Years ago, I had a friend who referred to my .25ACP Browning I carried when wearing shorts and a t shirt as, "The Warmth" - because it wasn't big enough to call it "packing heat". LOL
I am going to remember that. Not for my lone .25ACP Mauser (piece of junk) but for my .32 S&W Iver Johnson pocket revolver that belonged to my Great Grandfather.
I imagine when he brings a normal gun half of them go "aww" and go back out to their cars and leave. Maybe angrily gunning out of the lot while mean mugging ian. That'd be me probably. At this point I'd rather stare directly at the sun then watch another tactical Timmy with a Glock clone put holes in paper. I've seen a couple decades of that when my dad bought his first glock (G26) and I mine (G19). I'm good on that.
There is a legend about a man living in the desert, who was able to "yeet" Ian, when his Taurus surprisingly didn't work. I think his name started with K.
@@sipofsunscorchedsarsaparil6052 not long ago, InRangeTV made a video addressing that Ian will no longer be a regular host in the show. If you wanna watch it hear it yourself, skip the read more of this comment. There's no drama, nor BS. It's just that Ian simply wants to focus on other things like writing more of his books, touring to places, and etc. which makes him unable to fully commit time to InRangeTV. That's it, time. He will still appear, just not as regular anymore.
At one point you have to do an interview with "The World's greatest Hi-Point collector". He has been referenced so many times, mostly on InRangeTV, so those of us who don't know the reference are dying to be clued in:)
My grandmother lives in the French countryside, where I've spent most of my childhood. For years I heard the story of a gun that my grandfather had apparently left somewhere in the house before he passed away. Naturally, I kept asking about it as I've always been a huge gun enthusiast and guns are pretty rare here in France. And for some reason... Everybody seemed to remember it was some "big american pistol from world war 2". We finally found it not long ago and I found it pretty funny that this "big american gun" was in fact a very small French pistol, so French in fact that it's simply called "The French". I immediatly clicked on your video when I got the notification haha. I was pretty happy to see you take that little thing out on the range !
When I have people out to shoot, they love the 22lr. But they usually come to the conclusion: "22 isn't good for home defense, huh?" "IDK, 10 pencil-diameter holes in the chest of an attacker in 2.5 seconds is a much better start than throwing a pillow."
What impresses me is the maths - firstly working out how to make a gun just strong enough that it doesn't explode, but light enough to carry, and secondly visualising the action of an exploding machine that has to function reliably in a fraction of a second. They had mechanical computers and possibly even slow-motion footage back then but I imagine it involved a lot of lined paper.
It's like an inverse wildey survivor! There no problem with knock down on that. But 'going to get a history video later'? We've heard that before! Love the BUG match videos.
It's rare in the USA but quite common in France. The different versions of Le Français pistol were sold in gun shops AND through the Manufrance catalogue (French equivalent of Sears catalogs).
First: Super cool video. Second: Last time over at inrange chaos struck hard. Ian at a match with a reliable, handy, modern gun. But thank god, now the old world order is restored, as Ian shows up at a match with an awkward, tiny, and above all, french pistol. Third: Thank you for your work.
I've got a Beretta 21A which is a similar gun in slightly more modern form. I actually carried it as a back up in the days before the super compact polymer .380s and 9mms. My captain called these pocket size .25s "ear guns". If a bad guy was trying to wrestle your service pistol away, you pulled the .25 out of your left front pocket and emptied it into the bad guy's ear. If he was still standing after that treatment, you gave him the keys to your car and ten bucks for gas. My 21A is a very high quality pistol. Its fun to shoot and as Ian says this type of gun seems to be inherently accurate. Unfortunately .25 ammunition was almost impossible to find before Covid and I don't want to go into serious debt to buy a box now.
@@billstevens5277 there is no bone behind eyes, its the most vulnerable place of the head, the locatiuon of choice in case you use a small caliber gun. A while ago, the Mossad used .22 for killing, and the standard recipe was : 3 bullets in one eye, 1 bullet in one ear, and 1 bullet in the mouth (to hit the upper part of the spinal chord). I believe in Mossad's professionalism...
@@florentleider222 that's wierd because I read their mo was to simply dump the mag into the unsuspecting targets chest, and save the last round for their face as they stepped over the body.
I just have to say that as someone who's getting into pistol IPSC these days I absolutely love these BUG matches with weird guns. I wish I lived in a country where collecting such things was feasible, I'd love to go down that route.
@@derekp2674 Hi-Point is way more trustworthy than a jennings considering jennings is a Saturday night special. Hi-point never actually got that title as they never blew up when fired. generally because the old shitty magazines made them jam a lot combined with the girth of the slide.
