Funny, my PPS came with a 35-round capacity magazine, and in 7.62x25 mm caliber at that....
Posted on 09/02/2008 3:13:16 AM PDT by Pistolshot
George Kellgren and his lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank.
Funny, my PPS came with a 35-round capacity magazine, and in 7.62x25 mm caliber at that....
While the .32/380 was more of a coat pocket pistol, it was and is a reliable,concealable shooter that has impeccable lines
One of my favorites
In 1931 my paternal grandfather was involved in a running gunbattle with two armed robbers, one an excaped convict, trying to overtake his Packard and relieve him of the company payroll he was transporting. Unfortunately for the auto-bandits, he was accompanied by both his Colt Model 1908 .25 *vest pocket* auto pistol, and the then-young woman who would become my grandmother, who had accompanied him so that she could get in some out-of-town shopping.
He first became aware of their intent when they pulled up alongside him and one waved a longish-barrelled revolver at Granddad, whereupon he floored it and left them behind. Unfortunately the road wasn't suitable for sustained high speed flight, and they pulled up alongside again and the passenger fired two shots into the door of Grandad's Packard. Whereupon he emptied the six shots in his little Colt's magazine into the passenger side window and front windshield, figuring the .25 bullets wouldn't get through their door's sheet metal any better than theirs had through his. The peppering surprised them sufficiently that they dropped back again, good news since Grandda had only the magazine in the gun.
Always helpful, his lady companion retrieved his box of 50 rounds of .25 ammo from the car's glove compartment and refilled the 6-round magazine for him. And when they caught up again, he let fly with all six again, this time shattering their windshield ald letting the November breeze hit the driver in the face. And again grandmother refilled the magazine, and again he waited for them to give it another try. They didn't, and eventually he came to a section of road straight and level enough that he could outdistance them.
Once he got to town, he dropped his affianced partner off at her home and left to drop off the payroll and let the local chief of police in on the detaiuls of his adventure. It turned out there was an alert for the excaped convict, and he was asked to join in the hunt for the pair, since he could probably identify the unknown driver of the car with the little quarter-inch holes in the side and front glass. And join the posse he did...after a quick trip home to grab a sandwich, his lever-action .44 Winchester *assault rifle* and a short-barrelled 12-gauge double-barrelled shotgun. The two bad guys were caught at an auto repair shop trying to get their broken windshield replaced, which they claimed *had been broken by frozen branches*. They were probably lucky it wasn't the car of cops with Granddad that happened to be the one that found them.
A day or so after the shooting and arrest of the criminals, one of the cops who'd been with Granddad during the hunt stopped by the house and asked Granddad for the .25 *for evidence.* In return, the cop, who latrer became our county sheriff, gave him the 5-inch barrelled S&W Military and Police revolver that the criminal shooter had fired at him, telling Granddad that if he was going to carry a gun for serious work, he should carry a serious gun.
In 1968 my dad died, and the sheriff was one of his pallbearers. After the services, the sheriff took me aside and asked me what kind of handgun I favored, and I told him that I most generally carried a 9mm Browning Hi-Power, which seemed to satisfy him. And wrapped in a very old and yellowed handkerchief, he handed me Granddad's little .25 pistol, which he told me he really figured belonged back with the family.
It's not likely to be used against robbers or burglars again. But if it has to it can, and though I only have the one magazine that came with it, the box of ammunition I got for it in 1968 still has 44 additional rounds left in it.
Awesome story. That Colt is priceless, and the memory that goes with it.
Fantastic story.
I have a 1903 .32 that has been in the family since 1915.
Had to have it refinished-hard to keep the rust off it-had it done in a bead blast blue. Still carry it as an off duty gun on occassion.
Fantastic story.
My Granddad passed away two years before I was born, while at work supervising the installation of a then-new air conditioning system, refrigeration engineering being his trade. He had been delivering the payroll for a chain of southern Illinois and Indiana icehouses at the time of the story, around $10,000, a pretty good piece of change in those days.
I'd dearly have loved to have heard the story from him, but instead got it from my Grandmother, the cop who passed the pistol back into the family, and a couple of other family friends who had known him in those days.
