Happy Birthday John Moses Browning

[txradioguy]

January 23, 1855 – November 26, 1926

Today we celebrate the birthday of John Moses Browning, and his Gospel. Sit you down and harken.

1 In the beginning was the 1911, and the 1911 was THE pistol, and it was good. And behold the Lord said, “Thou shalt not muck with my disciple John’s design for it is good and it workith. For John made the 1911, and lo all of his weapons, from the designs which I, the Lord, gave him upon the mountain.”

2 “And shouldst thou muck with it, and hang all manner of foul implements upon it, and profane its internal parts, thou shalt surely have malfunctions, and in the midst of battle thou shalt surely come to harm.”

3 And as the ages passed men in their ignorance and arrogance didst forget the word of the Lord and began to profane the 1911. The tribe of the gamesman did place recoil spring guides and extended slide releases upon the 1911 and their metal smiths didst tighten the tolerances and alter parts to their liking, their clearness of mind being clouded by lust.

4 Their artisans did hang all manner of foul implements upon the 1911 and did so alter it that it became impractical to purchase. For lo, the artisans didst charge a great tax upon the purchasers of the 1911 so that the lowly field worker could not afford one. And the profaning of the internal parts didst render it unworkable when the dust of the land fell upon it, and these profaners didst try and fit more rounds of ammunition into the magazines than the holy number of seven, appointed for the .45.

5 And lo, they didst install adjustable sights, which are an abomination unto the Lord. For they doth break and lose their zero when thou dost need true aim. And those who have done so will be slain in great numbers by their enemies in the great battle.

6 And it came to pass that the Lord didst see the abomination wrought by man and didst cause, as he had warned, fearful malfunctions to come upon the abominations and upon the artisans who thought they could do no wrong.

7 Seeing the malfunctions and the confusion of men, the lord of the underworld did see an opportunity to further ensnare man and didst bring forth pistols made of plastic, whose form was such that they looked and felt like a brick, yet the eyes of man being clouded, they were consumed by the plastic pistol and did buy vast quantities of them.

8 And being a deceitful spirit, the lord of the underworld did make these plastic pistols, filled with tiny springs and parts that were easily lostc, and they were unmenable to the artisans of earth so they were unable to muck much with the design, and lo these pistols did appear to function.

9 And the evil one also brought forth pistols in which the trigger didst both cock and fire them and which require a “dingus” to make them appear safe.
10 But man being stupid did not understand these new pistols and didst proceed to shoot themselves with the plastic pistol and with the trigger cocking pistols for lo their manual of arms required great intelligence which man had long since forsaken. Yet man continue to gloat over these new pistols blaming evil forces for the negligent discharges which they themselves had committed.

11 And when man had been totally ensnared with the plastic pistol, the lord of the underworld didst cause a plague of the terrible Ka-Boom to descend upon man and the plastic pistols delivered their retribution upon men. And there was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth in the land.

12 Then seeing that the eyes of man were slowly being opened and that man was truly sorrowful for his sinful misdeeds, the Lord did send his messengers in the form of artisans who did hear and obey the teachings of the prophet and who didst restore the profaned 1911s to their proper configuration, and lo, to the amazement of men they didst begin to work as the Lord had intended.

13 And the men of the land didst drive out the charlatans and profaners from the land, and there was joy and peace in the land, except for the evil sprits which tried occasionally to prey on the men and women of the land and who were sent to the place of eternal damnation b by the followers of John.

Now go ye forth and sin no more.

Amen.

[Elderberry]

One of the longest-serving handguns of all time was the final work of the most prolific gun designer of all time. The Browning Hi Power pistol was the last handgun designed by John Moses Browning, American weapon designer extraordinaire, whose inventions are still popular more than ninety years after his death. The Hi Power was arguably the first of the “Wonder Nines”—simple, accurate nine millimeter handguns with large capacity magazines that dominate the handgun market today.

The son of a Mormon pioneer, John Moses Browning learned the craft of gunsmithing in his father’s gun shop. Browning built his first firearm in 1868 at the age of 13, the first of a long line of handguns, long guns and machine guns. Browning designed more than thirty firearms, with the Winchester 1885 single shot rifle, Remington Model 8, Browning Auto 5, Colt Woodsman, Colt 1903, Colt 1911, Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) and M2 Heavy Machine Gun. The latter is still in use by the U.S. military to this day. Browning also invented a number of gun calibers, including the .380 ACP, .45 ACP, and .50 BMG.

Although Browning is today best known for the Colt 1911A1 handgun and the M2 “Ma Deuce” heavy machine gun, his final pistol design was decades ahead of the competition. The Browning Hi Power handgun was designed by Browning in the late 1920s in response to a competition for the new French Army pistol, which was dubbed the Grande Puissance ("high power") 35. Browning was commissioned by Belgian arms manufacturer Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre—FN for short—to design a new pistol. That pistol would later be known as the Hi Power (HP) or GP35 for short.

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The GP35 was without the technical benefit of Browning’s intellectual property in the 1911A1, whose rights had been sold to Colt. Instead of the hinged link which effects barrel/slide recoil on the 1911A1, the GP35 used a shaped cam on the underside of the barrel to do the same job. Field stripping was markedly easier than the 1911A1, nearly on par with today’s simple to disassemble Glocks and Sig Sauers. The handgun was designed to accept an optional wooden carbine stock and had an unusually large (for its time) magazine of 13 rounds, something that keeps the GP35 competitive with the handguns of today.

The GP35 was adopted by the Belgian Army and a handful of smaller armies, including the Lithuanian army. But upon Belgium’s defeat in World War II the plans for the handgun were spirited out of the country. The machinery and tooling to produce the handguns was started up again and the GP35 was one of several handguns carried by German troops, in particular the SS and German fallschirmjäger parachute units. The plans for the GP35 were used by Canadian manufacturer Inglis to produce guns for Nationalist China, and later Canadian and British paratroopers and special forces.

After the war the GP35 was more commonly known as the Hi Power, and the design’s popularity exploded off the charts. It was, by far, the most common handgun of the postwar era until the end of the Cold War. Over ninety countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe purchased, licensed or imitated Browning’s handgun as a military or police issue weapon. It was a common sidearm in NATO during the Cold War, and was even entered in the 1979 competition to replace the Colt M1911A1 in U.S. military service—another John Browning design. It was carried by Israeli paratroopers on the raid on Entebbe, the Kuwaiti Army during the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and Rhodesian troops fighting ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas during the 1970s. The Hi Power was carried by both sides in the 1982 Falklands War, by British and Argentine troops alike.

The Hi Power’s design, although ninety years old, is similar to the so-called “Wonder Nines” of the early 1980s. A simple to disassemble, reliable semi automatic pistol with a large capacity nine millimeter magazine, the Hi Power is similar to the Sig Sauer P226, Glock 17, Beretta 92 and the Smith & Wesson Model 59. The Hi Power is still sold today, although ironically it costs considerably more than the generation of handguns it influenced. John Moses Browning’s final handgun was decades ahead of its time.

[txradioguy]

I actually got to shoot a Hi-Power in Afghanistan.  The Aussies are still carrying them as their sidearm.

[skeeter]

Firing an M2 is on my bucket list.

[txradioguy]

Firing an M2 is on my bucket list.

It's a rush that's for sure.