below the barrel that the guide extends through when the slide is cycled.

The first thing I do with a “new” firearm — used or factory-fresh — is take it apart completely. The Hi-Power is easy to field strip. Lock the slide to the rear using the thumb safety, remove the slide lock and slip the slide forward off the frame. The “P.I.” uses a flat recoil spring instead of a spring formed from round wire. It’s strong — the guide rod is long and has to line up with its hole in the slide. Initially, it’s difficult to remove the spring and rod from the slide; it takes just the right combination of push and wiggle to remove and install. You only need a few punches and a hammer for complete disassembly of the slide and frame. On this subject, and all other things Hi-Power, I recommend Stephen A. Camp’s book, The Shooters Guide To The Browning Hi-Power.

The Hi-Power uses a sear lever that pivots in the slide to transfer movement from the trigger lever, which pushes upward, to press the sear down, releasing the hammer. It’s kind of like a see-saw. The P.I.’s sear lever is a late-model Mk III-type Devel lever, which has a wing that blocks the firing pin, preventing forward movement unless the trigger is pressed.

The factory Mk III style stocks didn’t fit my small hands. The thumb rest is right next to the magazine release, and I couldn’t press it efficiently. I pulled a variety of different stocks from my stash to test their fit; some fit well, while others had a little wiggle. This isn’t uncommon with aftermarket stocks and various “Browning” clones. Stocks from a FEG fit and those from a Springfield SA 35. It may require experimenting, but finding the right fit for you shouldn’t be a problem.

Small parts like pins and springs are a big indicator of a pistol’s quality. The “P.I.’s” internals spec’d out at the proper size and tension. Another sign of a properly made Hi-Power is the fit between pins that hold parts like the sear, sear lever, extractor and ejector and the frame. The pins shouldn’t require much force to tap them in and out. Plus, as long as you use the proper punches, the pins shouldn’t deform during removal and installation. The P.I.’s internals look good, but the true test is at the range.

Range Day

“Range Day” is the most exciting part of testing a new gun. The two most interesting characteristics of any firearm are reliability and accuracy, which are only revealed through live fire. “Fit” and “feel” are also important but more subjective. Does this pistol feel right in your hands?

Lives depend on the reliability of a defensive pistol. A clean, freshly oiled gun with quality ammunition and magazines should function. Factory-recommended “break-in” periods and such do not apply. A defensive pistol shouldn’t be finicky about what ammo it will fire. I test a pistol’s reliability by putting it through the “trash ammo” test.

I loaded 15- and 13-round Mec-Gar magazines with “homeless” rounds lying on the range, stray ammunition from the dusty cardboard box in the shop and all the questionable stuff rattling around the floorboard of my truck. The “Private Investigator” ate everything with no malfunctions. It also displayed very consistent extraction and ejection. Empty cases landed in a one-foot square area about 7′ to 8′ from the shooter at 4 o’clock. Perfect.

Like all Hi-Powers with the magazine disconnect, you can feel some grittiness in the trigger as the disconnect engages the magazine. This is something that wears in over time. Or, you can easily polish the parts. Girsan offers full-size Hi-Powers without the mag disconnect and will hopefully follow through with similar models of the “P.I.” The trigger is crisp and breaks at 7½ lbs. For a military-style weapon, it’s a good trigger. As an experiment, I removed the magazine disconnect to get an idea of what the trigger would feel like after some tuning and polishing. This brought the pull weight down to a perfect, crisp 5½ lbs. Like all “military” style pistols, there’s improvement to be had.

Accuracy is subjective. An accurate defensive pistol might not fire tiny groups during a bullseye competition. Under stress, with both you and the threat moving, accuracy involves placing hits in the proper locations of the threat’s body. Defensive accuracy is more about what you can do with the pistol, as opposed to how tight a group it will shoot under perfect conditions.

I used factory-fresh ball ammo to test practical accuracy. You can expect improved precision with quality defensive rounds if a pistol groups well with ball ammunition. At seven yards, slow fire, the Girsan grouped well — minus one shot I called “bad” because of my trigger press. The group size was better than I normally get with more expensive pistols. Hi-Powers are always a pleasure to shoot; the “P.I.” actually seemed to recoil less than the full-length barreled Brownings.

At 75 yards, I had to aim about a foot low and slightly left to hit the torso target. Most people never fire their pistols at these distances. But it’s a good idea because there are enough documented situations that required long-distance pistol shots. This reveals the difference between the pistol’s point of impact and point of aim. The “Investigator’s” long-distance accuracy is up to that task if you are. Eventually, I’ll adjust the sights to my eyes and shooting style, much like zeroing a rifle.

The MC P35 PI is the first Girsan pistol I’ve handled. After inspecting it inside and out and spending time with it on the range, I can safely say it won’t be my last. The “P.I.” is an excellent pistol with the right features at an affordable price. Those new to Hi-Powers will be very pleased; longtime fans of the “Browning” won’t be disappointed. And, if you’re thinking about a custom pistol build, the Girsan is the perfect starting point. That’s a win, win, win.