If double action pistols and double stack pistol mags existed in 30's, why did we have to wait until 70's-80's to see producers making DA double stack pistols and set these 2 things as standard?
If double action pistols and double stack pistol mags existed in 30's, why did we have to wait until 70's-80's to see producers making ...
Because double action doesnt matter to a semiauto hand gun. When would it ever be used? The only time it would have the hammer down is if the gun is empty, the user manually dewienered for reasons, or the ammo was a dud.
Theres no need for the hammer to wiener itself with the trigger pull.
The slides movement will do that.
Sure theres second strike cabability but that circumstance is insanely rare unless somethings wrong with the ammo.
Theres no reason to develop it as a priority.
In order to make them safe to carry. WW2 thought a lot of armies that statistically a soldier was more likely to kill/injure themselves or a friendly with a handgun than an enemy. Think about something like a TT33, single action, no external safety. That thing is a massive liability to carry in anything other than chamber empty. Even with a manual safety people can frick up fairly easily. DASA trigger is pretty safe. That was a major selling point of revolvers back in the day. Safe to carry, but ready to go.
>Think about something like a TT33, single action, no external safety. That thing is a massive liability to carry in anything other than chamber empty.
Think about something like a glock, single action, no external safety.
See how stupid that point is.
Idiots will always be idiots.
da/sa is a solution to a pretty much insignificant problem they invented.
>Think about something like a glock, single action, no external safety.
Because now we live in the era of plastic holsters and reddit finger. Back then it was leather holsters and every mothrfricker has his finger on the trigger in photos.
I dunno man, Glock leg is a thing. Never heard of someone with Beretta leg.
>glock, single action, no external safety.
It still has a safety, the TT-33 has nothing whatsoever
A safety on the trigger basically is no safety. It makes the so called "suicide safety" of the past look smart.
I agree in principle, but it's mechanically pretty damn different from a wienered and locked hammer gun with no safety
I always thought this was stupid. it's just drop protection
>dude it has a safety
>pull trigger
>it shoots
Yes well that's still in contrast to the TT-33 which will happily go off without even touching the trigger. Same with (some) pre-Mk III Hi-Powers, for example
Glocks are 1.5 action though, like hk lem
>Think about something like a glock, single action, no external safety.
People shoot themselves with Glocks (and now, Sigs) all the time.
Glocks still have relatively long, heavy triggers compared to say, an SA hammer-fired gun. Also Glock leg is a thing.
> Think about something like a glock, single action, no external safety.
Yes, it’s a stupid design and people shoot themselves with Glocks at much higher rates than any other style of gun
I think you could flip this question around, why were customers not demanding hi cap magazines and double action triggers until the 70s/80s?
I think that hi cap and double action were considered moreso "gee whiz" features than really necessary. Nobody felt any real deficit in being armed with a service revolver or 1911 until the 80s or so.
And these things happen incrementally, for example the Newhall shooting was a major event in law enforcement circles and brought about major changes in weapons and tactics... But at that time, that meant that LEOs had to qualify with their duty ammo and start using speed loaders, not abandon wheel guns entirely and start carrying double-digit magazines. The institutions just weren't ready for such a leap.
This anon makes some great points. I especially like his point about the rise of violent crime in the 70s, that brought about the demand for wonder nines.
>Why were customers not demanding hi cap magazines and double action triggers until the 70s/80s?
That, detective, is the right question. This has been an area of interest for me for a long time, and I still haven't really got a perfect answer, but I'll try to answer without this being a book nor sounding moronic.
Firstly, American ideals for firearms for most of the 1900s was bigger=better. You could say it started with the Filipino war situation and .38 long colt supposedly not being powerful enough that began the idea that "a fighting handgun should start with a .4". Next, we got the two world wars of .45 ACP, which cemented a position for the cartridge and the 1911 for at least the rest of the century. Between the end of WWII and the 70s, there really weren't many options for a full-size semi auto anyways, so the 1911 in .45 was the go-to. Getting to mag capacity, even if a company was willing to try a double stack .45 at the time, they probably would have realized quickly what we all know now, that a double stack metal frame .45 is stupid thick and not really worth the extra capacity.
Also, capacity was almost globally unimportant for a handgun until the late 70s. The Hi-Power was the outlier while mostly everyone in the US had revolvers and 1911s and Europeans had single stack .32s, .380s, and 9mms.
