Tag Archives: Browning Baby

Is that a 9mm in your pocket? 1986 edition

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While there is a number of very handy and downright pocketable little 9mm pistols today, back in the mid-1980s, Detonics was the main name in the game.

Super compact semi-auto pistols at the time were far from a radical concept, as guns like the assorted Browning Baby and Colt Vest Pocket had been on the market since the 1900s. However, they were more on the pipsqueak level, chambered in .25 ACP. Larger format pistols like the Walther PP/PPK brought .32 ACP and .380 ACP to the table, but if you wanted something with a bit more ballistic performance, you had to cash in your savings bonds and go for a Semmerling or an ASP, both of which were in extremely limited, almost underground, production.

Enter the Detonics Pocket 9.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Oh, Baby

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The very cute Browning Baby had a lot going for it when it was introduced in 1931. Just 9-ounces, the pipsqueak gatt was reliable, made of steel, and could fit in a pocket, and allow 6+1 shots to the user.

On the downside, it was chambered in the downright lilliputian 6.35mm (.25ACP), which is still better than a poke it the eye, but not by much.

Nonetheless, it gained popularity over time. Prior to WWII some 50,147 of these guns were produced by FN in the decade before the assembly line was interrupted by the Germans– and in return, some of those early guns made it to the hands of the Resistance, where their size came in handy

Then, after the U.S. market opened up and the guns were sold there via the Browning Arms Company in 1954, the gun really caught on, with over 13,000 shipping to the states that year alone. By 1968, production had ramped up to more than 42,000 Babies per year.

Then came the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the wheels fell off.

More in my column at Guns.com