Читать книгу Gun Digest 2011 онлайн

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To his credit, Georg Luger made the gun work with a less than perfect cartridge for it. When you consider the initial strikes against it and the final outcome, you realize that this is one of the finest triumphs of German firearms engineering.

The Luger was inspired by the Maxim Machinegun and indeed Hiram Maxim referred to it as a Maxim machinegun in pistol form. (He also considered it a patent infringement.) Like the Maxim, the Luger is an incredibly long-lived gun. According to Alfred Gallifent, a Swiss Federal Certified Armorer who was qualified to work on the Swiss Army’s Lugers, the five most common Luger repairs in order of frequency were 1) the grip screws were buggered up by someone with an ill-fitting screwdriver; 2) the L-shaped spring that retains the takedown lever would break; 3) the leaf spring on the M1900 would break; 4) the receiver forks would break when some idiot dropped it on concrete; and 5) the transfer bar from the trigger to the sear was buggered up by people tinkering with it and bending it in an attempt to get a better trigger pull.