Getting to double action triggers, and higher capacity too, I think that's a case of the public only wanting it after military/LEO adoption. People were aware of the DA/SA P38 since the war ended, and S&W had the Model 39 on the market since 1955, but the S&W semi autos never got super popular until the 80s when police started using them. Arguably, police only started using them after the US military adopted a DA/SA high capacity pistol, which likely only happened as a result of trying to standardize calibers with western Europe due to the Cold War.
TL;DR: Americans like .45 and people buy what the army buys.
>which likely only happened as a result of trying to standardize calibers with western Europe due to the Cold War
Correcting this, standardizing calibers with western Europe due to the Cold War absolutely was one of the reasons for adopting the 9mm M9. I bet that without the Cold War, whatever they chose would have been chambered in .45 still.
From my scant research on the same question I came to a somewhat different conclusion. One aspect was bullet selection. 357 HPs were considered man stoppers, and the rule of the day was one shot one dead badguy. You see the mentality in some of the police training videos that are from the day (60s etc). Volume of fire does not matter, only accurate "powerful" hits. Putting more rounds down range was not a virtue, it was a liability. Shotgun use is discouraged due to shot spread hitting innocents. So the relative accuracy and "stopping power" of revolvers, combined with safety and reliability caused them to stay common for a LONG time.
I think you are over stating the popularity of the 1911. They did not make much impact outside of the target shooting and gun nerd circles until the wonder nines showed up. At that point they were competing with "unreliable" 9mm competition, but added capacity beyond the revolvers people were used to while still being chambered in a "powerful" cartridge. There were police department adopting the 1911 into the 90s. It was the gun that came after a lot of police departments abandoned revolvers, and was directly competing with glocks as the thinking mans autoloader. There is also the marines MEUSOC 1911 getting adopted way into the 00s. Like wtf is that even about.
Anyway great post. And yeah this is a really interesting question OP
In addition to all the good points here, keep in mind that the gun meta for police forces moving beyond revolvers is one of the big factors here.
For several reasons, including the perception that police forces needed to be more heavily armed after the nastiness that were the late 60s through mid 70s (urban violence), did the shift from revolvers to the Wonder 9s take place.
>why were customers not demanding hi cap magazines and double action triggers until the 70s/80s?
Because the BHP already existed and Israeli carry was pretty much the norm
>When would it ever be used?
So that you'd have a modicum of safety while carrying with the manual safety off and a round in the chamber. Now the utility of that is debatable and probably matters more for CC than use in a military context, but IIRC that was the logic behind widespread adoption of DA in autoloaders. Either way I'm no expert.
>second strike capability
Was actually somewhat relevant back in the day because ammo back then was less reliable. The designer of the Seecamp Pistol fought on the Eastern Front and the DA trigger on his P38 saved his life.
That's actually not a bad question.
Frick
I'll try.
Double action actually got pretty popular as soon as it became available Walthers and Berettas were very popular after the war and most new handguns like the Mak were too right from 50s. It's just that a lot of armies we're still using SA legacy handguns like 1911 or Hi Powers. Granted some new designs we're SA too like the Mle 1950 or P210 or Beretta 951, but I think that had to do with some inherent conservatism with the militaries that ordered them.
Also, I think revolvers were still more relevant back then since most magazines were low cap, and I think the attitude was, if you want a safe double action carry a revolver.
Which kinda brings us to the half of the question which I think is kinda harder to answer, why didn't hi cap mags catch on quicker.
I think it mostly has to do with ergo. Those old single stack guns feel really good in the hand (hold something like a Luger and then a USP) and maybe a generation of grognards needed to die off before people cared enough about capacity to take the trade off.
It think it kinda boils down to the fact that handguns were tertiary weapons at best, especially in an age when people were still walking around with SMGs, and that made personal preferences more important than if you have 8 vs 15 in a mag.
I'd say the reason that double stacks and double actions took off when they did has to do with the rise of violent crime in the 70s. Suddenly police departments and civilians were interested in high cap mags, since for them the handgun is often the only weapon. If it wasn't for that, maybe militaries would still be running around with 8+1.
They aren't.
They never have been.
The real question is why the 2011 took so long to get right.
