What did the rest of the world use?

T

TxFlyFish

New member
In the decades that colt and s&w revolvers dominated LE and private markets what did the rest of the world use? I am pretty sure Europeans had their own manufacturers, we just don't see them being discussed a lot. Surely not everyone was wielding korths and manurhins :eek:
 
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Many actually used Colt and S&W. They were big sellers overseas. Brittan had some manufacturers (like Webley) and Belgium had a bunch of them (many were total garbage). Germany had some too. There were other foreign commercial manufacturers as well but none that I know of were as big as webley. There were a number of foreign military manufacturers that made handguns for military use (i.e. Japan, Russia, etc).
 
Actually an interesting question that I don't think has been asked in exactly that way.

Revolvers the law enforcement and private commercial until, oh, probably until the 1980s, maybe earlier, maybe later, in the United States. Revolvers were also commonly used even later in Great Britain and Commonwealth countries for police purpose. They were likewise commonly used more than automatics in Latin America.

In Europe, however, I'd say that automatics quickly became more popular than revolvers almost as soon as they were introduced, though older revolvers remained in use, even in the military.
 
Western Europe mainy used 380 and 32 Auto pistols before the terrorist attacks in the 70s. In Germany, the Walther PP and PPKs were probably the most often seen pistols used by the Polizei. It was probably pretty rare to see a Bobby in Britain with any weapon in the time frame you are asking about. I don't know about the Eastern Block as the Wall was still up and an American soldier just didn't go over there too often. If I were to guess, I'd say that they used the Makorov and the TT over in the Warsaw Pact countries.

By the 80s, many of the NATO countries' police foreces had updated to 9mm semi-autos and submachine guns became much more common around airports and train stations.

I'm currently in Europe and the belt guns all seem to be semi-autos and often represent the country they are carried in.
 
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Understand that the concept of an armed police force is a relatively new one. Even in the U.S., armed police were rare in large cities like New York and Chicago prior to the 1890's. I'd venture to guess that the majority of European police forces prior to the 1920's and 1930's were either completely unarmed, or the individual officer was armed with a handgun that he provided himself, most likely a small revolver that could be carried in an overcoat pocket.

Remember too that the need for an armed police force was somewhat less in Europe because many European countries used their militaries more liberally for police actions than the U.S. has. The thought process seemed to be that if a problem was so dire that it couldn't be solved with a whistle and truncheon then it called for a soldier rather than a policeman.

Once European cops were armed, it was largely with small .32 or .380 handguns. Throughout the first half of the 20th Century, the policeman's gun in Europe was viewed more as a badge of authority and last-ditch self-defense weapon rather than as a serious fighting tool. This began to change in the 1960's and 1970's when the nature of crime became more violent and terrorism began to be more prominent. Once European police realized how ill-prepared they were for violent criminals, they began to switch over to the same types of handguns that were in use by their militaries: primarily 9mm semi-automatics.

The two European countries which held on to revolvers the longest were the United Kingdom and France. The ever-conservative British had a long history with Webley, Enfield, Pryse, Trantier and other revolvers and held on to them for decades after other nations switched to semi-autos (the Brits were one of the last countries to move away from revolvers as their standard-issue military handgun). The French were particularly enamored with American police and the .357 Magnum cartridge in particular. French police were primarily armed with S&W, Ruger, and Manurhin revolvers well into the 1980's and early 1990's.
 
wow what a wealth of info! really puts things in perspective. I wrongly assumed that would have the same gun practices/notions as we have here. thanks for sharing!
 
If you travel the old highways ...in the more rural states in the US ...like in the state region in the west/midwest of Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Nebraska...and stop for coffee or lunch in some of those small towns....you'll still see a lot of S&W revolvers being carrier by law enforcement officers...at least in those states...

Not everywhere ...has gone to high capacity poly frame semi-autos as the norm...
 
Prior to the turn of the 1900's, European countries varied between having local or state police departments or national para-military police.

In Europe police did tend to always be armed, for a number of reasons.
One was the pistol was more a badge of office and authority. The policeman represented the king or ruler, and as such, following ancient tradition, the local symbol of the king would be armed.
For another, the policeman was the first defense against rebellion and needed to be armed to maintain control.
The pistol as a tool of actual law enforcement wasn't what it was in America.
Policemen seldom had to shoot criminals.

Up until the late 1890's most European police were armed with larger military type revolvers, often the same as the countries military were armed with.
This was in keeping with the para-military aspect of police.
Since most countries had a proprietary military revolver, that's what the police carried.

Starting in the late 1890's the automatic pistol began to become available and European police immediately began to convert to the automatic. Some like Germany and Switzerland continued to carry the same pistol as the military, in their cases, the Luger.
Many countries police broke with tradition and countries like Spain and France adopted small caliber .32 or .380 automatics, most often the Browning pistol or various copies or versions.

It was during this time of civic upheaval and anarchist and communists threats that more plain clothes detectives began to appear. Where in the past almost all police wore some sort of uniform, the plain clothes detective was better able to remain unnoticed by potential revolutionaries, and they were issued with the small .32 and .380 autos as befitting a non-uniformed officer.

