- Since 2017, US military service branches have been rolling out new M17 and M18 handguns.
- The new guns are only the latest in a history of sidearms that stretches back to the first Continental soldiers.
US soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines have quickly received the the military’s newest pistols in massive numbers.
The US Army awarded Sig Sauer the contract for the new Modular Handgun System in January 2017. By 2018, other service branches had placed their own orders for the M17 and M18 variants.
By November 2019, Sig Sauer had delivered well over 100,000 of the new sidearms. Deliveries reached 200,000 in November 2020 — the first month the pistols were sent to all military branches simultaneously.
The M17 and the compact M18 variant are the latest in a long line of sidearms that US troops have carried into battle since 1776.
The flintlocks
The American military’s early sidearms were often privately owned. Officers, able to afford more expensive weapons, usually had dueling pistols, while rank-and-file soldiers made due with whatever they could get from local gunsmiths. This led to an array of armaments with varying calibers and qualities.
The Continental Congress tried to get a standard sidearm to the Continental Army. The pistol it chose was a direct copy of the British Model 1760 flintlock pistol. The Congress bought 2,000 of the pistols, dubbed the Model 1775, which were made by the Rappahannock Forge in Virginia.
The .62-caliber smoothbore single-shot flintlock, which included an iron or ash ramrod under the barrel, is considered the first US Army-issued handgun.
The pistol was well received during the Revolution. After the war, a new version, known as the Model 1805, was made at Harper’s Ferry. This flintlock saw service in the War of 1812 and remained the US Army’s standard-issue pistol for over 50 years.
Two Model 1805s are featured on the US Army Military Police Corps insignia, and a similar pistol can be seen on the US Navy SEAL emblem.
Colt revolvers
In 1836, inventor Samuel Colt revolutionized warfare when his first revolver design was patented.
The new weapon allowed a soldier to fire six bullets in as many seconds without pausing to reload. It also used percussion caps, which allowed soldiers to shoot reliably in wet weather.
Colt revolvers were important weapons in the US arsenal for much of the 19th century, with at least four designs — the Colt 1847, the Colt M1848 Dragoon, the Colt Army Model 1860, and the Colt Single Action Army — seeing service.
The Colt 1847, known as the “Walker” for the Texas Ranger who helped design it, was based on previous Colt designs in service with the Republic of Texas and became the first mass-produced revolver in US service.
The Walker and the Dragoon, another .44-caliber revolver adopted by US Army cavalry and mounted-infantry units, saw service in the Mexican-American War and on both sides of the US Civil War.
The most popular Colt design of the 19th century was the Colt Army Model 1860, a .44-caliber revolver adopted just before the Civil War. It was used in large numbers by the Union and the Confederacy — 130,000 were built for the Union alone, and over 200,000 had been made by the time production ceased in 1873.
The invention of metallic cartridges again revolutionized firearms, eliminating the need for percussion caps, a separate powder container, and ramrods. Colt’s most well-known model featuring this innovation was the Colt Single Action Army.
The new revolver fired a .45-caliber center-fire cartridge and was a huge success, becoming a standard sidearm for the US for more than 20 years. It saw action in every US war and military campaign until 1905 and was used extensively on the US Western frontier by bandits and government personnel alike, earning it nicknames like “the Peacemaker.”
Some soldiers, such as Gen. George S. Patton, carried their personal Colt SAAs with them as late as World War II.
The last revolver in US service was the M1917, a six-shot pistol made by Colt and Smith & Wesson and introduced for interim use. After World War I, M1917s were used mostly by support units, though they again saw frontline service with the Vietnam War’s tunnel rats.
M1911
In 1911, the US military adopted what would become one of the most iconic firearms in history — the M1911.
Designed by firearms legend John Browning, the .45 ACP pistol was a semiautomatic, single-action, recoil-operated pistol capable of firing seven rounds from a magazine held in the grip of the gun.
The M1911 was one of the most popular weapons in American history. It was the standard-issue sidearm, with few changes, for all branches of the US military for more than 70 years and saw action in almost every American conflict during that period, including both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and the US invasion of Grenada in 1983.
The M1911 was officially replaced in 1985, but a number of special-operations units carried them into 21st century. It was so popular that the Marine Corps brought it back into limited service in 2012 in the form of the M45A1 CQBP.
M9
In 1986, the military selected the Italian Beretta 92 as the new sidearm for all branches.
Lightweight and modern, the pistol used the smaller 9 x 19 mm round, enabling it to carry 15 rounds in the magazine, double that of the M1911, but at the cost of less penetration power.
In service as the M9, the pistol was used by US troops for 30 years and saw action in Yugoslavia, the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, and other operations during the War on Terror.
The Pentagon bought more than 600,000 M9s, but they had reliability problems and had gained a bad reputation by the 2010s. In 2015, the US Army and Air Force began searching for a replacement.
M17/M18
In January 2017, Sig Sauer’s P320 was announced as the winner of the XM17 Modular Handgun System competition. The pistol has two variants: the full-length M17 and the compact M18.