Companies still struggle to make a reliable one.
Why?
1911's are reliable.
Double stack pistols are reliable.
1.5 stack magazines like in the p365 are reliable.
...and yet 2011's are just now starting to become reliable.
Why?
Mags suck and mags have to be compatible for shit they were never optimized for
Yeah okay but the Hi-power and the 1911 have been out for more than a century. The 1911 actually began protyping in the 1800's. It's as old as a model-T Ford.
Surely someone could have figured this out and perfected it by like, a long time ago. So, what is such a big hang up?
You have to keep the 1911s magwell and feedangle which isnt great. They made something that was mostly functional but not really then eveyone else still has to copy that shit to make a 2011 mag
Okay, well let's say I get that. I'm not interested in an authentic 2011 that maximizes parts compatibility. To date, the 1911, a properly fitted one, remains the best autoloader trigger there is but double stack magazines have been around just as long. If I were a firearms manufacturer/inventor/innovator I would have been trying to figure out how to put a 1911 trigger in something akin to a Hi-power. To my knowledge nobody successfully did any thing of the kind until Staccato came out as a duty weapon and even then they only like cartridges with a certain range of OAL and magazines are $75 a pop. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying they've had over a century to do it, like get it together Tyron.
well there is the platypus which is 1911 slide and a frame that takes glock mags
Finally, a gun so ugly it will repulse your attacked on sight. Save a fortune on ammo.
I was not aware of this.
Today I learned something new on /k/.
Is it reliable?
Is it accurate?
...I think I want this.
All I know is you can get it colored like parry the platypus
Based as frick. Be right back gonna burn 1400 on the Agent P(istol)
>1911s are reliable
Objection your honor, assumes facts not in evidence
Also, 2011s are only popular due to heavy marketing, convincing tactical morons that they can buy skill, and that the only difference between them and John Wick is that John has a 4,000$ Taran Tactical Glock brand Glock™ and a 7,000$ Taran Tactical brand Pit Viper™
Because nobody was willing to spend the money to buy the tools necessary to manufacture handgun magazines for random handguns that didn't have military contracts besides Mec Gar for decades.
How do you feel about the pastas controlling the world's handgun mag supply
prolly cause of 3 large wars and a presidential assassination in between it all
Honestly handguns aren't all that important. In the grand scheme of things logistics rules the roost in military affairs, and on the weapons side of things the 20th century was defined by two things: air power and nukes. On the law enforcement side of things, sidearms weren't the focus of much of anything, as most of today's agencies were being founded or still trying to find a role for themselves during this time. Plus you can imagine how FUDDy the old sheriff must have beenith even less access to information than ignorant asshats today, so there wouldn't be much need to shift from the standard double action revolvers of the day.
As far as the civilian side of things, CCW wasn't the lifestyle choice that it is today. In fact, in most of the country CCW was outright banned or highly frowned upon. In fact, as late as the 60's and 70's there was quite a bit of polling that Americans might have supported adding handguns to the NFA as Soviet backed leftist in the West had used them during several high profile assassinations, coupled with the out of control mob violence on the East Coast and Chicago which had mostly been done with handguns and were all highly publicised.
Now, bear in mind, there wasn't the access to the kinds of information we have today, nor the subcultures that are here now. A "gun guy" in the modern sense didn't really exist in that time, maybe then they might own some more milsurp than usual, or splurged on a DA revolver AND a 1911. Maybe they had a semi auto shotgun or their dad's bringback. But you were ultra tacticool supreme if you had a mini-14, "Where's the war?" They'd say, as they rolled their eyes at the waste of money that you could have better spent on a 4 barrel carb for hot rod or a new component for your hifi.
Also thanks to factors that have nothing to do with guns, modern thinking is all about optimization. Most people probably never saw the need for it.
>modern thinking is all about optimization.
interesting thing to bring up. Why do you think that's the case?
Well I'm think in terms of most people's jobs and how they might impact thinking. The Toyo theory of manufacturing dictates that there be a Continuous Improvement team in any sort of production facility, who are constantly evaluating and then revaluating datasets to find and attempt to eliminate inefficencies. If you go back to mid century America, we were ruling the roost as far as manufacturing, but workdays were only 8 hours, scheduling was inconsistent as hell, and administration and order processing was slow, laborious, and full of errors. "Do more with less" is a mantra that has been adopted whole heartedly in an effort to streamline manufacturing efficency, and its bled over into every industry in some fashion or other. It could apply to law, medical treatment and even movies, among others.