@@thatguybrody4819 They do indeed have different brand reputations but what is needed here is a firearm for Ian to use that comes with a similar reputation for "as cheap as possible" retail price but is much older. I did wonder about something like a Belgian bulldog revolver, ideally in a pinfire cartridge, but I'd accept centrefire, if that made it viable to actually shoot today. Also, all kinds of weird and wonderful .32 autos came into being after the success of the early Browning models, particularly when inventors had to steer around his patents. Many have featured on C&Rsenal, if they were issued to French or German forces in WW1.
I would totally pocket carry that thing. I currently have a polymer .32 for pocket carry when I am going ultra light. This is accurate enough that it might make up for the slight decrease in power.
I have an NAA Guardian .32 for pocket carry. Full steel frame so it is heavy enough to make recoil extremely light which aids controllability and quite accurate to boot. When one of my friends referred to it as a "mouse gun", I simply told him I would rather have my .32 in my pocket as opposed to my .45 in the gun safe at home. First rule of gunfighting is to have a gun!
25 or 30 years ago, when I first began gun hording, I went through a tiny gun phase. I had several .25ACP's and the only problem I ever had with them was the cost of ammo for the power of the gun. I had one of those cheap Titian Tiger which was really my favorite. I mounted a piece of spring steal on the grip that I made from a stainless steal paper clip deal and carried it in the top of my cowboy boot when I wanted a conceal carry. Since I was in Law Enforcement all I needed was my badge to cover conceal carry laws. I had many little .22's that I carried as backup or off duty guns. My favorite was the stainless Sterling which was a wonderful little semi-auto and had a great zero considering all it had was a trough cut all the way down the slide. That is the only pistol I ever wore out. I used to take it out shooting daily as I lived right on the edge of the little city I was working in with woods and a river running right behind my house. The little gun never jammed on me, but in the end it began to discharge multiple round with one pull of the trigger. I was out shooting with a preacher I knew who was a gun nut and he saw the little guy pop off 3 for one shot and not jam in the end. He tried shooting it and it did the same for him. He asked what I wanted for it but I told him I would have to get it fixed first but he said no, he worked on two nearby reservations and wanted the little guy for protection as things were rough on both of them back then. So I sold it to him. He never came back and complained so I guess it did the job for him. I am sure the little guy had worn itself to illegal but back then I just wanted out of the gun as I would never trust a gun that did that.
What precision for a little guy of almost 100 years! Can't wait to see your review of this pistol. For French speakers, you can see the history of this gun and the notions of self-defense in France in those years, on Partick Sautereau's YT channel.
The gun is very accurate. But it is not that easy to shoot it accurately. The double action trigger is very hard, the sights are rounded and can be hard to see, and the gun is so small that you must be careful on how you grip it. But once you get used to it, it's a sweet little shooter. And the design is absolutely genius.
Well, he started some years ago to shoot awkward old stuff at matches. That is not the easy way, but it makes you better shooter. The progress of Ian`s pistol shooting is clearly visible, or check out the old inrange match stuff of his early days.
25acp is center-fire vs 22lr rim-fire. Rimfire priming is not as consistent as center-fire. That said, I've been shooting a lot of rim-fire lately and I get a rare occasional ftf. But typically I just reload it into the mag with a new section of rim up and it generally goes bang the second time. Just the nature of the beast. OTOH, I can't remember the last time I had ftf with a center-fire cartridge. IMO 25acp is underrated for a hideout gun. Maybe someone should develop a 25 Super...give it a little more oomph. Make it a couple MM's longer than acp so some fool won't chamber it in an old pistol and blow it up.
@@lightweight1974 There is .25NAA that is a necked down .32acp. 35gr bullet @1200fp/s.It's super obscure and I believe the only gun that uses it is a NAA Guardian. They also have .32NAA that is a necked down .380.
I can't remember the last time I had a .22LR fail to fire, but then again, I always buy quality ammunition. 100 years ago that may have been a concern, but not really today. If you're that concerned about reliability, you may as well step up to a .32ACP instead of the .25ACP. Almost all pistols chambered in .25ACP are also available in .32ACP including the Le Français.
@@tarmaque Yes, but the .32 Le Français is much, much bigger than the .25. Not exactly comparable guns appart for the fact that the general design, fonctions and features are the same.
My understanding is that the pop-up barrel doesn't factor into the ejection process (i.e. it extracts/ejects normally), but it's simply a way to make it easier to load one in the chamber with a full mag. Could be mistaken though, I've never handled such a pistol myself.
It is a blowback pistol with no extractor, only the pressure pushes the case out. When you want to clear the chamber nothing grips onto it so the barrel tilts so you can manually remove the round. It also functions as a workaround for loading without dealing with the extreme spring pressure the slide is under. FW has a video on a .32 example. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4_KfmmNhdIk.html
There are a number of pistols that use this system, including the fairly modern Beretta Tomcat. As others have mentioned it doesn't tip up to eject when in use, only when unloading or loading a live cartridge.