The Army received its first M17s in June 2017. The Air Force began its procurement in June 2019, and the Marine Corps started officially fielding the M18 in September.
The pistols can be configured for different missions and have a rail on which accessories like lasers and optical sights can be mounted. Their standard capacity of 17 9-mm rounds can be increased to 21 with an extended magazine.
The Pentagon plans to buy 420,000 M17s and M18s for $580 million over a 10-year period.
From this
to UGH this! Grumpy
Obviously, I liked the guns.
Perhaps my favorite, based purely on aesthetics, was the pepperbox revolver. If you’re unfamiliar with it, think of a Gatling gun in your hand and you’ve got a good idea of what it looked like, though the operation was very, very different.
The guns aren’t really a thing in this day and age, yet apparently, you can still get arrested for having one in California.
Just after 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, officials with the Redding Police Department said their officers were called to the Burger King off of Eureka Way for a report of a man seen walking around with a handgun on his bag. Officers said they responded to the area and contacted the suspect, identified as Ryan Battles.
After searching Battles’s bag, police said they found an antique black-powdered pepperbox revolver, black powder and iron pellets.
Of course, the media called it a “musket-style pistol,” which makes little sense.
Battles was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.
Now, with all that said, yes, there is more to the story. For one thing, police believe Battles stole the gun in the first place. Apparently, he’s not much of a history buff or something. Either way, if the gun is in fact stolen, I’m all for putting Battles under the jail, metaphorically, of course.
I cannot abide a thief, but especially not a gun thief.
Yet I can’t help but chuckle about someone ultimately being arrested for carrying an 18th-century revolver, something not that different from what anti-gunners routinely tell us the Second Amendment is really protecting.
Again, Battles isn’t actually charged with having a stolen gun. They just think it’s stolen. While they’re probably right, they still arrested a man for carrying an antique, muzzle-loaded revolver that apparently wasn’t even loaded.
Only in California.
OK, not just in California, of course, but you know what I mean.
Still, if they believe it to be legitimately stolen, they need evidence that it wasn’t his gun. I don’t know that they have that, which also means it’s possible that Battles is innocent of that accusation.
Either way, though, this looks like it could be a surprisingly interesting case. I clicked on it because the headline looked weird and I’m a fan of pepperbox pistols, so seeing the picture made it obvious that I’d talk about this one.
But there are a lot of layers to this one that hasn’t really been uncovered as of this writing. I’d say it’ll be interesting to see how all of this shakes out, but it’s California. Even if the gun belonged to Battles lawfully, he’s still getting prosecuted for not having a carry permit at a minimum. As such, we know how it will ultimately shake out. It should still be pretty fascinating to watch in that trainwreck kind of way.
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Hey its Hump Day!!!!!!!!! NSFW
I was sitting at the shooting bench in Lander, Wyo., to check my rifle’s zero before the next morning’s hunt. I was there for the One Shot Antelope Hunt—a prestigious event with a dignified provenance—with teammates Larry Weishuhn and Chris Sells (of HeymUSA) when Chris and I began comparing notes. He was shooting the Heym SR30 in 7mm Remington Magnum, while I had the Savage Impulse Mountain Hunter in Hornady’s new 7mm PRC, so the inevitable comparisons were made in short order. Our conversation convinced me this would make a good topic for our “Head to Head” series, as the 7mm bore diameter is one of the most popular all-around choices for North American hunting, and the magnum cartridges are surely a favorite as well.
One is a newbie, and one ranks among the most popular hunting cartridges sold to this day, but both have appreciable characteristics. Both have the ability to launch even the heaviest 7mm bullets at very respectable velocities, and both are perfectly suited to take the vast majority of the world’s game animals, save the biggest and most dangerous species.
Starting with the older design, the 7mm Remington Magnum reared its head in 1962, and quickly gained a foothold among the hunting community. Following the concept of the shortened Holland & Holland belted case, the 7mm Remington Magnum was designed to fit in a standard long-action receiver, and bears a strong resemblance to the .275 H&H Magnum which preceded it by a half-century, albeit at higher velocities. Following the successes of Winchester’s .264 Magnum, .338 Magnum and .458 Magnum released in the latter-half of the 1950s, Remington’s 7mm cartridge showed the major shortcoming of the .264 Winchester Magnum: bullet weight.
Shortening the H&H case to a length of 2.500 inches, and using a 25-degree shoulder, the 7mm Remington Magnum has an overall cartridge length of 3.290 inches. Though it is designed to headspace off the belt of brass, handloaders can improve concentricity by using the shoulder for headspacing. Driving a 140-grain bullet to a velocity of 3150 fps, and the heavy 175-grain bullet to 2800 to 2850 fps, the 7mm Remington Magnum offers a wide selection of bullet types and weights, all at recoil levels which are tolerable for a magnum cartridge in a standard-weight rifle.