Think back to the epics of the '60's, Lawrence of Arabia, and consider how many thousands of extras and insanely expensive sets they constructed, only to blow up for a single scene. Now contrast that with the latest Disney/Marvel garbage that's practically produced on an assembly line. It might be soulless, but Disneh has been very effective at finding all the inefficencies in movie making and have eliminated them. A globally economy has been one of the biggest factors in driving this mindset home in one of the most crucial ways that it can affect Americans: with money.
If consider that one of the biggest factors in mid century American success was the absolute destruction of most of its industrial competitors, things begin to make a little more sense. When you realize that the Postwar strategy to counter communism was to essentially buy off support by importing foreign goods things start falling in line. And then figure how these foriegn goods were supposed to compete against domestic made goods: optimisation. The Toyo Theory of Manufacturing, literally developed by Toyota, was an attempt to streamline efficency in automobile production.
That seems like a reasonable explanation. Given the almost worship of brands and the dollar, it seems like that kind of enabled the pursuit of that same style of corporate optimization but on a personal scale. I guess it's understandable to some degree but I've noticed it also seems to go hand-in-hand with a deterioration of actual human capability. You have guys who used to train with revolvers and speedloaders, and from what I can tell, police had more emphasis on accurate shooting. Compare that to now, when the majority of police don't regularly train, which kind of negates the advantages of carrying 17+1 autoloaders.
Personally, I used to care more about optimizing stuff in my own life, but at some point I think "good enough" won over. Frankly, I'll take feeling good, or better aesthetics, at the cost of suboptimal performance. Maybe that's why I got a snubby .38 instead of a glock. The inner noir private investigator in me won that decision.
>I guess it's understandable to some degree but I've noticed it also seems to go hand-in-hand with a deterioration of actual human capability.
I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there. As my case in pohnt: BOnnie and Clyde's car: shot all to frick bg cops magdumping wildly.
Also just a fun side bit, handgun training sucked before.... i can't really pin a date, but whe. The Isoceles and Weaver stances began being taught, which is probably after the 70's increase in police militarization. Prior to that, military, LE, whatever were expect to utilize handguns in one hand, which was moronic even then, but handgun doctrine hadnt really changed since the days of dueling with flintlock pistols. You fired it one fricking handed like a man. Nowadays we have that John Wick style whose name escapes me atm, and i just saw some other bullshit the other day which was building off isoceles IIRC.
But either way, their standards weren't really any higher than now, they practiced less than pretty much anyone now, and their tools weren't built to the same standard and tolerances that ours our now.
>As my case in pohnt: BOnnie and Clyde's car: shot all to frick bg cops magdumping wildly.
kek some things I guess never change.
I read in another thread some anon calling Weaver stance outdated. I didn't know what that was but when I looked it up it's just the natural stance I take when holding a handgun. It seems strange to me that it was something that had to be "introduced".
I don't really have a good follow up to this other than how outlooks and doctrine can die a hard death in institutions. The French learned this the hard way when they marched rank and file into the overlapping fields of fire of German machine guns in the outbreak of WW1 because no one bothered to update the field mnauls since Napoleon.
The internet certainly plays a role, because these aforementioned autistic individuals obsessed with optimization are bouncjng off of each other finding solutions no one in any professional capacity is going to have the money or R&D to try.
Oops. I ran out of room before I could really start getting into revolvers, but yes, they were the dominant handgun for most of the 20th century. One thing I wanted to say in the first post was how revolver development also reflected that "bigger=better" mentality. Cartridges like .38 S&W and .32 S&W Long were phased out for .38 Special, then .38 Special needed to be bigger, so we got .357 Magnum. .357 never really got unseated before semi autos took over, but I have read cases of individual cops choosing to carry .44 Magnum revolvers instead of a .357. As you said, there was definitely a focus on a quick elimination of the threat with one, or maybe two hits from a powerful cartridge. Now what I find interesting is how that bigger=better approach was mostly limited to American military and law enforcement.