.25 auto ? perfect for my collection. IF I ever had the money to start a gun collection I'd be looking at early pocket self loaders like this don't ask me why but pocket pistols especially from the era roughly 1870 to 1930 always fascinate me. they don't HAVE to be semi autos but I really think most of m y favs are like that. So jealous of Ian once again that he even gets to shoot one.
Both of my .25 pocket pistols were less than $150 lol easy to start a collection. My rule of thumb is if there's ever a gun in a gun store less than $200 I buy it
@mikepette that's the big kicker ain't it? You find more guns you want to collect faster then you could hope to make the money to buy them. My hope is to one day have the two primary issued rifles of all major factions of WW2, but unless I win the lotto or get lucky some other way I'll have to content myself with living through Ian and others like him.
@@epluribusunum5318 A MAS 36 is not so expensive and a good bolt rifle of WW2 era , and it was produced from 1936 to 1959. It is rugged two. Serviciable but worn exemple of this are often in north Africa surplus.
I too confuse Glocks and Hi-Points. I try to clarify the difference as Glock being the Toyota Corolla of handguns, while Hi-Point is the Ford Pinto of handguns.
With over 33 years of experience as a police.......I learned to NEVER underestimate the lethality of the RG-10 revolver and Titan 25 Automatic. IT'S REALLY NOT THAT IMPORTANT WHAT YOU SHOOT THEM WITH, WHAT'S IMPORTANT IS WHERE YOU SHOOT THEM WITH IT! Just sayin.🌴☠️
There was an article in SWAT Magazine many years ago that quoted a former Moscow Militsiya officer turned medical examiner on the Makarov PM. He said that he'd seen plenty of corpses, both on the street and in his autopsy room, who'd been put there by the supposedly underpowered 9x18 round. If the shooter knew his business and put the bullets in the right place, it did the job just fine.
You dont want the center of the back of your head to be punctured with it. I have an airgun in .25 with half the energy of this round and the bullet (flat nose bullet not pellet) gets out in front of your skull with ease and flies further. Edit: oh its 25 ACP so my airgun is a bit hotter than this.
I carried a Bauer .25 acp for a backup as a police officer for years. At 10 yards, I could chew up the heart area of a target as fast as I could pull the trigger. It wasn't much of a cartridge, but it was, and is, a fine little pistol, a perfect copy of the Baby Browning in stainless steel. I eventually graduated to a .380 PPK.
They say it's not the caliber that's important, it's shot placement -- and the designer of this gun certainly seems to fall into that camp! Nice to finally have something that actually shoots where you want it to.
That was very good, thanks. I carried a Bauer .25acp for a few years as a BUG and miss it. I think these little guns are capable of better accuracy then they are given credit for.
Pretty good shooting for a dinky and ancient. . . well, maybe just old, .25. I was especially impressed with the swimming hole they added to the longer range targets. Need a boat or at least waders to get out there.
I love these vids, seeing how the gun works and hearing about the guns history is great, but actually seeing it perform in a shooting event is really eye opening and awesome to see! Keep em coming, I especially lov these BUG matches where Ian is basically just handicapping himself with some weird/quirky or just outdated gun.
I’d imagine if made right back in the day that barrel should pretty much last forever cause those small calibers aren’t really barrel burners. It’ll probably still shoot good in 100 years if properly maintained lol. Great video as always
After doing a two gun with the WWSD2020 rifle this a welcome return to doing shooting matches with some obscure French gun no one has ever heard of. Bravo.
From what I remember you just have to find one that's not outright broken, the design itself is a simple as a rock though It *will* wear out in relatively short order.
I got a .22 with a garbage barrel and rebarreled it with an airgun barrel. It shoots without tumbling bullets and the groups are half as big now, but it still needs work.
This was really cool! You know what'd be even cooler? To run a BUG match with a Borchardt. Too bad we don't know anyone who's willing to loan theirs...
My dad had a pair of two hold out guns, he'd taken off an Italian Army guy. They were a pair beautifully blued Berettas. In .25 auto, he sold those in a time of need, in the late seventies, the price surprised dad. No bloody good at much over 3m.
Honestly I think these BUG matches with uncommon weapons are some of the more interesting content. Not as silly as taking a bolt action to a 2 gun but not too serious.
Good shooting, Ian!! That little firearm reminds me *so* much of my little Beretta 950BS in 22 short... Really a fun little gun to shoot! Thanks for the video!
What is notable is that this kind of pistols were called in France "pistols for ladies" they hid in a handbag and were not made to kill (although it is possible) but to put in escape the aggressor. And they were not even for the time really worth anything.