There are those who feel the 7mm Rem. is a bit overbore, and that the bore diameter is better served by the .280 Remington case, or perhaps the .280 Ackley Improved variant, but there are also thousands of hunters who sling a 7mm Rem. Mag. rifle over their shoulder each season and get to work. It can be a wonderfully accurate cartridge, often delivering sub-MOA groups, and the energy figures generated by the cartridge make it suitable to almost all game on the North American continent.
While it has been used to take the huge coastal brown bears, I feel comfortable saying that there might be better tools for that job, and by that I mean a bigger bore diameter and heavier bullets. However, the 7mm Remington Magnum is right there near the top of the list as an all-around choice for the hunter who wants a cartridge for pronghorn antelope, distant Coues deer and Dall sheep, as well as whitetail bucks, bull elk and moose.
Fast forward 60 years and you’ll find Hornady releasing their new 7mm PRC, part of the Precision Rifle Cartridge line. Where the earlier 6.5mm PRC was designed to fit in a short-action receiver, and the beefy .300 PRC needs a magnum-length receiver (though some may argue a long-action will work with some modification), the 7mm PRC sits right in the middle, being completely at home in a long-action receiver. Using the same case-head diameter as the H&H case (0.532 inches), the PRC family has dropped the belt, instead relying on the 30-degree shoulder for headspacing. The case measures 2.280 inches, leaving plenty of room to seat the long, sleek bullets, while maintain that 3.290-inch cartridge overall length.
The concept of the shorter case/longer bullet is certainly gaining ground—consider the popularity of the 6.5 Creedmoor over the .260 Remington—and has been applied to the 7mm PRC. Some accuracy hounds insist that the best performance comes from a cartridge which can have its bullet seated so that the base of the projectile does not extend below the junction of the case neck and shoulder; while I cannot refute that, I have seen the 7mm Remington Magnum and .300 Winchester Magnum print some seriously tight groups and consistent velocities, despite their bullets extending was down into to the case.
What I can say based upon my experiences with the 7mm PRC is that it has shown wonderful accuracy. At the time of this writing, there are three loads available from Hornady—the 180-grain ELD Match at 2975 fps, the 175-grain ELD-X at 3000 fps and the 160-grain CX monometal at just over 3000 fps. I took my Wyoming pronghorn twenty minutes after legal light, at 330 yards without issue, and the following week took a black bear boar in British Columbia with the same ELD-X load at 75 yards. The cartridge makes a great choice for the hunter, especially if you like the concept of using your hunting cartridge as a long-range target choice.
Pitting the two against one another, quite obviously you will find a huge range of ammo selections for the older 7mm Remington Magnum, while the brand-spanking-new 7mm PRC is, for the time being, proprietary. The difference in recoil between the two is negligible, and in a proper fitting rifle is manageable without the need for a muzzle brake or mercury recoil reducer. The 7mm PRC does offer higher velocity figures—running at a higher pressure—though many feel that the 7mm Remington Magnum has plenty of velocity. The PRC is most certainly a better choice as a long-range target cartridge; I had the opportunity to use the cartridge in a Remington Model 700 at the FTW Ranch in Barksdale, Texas, punching steel out to 1,400 yards with repeatable results.
I actually like the 7mm PRC better than I do the 7mm Remington Magnum, for the slightly shorter case, and for the tighter twist rate used in the two rifles I’ve shot (1:8” for the 7mm PRC versus 1:9” or 1:10” for the belted Remington Magnum). Looking at factory ammunition, the PRC should give better concentricity—headspacing off the shoulder rather than the belt—and therefore better accuracy, but those benefits might not be as apparent at common hunting distances.
The reloaders will appreciate the longer case life of the beltless PRC case. While only time will tell how the 7mm PRC will be received by the hunting community, and I also doubt many hunters will be selling their 7mm Remington Magnum to replace it with the 7mm PRC, I do feel that new shooters looking for an all-around cartridge in the 7mm bore diameter will take a long, hard look at Hornady’s new design. Of the PRC family, I like the 7mm variant best, and my experiences with it have been nothing but positive, whether I was hunting game animals or steel targets. Just as the .300 Winchester Magnum didn’t quite kill off the .30-06 Springfield, I feel confident saying that the 7mm PRC might not kill off the 7mm Remington Magnum, at least not anytime soon.
There have been a number of “revisionist” cartridges—as I mentioned in the comparison of the .260 Remington and 6.5 Creedmoor—which have offered a shorter case and/or tighter twist rate in order to optimize downrange ballistics, and I feel the 7mm PRC fits this category well. I’ve had some folks state that the belted cartridges of the 20th century are going the way of the dodo, but I don’t believe that to be the case either; few who have relied on the 7mm Remington Magnum, .300 Winchester Magnum or .375 H&H Magnum for decades are going to retire them just because of a belt of brass. However, I’m going to keep an eye on the PRC cartridges over the next few years, and I’ll make this prediction: if ammunition (in both quantity and selection) becomes and remains readily available, these cartridges will rise to the top.