"Baby" Browning

[drjoker]

Andy's right. Those old auto pistols don't have a firing pin/hammer block safety. I would carefully shoot them, but I wouldn't carry them. If I did carry one, I'd carry one with ZERO rounds in the chamber. I'd load the chamber with a snap cap, just in case.

The only AD (not ND) I ever experienced in my life was with one of those.

A little old guy was shooting at the range I was running and said that he had a problem getting his pistol to fire and wanted some help. I trotted down to the bay, picked it up off the bench (pointing downrange and finger off the trigger) and popped out the magazine.

BANG!

All that's holding the striker back on the Baby Browning is a little chunk of metal sticking out underneath - it had worn down and must have been quivering right on the edge of firing when the slight vibration of removing the mag allowed it to slip off and fire.

Believe me, I blessed my father for his lessons in safe gun-handling - especially his insistence that a weapon be kept pointing in a safe direction before doing anything else.

Have a good look at yours before shooting it - the striker is a small hollow cylinder with the firing pin at one end and the relevant tab underneath - make sure it's not worn, please.