Looking at private gun ownership, what the average Joe owned and carried remained pretty relaxed compared to what cops had. .32 and .38 S&W stuck around for a surprisingly long time in cheap top-break revolvers despite being pretty weak options. For semi autos, .32 or .380 ACP were considered adequate for personal use. But from what I can tell, private demands started catching up with LEO demands in the 80s and 90s. I think that could be due to rising crime, carry laws being relaxed, or what said about how people think changing over time, which brings us to the current era of people debating the most minute details of a carry gun.
There's another wall of text, but as I said, this topic interests me. It's fun to look back in history and see how different people in different roles approached the same problem we do and why.
>Now what I find interesting is how that bigger=better approach was mostly limited to American military and law enforcement.
Its fricking bizarre how much the US is an island with regards to small arms in general. OPs question brings up another one I always had, and Othias has brought it up in the revolver videos he has been doing for the last year or two, but why did the US stick to single action revolvers for so damn long in the 1800s? DA was normal in europe for decades before it became common in the US from my understanding. European guns were being imported, people were aware of them, but the single actions still seemed to be dominant. And then just as double action guns were becoming more common in the US, 1890s onwards or so, autoloading handguns became common in europe. The US adoption, by either police or civilians or just commercial manufacture, lagged behind for another few decades.
The cliches being what they are you would think the US would be leading in these developments, but instead JMB (PBUH) had to sell his auto pistols in europe. I get that pocket carry was more of a virtue in the higher density urban environments that europe has, but it still always seemed like such a blind spot to me by american gun owners. The savage 1907 should have spawned a dozen different copies, same with the colts. Instead people just shrugged a continued to build shitty top breaks.
america is big and things need to be transported. its not like some guy in utah sees how great these 1911s are in newyork and wants to buy one for himself. news doesnt travel how you think it did.
The US, especially of the 19th century, was a very separated and disparate entity where what's going on in Texas was a far cry from what was normal in say Virginia or New York. Though in general the US is rather stubborn in the face of new technology and change, we have a habit of waiting for someone else to either prove the concept for us or put ourselves in such a shit situation where we're forced to try a radically new approach. This has its benefits, as we rarely waste time and money on technological dead ends but it results in a generally slower industry that's more reactive to threats rather than proactive
And you probaby realize just how devastating that's been to domestic auto production, as a majority of vehicles sold any more are these foreign companies (we'll exclude the foriegn manufacture of US brands for arguments sake). So this has hit Americans pretty hard at every level, regardless of industry. Hell, even hotel hospitality has been finding ways to optimize room layout and booking inefficencies, and utilizing pretty complex mathematics to find the highest booking cost on what days during the year.
This probably isn't the most coherent argument, but optimisation became a fairly serious focus in the US, especially after the 70's and 80's when foriegn jmported goods really began hammering on US industry, to the point thag its an accepted part of everyday life, and everyone is asked pretty routinely to find these inefficencies and help correct them.
So combine that general shift in perception of things, and apply to the kind of autistic guy who looks at things with very little innovation, like firearm actions, and realize that back in the day minmaxing stats just wasn't something to spend time on. Especially since the people who held the pursestrings for things like approving whole new manufacturing lines were of an even older method of thinking, as they were raised in an environment where dealing with union labor issues and improving living standards were a higher priority than productivity. Especially since many of the productivity boosting machines were still in their infancies and need to just be utilized to be an improvement, and didn't require optimisation yet.
That's a really good question, and honestly I can only speculate to the answer because in reality it might simply be the case that nobody thought to combine the concepts. But, looking at various handgun stances of the era it's fairly clear that there's a strong preference to single hand shooting, something double stack handguns aren't really conducive to thanks to the wider grip needed to accommodate the fatter mags. Also look at how many DA/SAs came out after the P38 and before the "wonder nines" versus the number of double stacks that existed in the same time frame. DA/SA makes sense given the general rules for carry and gives a major improvement to safety and speed, meanwhile a lot of contemporary shooters didn't see the benefit of double stacks. Now what spurred the fusion of the ideas? Again I don't know but I'm willing to bet it has something to do with the massive spike in crime in the 60s and 70s driving police to be better armed to deal with the situation
a weapons thread? on my ukrainian war board? mods, ban this guy
This is the best discussion I've seen on /k/ in a long time. Threads like these are the reason I still come here, even though I have to wade through a ton of shit first.