In most of Europe the revolver was considered obsolete as a police weapon by the end of WWI.
At the end of WWII, the US gave the German and French police large quantities of fine S&W .38 Special revolvers, often the S&W Victory Model.
The Germans discarded the S&W's as soon as Walther was able to begin producing PP, PPK, and P-38 pistols in France in the early 1950's.

The French so disliked these S&W revolvers that they almost immediately trade them off and bought very inferior Spanish Ruby type .32 autos.
The fact that these cheap autos were none to reliable not mattering to the French cops. Better an auto then a revolver.

One of the few times the revolver made a reappearance in Europe was with some special French police who used revolvers for a short time. The first of these were built by Manurhin using frames supplied by Ruger, then revolvers entirely designed and built by Manurhin.

The German GSG-9 anti-terrorist special force used a variety of S&W revolvers for a time.
They started out with the S&W Model 60, then with some real world experience with the .38 Special and recommendations from SEAL Team six, the S&W Model 66 with a 2 1/2" barrel was used as an assault weapon for airplane cockpit take-downs.

The bottom line was that the European police bought into the automatic pistol early on, and were satisfied with calibers considered under-powered in America.
Since the police pistol was very seldom ever used they probably didn't need much more until the heavily armed terrorists of the 1960's made shoot-outs a real threat.

On the other hand, America had a long tradition of gunfighters, and the more individualist less willing to submit to authority of American's gave us a long history of police needing to have powerful, reliable pistols, and to be ready to use it fast.
Due to the early less than reliable automatics, and simple tradition, the revolver maintained it's primacy in America until the more prevalent violence of the 1960's and 70's led police to decide they were out-gunned and needed automatics.
 
Was in Spain recently and saw lots of S&W and Ruger revolvers in small town police holsters still, though 9mm Sigs are the new "thing" for the national police and large cities.
 
Besides the already mentioned things, one reason the European police (Germany in particular) were satisfied with small autopistols is the common carry of submachineguns.

I was in Europe for a while in the mid-late 70s, during the terrorist troubles then, and it was extremely rare to see a single Polezei. They were virtually always in pairs, one carrying a Walther 9mm (P1 usually) and the other an H&K SMG (MP5 usually).

The Italians used Berettas, not sure about the French & Spanish, but I'm sure they use their equivalent. Generations of American police relied on a shotgun, when more firepower was needed. The Europeans go to a SMG.

We have learned, and many depts today supplement the shotgun with FA calability, either SMG or assault rifle, for those times when the regular sidearm isn't considered enough. We also have police snipers today.

SWAT teams were not common when the revolver was king among LEOs. Military and paramilitary tactics were not the usual thing.
 
British police almost never carried firearms until the 1920's and even then a handgun was not routinely carried. They would be issued only for a specific purpose, then turned in. The explanation, beloved by police and the press alike, was that the English criminal was "sporting" and would not arm himself if the police did not. (That did not prevent those "sportsmen" from imposing the most vicious cruelty on innocent persons, something the English police treat with great good humor.)

That idea continues to prevail, while armed crime in Britain increases and courts become ever more lenient with career criminals. Perhaps that has changed with the recent wave of terrorism, but ordinary murderers and robbers simply have no fear of any real punishment.

At one time in the 1980's, some British police did carry firearms on routine patrol, but that created such a public outcry from the brainwashed public and press that the practice was stopped.

A big factor in Britain is the press, totally against the ownership or use of guns of any kind, by anyone, even the police. Police using guns have been headlined as "murderers" and "brutes" and worse. And unfortunately, they sometimes are. The history of British police using firearms is not a nice one.

Jim
 
I was in Paris in the early 1980s. Police there were carrying MAB .32 ACPs and I saw a lot of MAT 49 and MAT 49/54 submachine guns.

I also saw a large group of police near Place de la Concorde (big event/crowd in the plaza) and many were armed with MAS 36 rifles.
 
I went to London through Heathrow in the 80's and a little two man tank rolled by my plane.

Why did the Spanish use Rugers and SW - I thought they had a pretty well developed revolver industry?
 
There are some curious attitudes in this thread. Some chide the British for their attitudes towards the police, yet go find the thread about how to act when stopped by the police here. It sounds like exactly the same attitude.

While small automatics were enthusiastically adoped by the police on the Continent around 1900, a typical American police revolver at the tiem may have been a .32. In fact, .32 caliber revolvers probably sold fairly well as late as after WWII.

It is true, however, that Europeans, such as the Germans and Austrians, preferred automatics, any automatics, over revolvers, any revolver. But I never heard of the French acquiring Ruby automatics after the war. They were purchased in large quantities during WWI because they were available and other pistols weren't. Those .32 automatics made the rounds in the interwar period on the surplus market. Some were well made, like Astras, but the rest were not so good. The Germans went in for automatics big time and actually used a large variety, even after WWII. Not all were .32s either but eventually the 9mm became the standard. Some would say they still use small automatics, I suppose.

I saw armed police when I was in the U.K. last summer but I didn't see any crime anywhere. I probably just missed it. I even went in a police station in Banbury to ask directions. Nice folks.
 
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