Don’t miss the Kickstarter-exclusive version of “Pistols of the Warlords”!
Today I am going to actually do some shooting with a Chinese Warlord Era pistol – a Shanghai Model 1900 Pistol-Carbine. As I described in yesterday’s video, these were well-made guns produced by a large and legitimate factory arsenal. I only have a single magazine (and sadly no shoulder stock) for mine, so the Backup Gun Match is a perfect place to try it out! Will it explode in my hands, or will I win the match? Let’s find out…
Well, it looks like you got one of the better guns!
Two things to remember about manufacturing in China. Everything is in the public domain and the bill of materials and material specs is a good starting point from which to start reducing cost.
Gun is good quality…oops malfunction 🙂
It’s a good thing we don’t buy any goods from China.
The thing that people really ought to look at with these pistols and all the varied copies is just how simply they were produced by the “technically unsophisticated”.
I’ve seen some bring-backs from Afghanistan that were the so-called Khyber Pass “copies” of things like the Martini-Henry from the “good old days” of the British Raj. Some of those were good enough that you’d have a hard time telling them from the originals, and those were produced over a hundred years ago by men working with files and hammers. Emphatically not “modern machine tools”…
This being the case, I think the odds of successfully implementing any form of “gun control” on anything other than a quiescently inert population of compliant idiots willing to put up with being victims of either their own government or other parties within that society are, effectively, about nil. When you can churn out working semi-auto weapons with what amount to hobbyist tools, any attempt to stamp out their production is going to end in abject failure, simply because there’s no way to effectively do so, absent also enforcing the abandonment of most of modern technology.
It’s a fool’s game, and soon to be overtaken anyway. They’re worried about 80% receivers, right now? They’d better be ramping up worry about some idiot doing work with CRISPR technology in his bathroom, because the technology is getting that easy and that prevalent. I’d lay you long odds that we have rather more to worry about with regards to some fool with access to modern biotech than we ever will over someone with access to modern machine tools and a willingness to play with them. In the final analysis, firearms are pretty much only capable of retail-level killing. Biotech? LOL… Yeah, that’s a civilization-wide threat.
Good observations Kirk!
Yes, the damn Bio-tech is the real threat for near future.
On subject of “retail-level killing” there is an ongoing effort by do-it-yourself hobbyists using 3-d print technology. Governments are pretending they are concerned, but should they be? Not in my mind.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2021/06/04/australian-fgc-9/
New magazine and old fashioned (hot) .32ACP ammunition would cure the problem.
The Browning 1900 is a superb pistol. I wouldn’t hesitate to carry one as a
concealed weapon.
Some of the Chinese 8mm Mauser clones were just as good as the German made examples. The Chinese copies of the 1888 Commission rifles were often better than the German originals. The Chinese arsenals often had European supervisors, so quality control was at a European level.
Love the shirt,
The “factory” guns (eg the ones produced with contracts from the original manufacturer and/ or designer, cause I bet a lot of the so called “artisan “ guns were produced in enough quantities and workshops that might be considered factories…wow, that was a long aside, I blame Pratchet) seem to be well made and safe to shoot with the usual precautions. I do love the BUG videos, so this was fun.
Did I mention I loved the shirt?
God(referring here to one of the gods that took the form of a turtle to reveal himself to his only disciple) rest his soul.
Ian, Couldn’t you have a gunsmith gin up a stock that would fit the backstrap (adduming that’s legal, of course)
I have a feeling that it would be OK to mount an original stock, but not to have one made to use. No real difference of course, but whoever said gun control had to make sense?