John Moses Browning was an American firearm designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms, many of which are still in use around the world. He made his first firearm at age 13 in his father's gun shop and was awarded the first of his 128 firearm patents on October 7, 1879, at the age of 24. He is regarded as one of the most successful firearms designers of the 19th and 20th centuries and a pioneer of modern repeating, semi-automatic, and automatic firearms.
The Colt M1911 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.
The .45 ACP, also known as .45 Auto, .45 Automatic, or 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 cartridge.
The .45 Winchester Magnum is a .45 caliber rimless cartridge intended for use in semi-automatic pistols. The cartridge is externally a lengthened .45 ACP with a thicker web to withstand higher operating pressures. The 45 Win Mag is nearly identical in dimensions and loading to the .45 NAACO developed by the North American Arms Corporation for their Brigadier pistol, developed to supply to the Canadian Army after World War II. The army ultimately did not adopt the pistol and its non-NATO standard ammunition.
A wildcat cartridge, often shortened to wildcat, is a custom cartridge for which ammunition and/or firearms are not mass-produced. These cartridges are often created in order to optimize a certain performance characteristic of an existing commercial cartridge, or may merely be intended as novelty items.
A rim is an external flange that is machined, cast, molded, stamped, or pressed around the bottom of a firearms cartridge. Thus, rimmed cartridges are sometimes called "flanged" cartridges. Almost all cartridges feature an extractor or headspacing rim, in spite of the fact that some cartridges are known as "rimless cartridges". The rim may serve a number of purposes, including providing a lip for the extractor to engage, and sometimes serving to headspace the cartridge.
Strayer-Voigt, Inc. is a manufacturer of M1911-styled modular pistols. The Strayer-Voigt system is called modular because the lower grip and trigger guard, which is made of carbon steel, stainless steel, titanium or aluminum, is a separate component from the metal upper portion of the frame that comprises the dust cover and frame rails. They are the most famous for their Hybrid series of pistols as well as their IMM Open division pistols made for competitions. SVI markets its products under the brand name Infinity Firearms. The Infinity pistols are sometimes unofficially known by the combined name of Strayer-Voigt Infinity among some enthusiasts, a play on the SVI acronym.
The Wildey is a gas-operated, double-action or single-action pistol designed by Wildey J. Moore. It was designed to fire several high-pressure proprietary cartridges including the .45 Winchester Magnum and the .475 Wildey Magnum. They are currently being produced by USA Firearms Corp.-Wildey Guns of Winsted, Connecticut.
The Kimber Eclipse is a model 1911 semi-automatic pistol chambered for the .45 ACP and 10mm Auto cartridges. It is made by Kimber Manufacturing in Yonkers, New York. There are several models of Kimber Eclipse, of different sizes and with different combinations of features.
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. The M1900 was the first firearm to be chambered in .38 ACP and was the first handgun to utilize short-recoil operation.
A handgun is a firearm designed to be usable with only one hand. It is distinguished from a long gun which needs to be held by both hands and braced against the shoulder. Handguns have shorter effective ranges compared to long guns, and are much harder to shoot accurately. While most early handguns are single-shot pistols, the two most common types of handguns used in modern times are revolvers and semi-automatic pistols, although other handguns such as derringers and machine pistols also see infrequent usage.
SIG Sauer of Newington, NH United States manufactures a full line of 1911 styled handguns. The earliest models were very faithful to the John M. Browning designed Colt M1911 Pistol which became the United States standard sidearm and served in that capacity for some seven decades before being replaced by the Beretta M9 handgun.
The Kimber Custom is an M1911 style semi-automatic pistol. It is designed, manufactured, and distributed by Kimber Manufacturing, Inc. in Yonkers, New York.
The Guncrafter Industries Model No. 1 is a variant of the widely popular M1911 handgun, modified for the .50 GI cartridge. John Browning's 1911 .45 ACP has been used for many cartridges over the past century. In every instance the cartridge used a bullet with a diameter that was the same or smaller than the original .451". Both the Desert Eagle and the LAR Grizzly have been offered in cartridges of .50 caliber. Both are large cartridges requiring a large, heavy pistol.
The .41 Action Express is a pistol cartridge developed in 1986 to reproduce the performance of the .41 Magnum police load in semi-automatic pistols.
The .45 Super / 11.5x22mm is a powerful smokeless powder center fire metallic firearm cartridge developed in 1988 by Dean Grennell, a well-known writer in the firearms field as well as managing editor of Gun World magazine. It is dimensionally similar to the .45 ACP round but has a thicker case wall and is loaded to higher pressures, which offers an average 300 feet per second (91 m/s) improvement in muzzle velocity over the .45 ACP. The cartridge was co-developed by Tom Fergerson and Ace Hindman.
The Tanfoglio Combat or Standard, also known as T(A)95 or EAA Witness Steel, is a modified clone of the Czech CZ-75/CZ-85 pistol. It is made in Gardone Val Trompia near Brescia, Italy by Fratelli Tanfoglio S.N.C.
The 9×23mm Winchester is a pistol cartridge developed as a joint venture by Winchester Ammunition and Colt's Manufacturing Company. The 9×23mm Winchester has a convoluted development history, but was commercially introduced by Winchester in 1996. Marketed primarily to competition shooters as a replacement for .38 Super for International Practical Shooting Confederation, United States Practical Shooting Association and International Defensive Pistol Association competition, the cartridge failed to find significant market success despite a high-profile introduction.
The .40 Super (10.2x25mm) is a powerful automatic pistol cartridge developed through the collaboration of Fernando Coelho and Tom Burczynski and introduced by Triton Cartridge in 1996. It delivers ballistics comparable to the .41 Magnum revolver cartridge, yet functions in standard 1911s and other full-size pistols. A 5” 1911 chambered in the cartridge is capable of penetrating 46” of Clear Ballistics gel.
The Arsenal Firearms AF2011-A1 is a double-barreled, semi-automatic pistol of Italian origin. The weapon is a derivative of the M1911 pistol and the majority of internal parts including the firing pins, firing pin plates, sear groups, springs, recoil rods, and mainspring housings are interchangeable with standard M1911 replacement parts. The purpose of the AF2011A1 pistol is to increase the ballistic capability of .45 ACP without the need to develop a more powerful round. The AF2011A1 has its roots in the Grieco pistol that also came with double barrels for the same purpose.