You come from good stock. Ballsy grandfather, and even more remarkably, a ballsy grandmother. Carry their memories, pass them to your children, it’s what makes family pride.
Ironically, all three guns I tossed overboard before my 2 hour Mexican visit were Rugers. A .22 Mk 1, a SS mini-14, and a SS .357. Now I own no rugers, and don’t plan to.
Are they taking Ruger to court over patent violations?
See the post 4th from the bottom here, posted Tue Feb 05, 2008 10:07 pm.
I've not heard of legal action following [and would note that George Kellgren's name was misspelled] but it's worth noting.
You oughta hear some of the stories from my mom's side of the family. Her daddy was a participant and survivor of the Pancho Villa raid at Columbus NM in March of 1916, was a Navy enlisted man during WWI, received a post-WWI veteran's Homestead Act land grant in Wyoming from President *Silent Cal* Coolidge in the mid 1920s, then returned to New Jersey as a senior Western Electrius/ Bell Labs technician and field supervisor.
When the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, he went to the local Navy Recruiter, where he was told that despite his WWI service he was too old. Undaunted, he applied to the Army, who found out what his technical qualifications were and commissioned him as a Signal Corps lieutenant, figuring he'd be safe enough stringing field phone wires in some military backwater.
It didn't quite work out that way: he ended up in the Aleutians, which the Japanese had attacked and invaded in 1942 and spent most of that year and the next working at tossing them out and making sure they didn't come back.
Then, after the war, he went back to work for Bell Labs, and among other things, wound up as the NJ State Commander of the VFW.
Like my other Granddad, he was not a real good feller to trifle with....and neither is my kid, nor the sweet girl he picked to go through his life with, and who so far has given him a son and twin daughters.
You reckon they'll be telling stories about their crabby ol' Granddad one of these days?
Best story of the day. This should be on CNN Armed Citizen (as if). I have my Granddad’s half-empty box of .380 Kleen-Bore and his 1905 Diamond 12-gauge.
Granddad reportedly didn't think it was all that remarkable, but there is one other little facet that goes with the story. I also eventually wound up with the .38 S&W revolver that had been used to shoot at Granddad, the bluing of which was quite worn around the grips, the checkering on which was quite worn. When I got the .25 Colt, I asked the Sheriff it was in that shape when granddad had received it, thinking that maybe it had been stolen from someone who had used it considerably.
Nope, I was told, it had been nearly brand new, in pristine shape. The wear came from my own Grandfather's practice and carry of it, including a period during WWII when he was a defense plant guard force supervisor keeping nighttime watch on a major local railroad bridge and a couple of lovcal defence industries with it. I'd always figured that was no great big deal, but later found out it was his own way of doing what he could after one of his cousins was killed at Pearl Harbor aboard the USS Oklahoma, and another was in a combat-loss U.S. submarine in the Pacific. One of those defenc industries was involved in supplying something remarkably important to the conduct of the war, and there was one other little detail that affected me personally:
Initially the bridge guards had to supply their own equipment, and Granddad not only had his .44 WCF Winchester '73, but let the guard force supervisor borrow the .38, as well as supplying a shotgun for another guard. Eventually, they got WWI M1917 Enfield army rifles and pre-WWI Krags, and finally, four M50 Reising submachineguns.
Though no Japs or Krauts snuck up river to raid the local defence industries or Army Air Corps training base, one mid-November evening Granddad did fire one shot from one his Reising gun at a very suspicious-acting whitetail deer that had come to the river to drink and nibble on some of the ears of corn that had been appearing around the guard shack over the preceeding week or two. The shot was fatal, and Grandfather removed the body to his home whereupon my Grandmother performed a sort-of autopsy and other careful kitchen surgery. Thanksgiving dinner of 1944 was graced with a dandy venison dinner, with the guests of honor being my Dad, home on leave while serving as a USAAF courier, and his then-fiancée, who became my mother. And gave Granddad a round from the .45 M1911A1 he carried to replace the one with which he *had bought dinner.* It was at that dinner or shortly afterward, I was told, that my future Dad proposed to my future Mom.
Two years later, the war was over, and Granddad had a heart attack while working and was gone. Two years after that, I was born and was named for him, the third in our family to carry that name.
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