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You may know Mauser’s excellent and enduring bolt-action rifles (or at least their properties which have been copied worldwide since the 1880s), but their pistols are less known. Further, their elegant “Hahn Selbstspanner Pistole,” or HSc, is a working piece of art.

Why was it made?

In the mid-1930s Mauser, long the go-to rifle maker in the world, didn’t have much to offer in the handgun category. Sure, at the turn of the Century their Broomhandle C96 and Luger P08 guns were seen as innovative and their M1910/14/34 pocket pistols were nice, but all of the above were increasingly dated and surpassed by more modern guns such as competitor Walther’s excellent PP/PPK line as well as their looming MP/AP pistol which became the vaunted P-38 (although Mauser ironically made some 323,000 P-38s under contract in WWII).

Facing block obsolescence, especially in the realm of sidearms for issue to police and military officers, Mauser hitched its handgun hopes to the new HSc.

Read more in my column at Firearms Talk