Colt 45 may refer to:
A revolver is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers for firing. Before firing a round, cocking the hammer partially rotates the cylinder, indexing one of the cylinder chambers into alignment with the barrel, allowing the bullet to be fired through the bore. The hammer cocking can be achieved by either the user manually pulling the hammer back, via internal linkage relaying a rearward movement of the trigger, or both. By sequentially rotating through each chamber, the revolver allows the user to fire multiple times until having to reload the gun, unlike older single-shot firearms that had to be reloaded after each shot.
The M1911, also known as Colt 1911 or Colt Government, is a single-action, recoil-operated, semi-automatic pistol chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge. The pistol's formal U.S. military designation as of 1940 was Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911 for the original model adopted in March 1911, and Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911A1 for the improved M1911A1 model which entered service in 1926. The designation changed to Pistol, Caliber .45, Automatic, M1911A1 in the Vietnam War era.
A derringer is a small handgun that is neither a revolver nor a semi/fully automatic pistol. It is not to be confused with mini-revolvers or pocket pistols, although some later derringers were manufactured with the pepperbox configuration. The modern derringer is often multi-barreled, and is generally the smallest usable handgun of any given caliber and barrel length due to the lack of a moving action, which takes up more space behind the barrel. It is frequently used by women because it is easily concealable in a purse or a stocking.
Colt's Manufacturing Company, LLC is an American firearms manufacturer, founded in 1855 by Samuel Colt and is now a subsidiary of Czech holding company Colt CZ Group. It is the successor corporation to Colt's earlier firearms-making efforts, which started in 1836. Colt is known for the engineering, production, and marketing of firearms, most especially between the 1850s and World War I, when it was a dominating force in its industry and a seminal influence on manufacturing technology. Colt's earliest designs played a major role in the popularization of the revolver and the shift away from earlier single-shot pistols. Although Samuel Colt did not invent the revolver concept, his designs resulted in the first very successful ones.
The Colt Single Action Army is a single-action revolver handgun. It was designed in 1872 for the U.S. government service revolver trials of 1872 by Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company and was adopted as the standard-issued pistol of the US Army in 1873 until 1892.
The .45 ACP or .45 Auto (11.43×23mm) is a rimless straight-walled handgun cartridge designed by John Moses Browning in 1904, for use in his prototype Colt semi-automatic pistol. After successful military trials, it was adopted as the standard chambering for Colt's M1911 pistol. The round was developed due to a lack of stopping power experienced in the Moro Rebellion in places like Sulu. The issued ammunition, .38 Long Colt had proved inadequate, motivating the search for a better cartridge. This experience and the Thompson–LaGarde Tests of 1904 led the Army and the Cavalry to decide that a minimum of .45 caliber was required in a new handgun.
Automatic Colt Pistol (ACP) denotes various John Moses Browning cartridge designs primarily used in Colt and Fabrique Nationale de Herstal semi-automatic pistols. All of these cartridges are straight-sided and appear similar. The .32 ACP, .38 ACP, and .25 ACP are semi-rimmed and headspace on the rim, while the rimless .45 ACP and .380 ACP headspace on the mouth of the case.
The .45 Colt (11.43×33mmR), is a rimmed, straight-walled, handgun cartridge dating to 1872. It was originally a black-powder revolver round developed for the Colt Single Action Army revolver. This cartridge was adopted by the U.S. Army in 1873 and served as an official US military handgun cartridge for 14 years.
Ethan Allen was a major American arms maker from Massachusetts. He is unrelated to the revolutionary Ethan Allen. His first firearm, the "Pocket rifle" was developed in 1836, and his first patent was granted in 1837.
The Colt Buntline Special was a long-barreled variant of the Colt Single Action Army revolver, which Stuart N. Lake described in his best-selling but largely fictionalized 1931 biography, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal. According to Lake, the dime novelist Ned Buntline commissioned the production of five Buntline Specials. Lake described them as extra-long Colt Single Action Army revolvers, with a 12-inch (300 mm)-long barrel, and stated that Buntline presented them to five lawmen in thanks for their help in contributing local color to his western yarns.
Star Bonifacio Echeverria, S.A. was a manufacturer of small arms in the Basque region of Spain from about 1905 until 1997.
The Colt Model 1900 is a short-recoil operated "self-loading", or semi-automatic .38 caliber handgun introduced by Colt's Manufacturing Company at the turn of the 20th century. It also marked the introduction of .38 ACP, the round for which it is chambered, and was the first handgun to utilize short-recoil operation.
The Smith & Wesson Model 3 is a single-action, cartridge-firing, top-break revolver produced by Smith & Wesson (S&W) from around 1870 to 1915, and was recently again offered as a reproduction by Smith & Wesson and Uberti.
The Model 1902 is a semi-automatic pistol developed by famous American firearms designer John Browning and produced by the Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company in the early 20th century. The Model 1902 was not a new design, but rather an incremental improvement upon the nearly identical M1900, and would transition from the 1900 into three distinct but related pistols with the same action and cartridge, the 1902 Sporting Model, the 1902 Military model, and the 1903 Pocket Hammer model. The 1902 Sporting model was so similar to the 1900 that it continued the serial number range, while the 1902 Military Model featured a different serial range as did the 1903 Pocket Hammer model. The 1902 Military Model featured a square and lengthened grip frame with an additional round in the magazine, while the 1903 Pocket Hammer featured a shortened barrel and slide but retained the Sporting model grip frame. The Colt M1905 .45 ACP pistol would be derived from the same lineage, also with a different serial number range.
The MEU(SOC) pistol, officially designated the M45 MEUSOC, is a magazine-fed, recoil-operated, single-action, semiautomatic pistol chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge. A variant of the M1911, it has been the standard-issue side arm for the Force Recon Element of the United States Marine Corps' Marine Expeditionary Units since 1985. It is assigned NATO Stock Number 1005-01-370-7353.
45 may refer to:
A handgun is a short-barrelled firearm designed to be held and used with one or two hands. The two most common handgun sub-types in use today are revolvers and semi-automatic pistols, although other handgun-types such as derringers and machine pistols also see infrequent usage.
The Colt Walker, sometimes known as the Walker Colt, is a single-action revolver with a revolving cylinder holding six charges of black powder behind six bullets. It was designed in 1846 by American firearms inventor Samuel Colt to the specifications of Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker.
Freedom Arms is a Freedom, Wyoming based firearm manufacturing company, known for producing powerful single-action revolvers. The company was founded in 1978 by Wayne Baker and Dick Casull to produce the Mini revolver then later a revolver chambered in Casull's powerful .454 Casull chambering. This 5-shot revolver was the Model 83. Freedom Arms currently makes a single-shot pistol in addition to their revolvers.
Cimarron Firearms is an American firearms importer that has been in operation since 1984. The company's field of specialty is reproduction firearms from the American Civil War to the end of the Old West period. Founded by Mike Harvey in Houston, Texas, the company is now based in Fredericksburg, Texas.