I have been this way before

What you are looking at is a Colt 1911 Combat Commander in .38 Super caliber, along with a couple of boxes of ammunition, resting atop a black, leather motorcycle jacket. Neat, hah? This is my most recent acquisition (last week) in the realm of firearms. As for the music, October is over, and it is safe to play Vixen and to remember Jan Kuehnemund, who died on October 10, 2013, at the age of 51. She created Vixen in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1980, while still a high school student.

Maybe, 38 is the perfect number

I managed to go four months without buying another firearm.  Yes, that sentence means I did buy another. Which reminds me, why are people who are affected (or should that be infected ?? afflicted ??) by computers called "nerds" or "geeks," but people who have the same attachment to firearms called "gun nuts?" On second thought, I guess I prefer the term "nut."

Anyway, while I do utilize the personal computer and have done so since before the days of the internet, I still love "things" from the past more than I do those from the present. Would you believe the pistol I just purchased is built to fire a cartridge introduced in 1929? And, that this is the first handgun I, a self-admitted gun nut, have owned which will fire this cartridge? The pistol itself, incidentally, is a Series 70 Colt Model 1911 Combat Commander. As the model number implies, it has been around since 1911 and this particular one dates to 1976.

A thirty-eight caliber in a thirty-eight-year-old pistol .... neat ....

The .38 Super cartridge was a "hot" round in terms of velocity and energy, and state of the art in 1929. Technology has passed it by, as it has so many things. But, as I said, that which is old appeals to me. I carry a portable Royal typewriter, for instance -- 1950 date of manufacture and still like new, that I bought in an antique shop in Knoxville, Tennessee -- on road trips in case power is not available and the battery for my laptop takes its own vacation.

Back to the .38 Super. In the 1930s, the cartridge in a 1911 Colt pistol became a favorite among FBI agents like Melvin "Little Mel" Purvis, as well as many notorious criminals of the era like Lester Gillis, better known as Baby Face Nelson. It was one of the guns carried by lawmen when Bonnie and Clyde "bit the dust," and it was the pistol used by an FBI agent to shoot down John Dillinger.

The cartridge faded away over time, but resurfaced in the 1970s among competition shooters for practical reasons which I will not elaborate upon today. It now has evolved into sort of a "cult round." I do not mean this in a negative sense, but only that, like a number of cartridges, the .38 Super has found itself the favorite of a significant, but relatively small, number of shooters. The .41 magnum is another such example among revolver aficionados.

The .38 Super also is popular in Mexico and some other Latin countries, where pistoleros are not permitted to own handguns which fire military designated rounds like the 9 mm and the .45 ACP caliber.
 

So, you might ask, why am I writing this piece? Simple, because I want to, and I like to do what I want .... and, because it helps me to escape from thoughts of snow and frigid temperatures .... and, because even gun posts sometimes lead to new people, places and ideas .... and, because I become absorbed in the historic role of many people, places and things, and what is more intrinsic to the history of the United States than the firearm? 

  

And, I suppose, because it is one ingredient in my never-ending (so it seems) search for the "perfect handgun." Remember? My interpretation of the quest for the holy grail .... the perfect rifle, the perfect pistol, the perfect car and/or truck, the perfect house on a hill, the perfect companion .... and, yes, I suppose, the perfect god .... or, at least, as Lew Wallace wrote, "The Fair God" ....

Now, you might ask yourself why you are reading this ....