jcsabolt2, Deputy is right about that with only one exception that I can think of and that is the TT33 Tokarev and variants. These are all steel guns produced by Norinco, also made in Poland as well as Russia. It is a slim handy piece that is rock bottom basic and totally reliable in it's functioning.
It's primary caliber is the 7.62x25mm Tokarev, which is a 1400+'/sec bottlenecked cartridge. It is a hot, smokin' round. When you shoot a Tok on the range, lots of others want to see where the pressure waves come from. It's flat-shooting and fast.
I once had a Russian immigrant laugh at my Tok because he said that during the Russian winters, when Police would shoot at poeple with their Tokarevs, the bullets would hit them but they would keep on running and shake the bullets out of their heavy clothing when they got home. Some trouble-makers, he said, kept a box full (small box) of those projectiles. But when I asked how much clothing those people would wear, he indicated something close to a depth of 5" of heavy clothing - that's body armor capability. When I asked him how close the targets were to the shooters, he indicated 50 yds or better. Well, give me a break, the 9mm won't do any better and it's questionable as to whether the 45 would have any effect on the same sort of an'armored' target.
The Tokarevs come with a superfluous frame mounted safety. The Polish pistols place their differently than the Chinese made pistols and are more reliable as a result. I prefer to carry mine as they were made to be carried, on half cock. The half cock of the Tokarev is not the same weak half-cock of the 1911 or Browning P-35 system - it is a fully squared 'C' shaped half cock notch that is designed to prevent the pistol from being fired if dropped. The only problem some of the Russian troops had was that they carried it fully cocked and stuck in their waistband and when they grabbed for it they would accidentally discharge it.
I once wrote to Massad Ayoob about disabling the frame mounted safety in favor of half cock carry and his response was (1) the Tok is an obsolete design, made in 1933 and should be forgotten - well, what about the world's most popular 1911, huh? (2) the cartridge wasn't powerful enough - well, whereya been Mass, when the Commies reduced the role of the handgun in combat from an offensive weapon to a defensive weapon, they went to the 9x18 Makarov catridge. Duh! (3) Unless I knew more that the gunmakers did I was looking a serious liability in the courts if anything ever happened - the very next Shotgun News came out with a thorough article on the Tok that substantiated exactly what I had said and made him look a bit like an uninformed idjit - so be it Mr. Ayoob - in that the safety I had sought to disable was a BATF add-on requirement for import to the US.
Now, the Tok comes in the original 7.62x25mm cartridge, which is readily availalbe from Sellier and Bellot, Winchester, and a number of foreign mil-surp suppliers. You can also get 9mm barrels for them if you want to shoot the 9mm. I purchased mine with a 38 Super barrel and it works just fine (the 9x23mm is too hot for it but the factory or factory equivalent handloads in 38 Super are just fine). If you can't find a 38 Super barrel you can always have a 9mm barrel chamber lengthened to handle the 9x23/38 Super case and use 38 Super loadings.
Have I finished yet? Think so. This be Mikey.
