End Of An Era

By James Rummel

Below is the trailer for the 1973 movie Serpico, and it has a line or two about a gun that the main character is buying.

The gun that the hero hippy cop was buying was a Browning Hi Power, and the guy doing the selling certainly seems to be impressed the firepower it commands.

“Takes a 14 shot clip! You expecting an army?”

Not exactly accurate. The magazine at the time held 13 rounds of 9mm Parabellum, with one in the chamber. Fourteen total, not 14 in the magazine.

Still, consider the times. Police forces at the time were wedded to revolvers, six rounds in the cylinder and then one had to go through a long reloading process. To most Americans in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the only autoloaders that existed in their minds were 1911‘s. Seven round magazines, and then you were out. The Hi Power must have seemed like a monster on steroids.

Originally designed by famed firearms inventor John Moses Browning, the same guy who invented the aforementioned 1911, the Hi Power was not put …Read the Rest

Source:: Hell In a Handbasket