laststandonzombieisland

In the 1990s, the new country of Croatia was in a pickle. Cut off from access to foreign weapons and facing a very well-armed Yugoslav military, the little republic was in dire need of modern small arms of every sort. That’s where some local ingenuity produced a host of homemade but forward thinking firearms– to include the Agram.

Back in the (former) People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, there was a group of engineers in the state of Croatia who banded together to form a company called IM Metal just as the hard-working Croats decided to pack up their stuff and break away from being under the Yugo banner. This was in the early 1990s.

The IM Metal gang built a series of pistols for the young and embattled Croatian military, the Walter P-38-ish PHP  and the SIG P220-ish HS95. They later turned around and made the HS2000, which we know today as the Springfield X  D.

However, there were other Croatian arms makers hard at work to construct guns for the needy new Croatian military who was gun-poor due to a UN weapons embargo on all sides of the conflict that was the Yugoslav Civil War and the Croatian War of Independence. One was the firm of Precizna Mehanika (PM) which was made up largely of the family run gun shop of Ivan (John) Vugrek in the mountain town of Novi Golubovec.

Moreover, John came up with a sweet little room broom.

Read the rest in my column at X  D Forums