With “John Wick: Chapter 4” scheduled to be released this week, I thought it would be interesting to show just how far the tactical-practical shooting concept has come in the past 40 years. If you go with the aspect of mid-1980s staples, I came up with a list of pro-tips and mods from yesteryear that often still make their rounds today.
More in my column at Guns.com.
Colt really pioneered the modern small-frame revolver when it introduced the Detective Special, fundamentally an abbreviated Police Positive Special with a 2-inch barrel, in 1927. Introduced at the height of Prohibition and the era of the great automobile-borne gangsters of the “Roaring Twenties,” the Colt Detective soon became a hit and was successful enough to remain in production until 1995, which is one heck of a run.
Immediately after World War II, Colt pioneered making handguns with such “Atomic Age” aerospace materials as early aluminum. With the material dubbed “Coltalloy” at the time, Colt introduced an aluminum-framed variant of the popular Detective Special in 1950 named the Cobra– the company’s very first of an extensive line of “Snake Guns.”
The same footprint as the 21-ounce all-steel Detective, the Cobra lost more than a quarter-pound of weight, hitting the scales closer to 15 ounces with the same 6-shot capacity.
In 1955, Colt responded to the newly introduced and popular S&W Chief’s Special by moving to make the Cobra even more compact. Taking the aluminum-framed 6-shooter and trimming the length of the grip frame down while keeping everything else intact, the Agent was born.
More in my column at Guns.com.
Atlas Obscura has a great piece up on an iconic gun-slinging NYPD Detective, “Deadshot” Mary Shanley. An Irish emigrant who joined the force in 1931, Shanley was apparently a fan of the .32-caliber Colt Detective (as shown below) and off-body purse carry (also shown below) but not of trigger D (hey it was the 1930s).
She was a colorful character who apparently pulled her piece a lot in the rough and tumble streets that were the Diesel crime noir era, although she suffered at least one apparent negligent discharge (while in a bar off duty, see trigger D above).
Still, the 5’6″ 160-pound tough Irish cop was formidable and something of a press darling, as her Wiki entry notes more than a dozen articles on her from the NYT and Brooklyn Eagle and she has inspired at least one off-Broadway play.
From the AO piece:
During the first half of the 20th century, policewomen in America often worked undercover, on so-called “women’s beats.” “They are called upon regularly to trail or trap mashers, shoplifters, pickpockets and fortune-tellers; to impersonate drug addicts and hardened convicts, to expose criminal medical practice, find lost persons, guide girls in trouble, break up fake matrimonial bureaus and perform special detective duty,” wrote the New York Times.
For most of her career, Mary would be assigned to the NYPD pickpocket squad. By the time of her retirement in 1957, she would be a first grade detective, with over 1,000 arrests under her belt.
Twenty years before Smith and Wesson gave the world their Chief’s Special, Colt pioneered the snub-nosed revolver. A handy six-shooter with a 2-inch barrel, the Colt gun was revolutionary for its day and is still viable nearly a century later. Colt called it the Detective Special.
In the 1920s, a new wave of Prohibition criminals such as John Dillinger, Machinegun Kelly, and Clyde Barrow captured the public’s imagination. They also scared the crap out of law enforcement. With these criminals being equipped with high-powered Thompson subguns bought over the counter, coupled with weapons stolen from National Guard armories, law enforcement needed to upgrade their sidearms. Plainclothes detectives either had to carry full sized revolvers or pistols, or were forced to tote small and ineffective European revolvers in tiny calibers such as the Velo Dog. What they needed was a handgun capable of being carried concealed, yet still chambered in an effective caliber.
Enter the Colt Detective…
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk
Snubbies have long been the go-to firearm choice for those pistoleros who desired a small and concealable handgun that could still deliver 5-6 hard-hitting full sized rounds at close range.
I take a look at the evolutionary process this week in my column at Firearms Talk
