Pakistani gun trade

[silverado]

Found this video on youtube... don't know how many people here may have seen it but it was pretty interesting to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FinRqCocwGE

[BrassMagnet]

Somewhere I am pretty sure I have a 1970 American Rifleman magazine with an article about this place. It is either titled "The guns of Darra" or "The guns of Dacca." I was pretty impressed back then!

[leadman]

Don't think I would like to visit that area being an old guy with blonde/gray hair. It would be exciting though to be able to buy some of the old guns there. I'm sure it would be a nightmare if one was caught doing this.
Interesting video though.

[762 shooter]

Bill Maher produces that show. VICE. FYI

Don't get me started.

762

[GOPHER SLAYER]

I saw this video on PBS several years ago. I just watched it again and what made me sick both times was when the reporter took the artillery Luger off the rack and asked if it was WWII and the man said "yes". Then the bozo said "evil in my hand". Yep, that pistol can think really bad thoughts. I saw three
artillery Lugers on the racks and if I were there I would have to make an effort to brig them home with me. The 9MM Luger is the only military weapon made since 1900 I regret not keeping. Some nice ones have passed thru my hands. I can't help but wonder what happened to all the Lugers the German army carried into Russia.

[MtGun44]

Darra. Didn't look at the video after it was linked to Bill Mahr, despise the punk.
If it is what I think it is. . . . .

Most of the guns are copies made of railroad rails and any other chunk of iron/steel
that the can find on various kinds of home made machinery to random tolerances. Some will
even shoot without blowing up. Just because it LOOKS like a Luger or SMLE doesn't
mean it is. Apparently they forge the proof and maker marks very convincingly, too.

Bill

[bob208]

and you think you can disarm the u.s. citizen. we have lathes and mills and other machine tools. I have even seen quite a few cnc machine centers. I built my own rifling machine.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

You can make many fire arms with simple tools and even make them shoot but you can't make a Luger that works with those same tools. That is one weapon that can't be made on the cheap. It was the main reason the German army went to a pistol that was easier to make. During two world wars German weapons were spread all over Europe and the middle east. Why is it so difficult to accept that they could be found in Pakistan. The guns I saw in the video were Lugers.

[fouronesix]

Here's an interesting Aug '62 Guns Magazine article about that region.
http://armscollectors.com/darra/darra.htm

[Garyshome]

Great post!

[MtGun44]

Can't make a Luger. . . . These guys make ANYTHING, fitted with a file.

Maybe you can't make a real, reliable, nice looking Luger without some quality
equipment, but I have seen a picture of a guy in India with FILE and no other
tool at all, making the frame for a S&W snub copy. You greatly underestimate
what can be done with simple tools if you have some skill and patience and
a file, and labor is dirt cheap. No problem to put 200 man-hours (file-hours?)
into a S&W frame (or Luger frame) and then go on to make the next part.

Bill

[runfiverun]

I was in that general area in the 80's.
we would go to the town square and buy a rifle and a crate of ammo then go shoot it out in the desert.
when we were done we'd drop them where we were and go home. [shrug]
cost about 50-60 U.S. dollars to shoot off @1-k rounds [gun included] for the day.

[LUBEDUDE]

I was in that general area in the 80's.
we would go to the town square and buy a rifle and a crate of ammo then go shoot it out in the desert.
when we were done we'd drop them where we were and go home. [shrug]
cost about 50-60 U.S. dollars to shoot off @1-k rounds [gun included] for the day.

Normally that would be hard to comprehend if I had not seen this video.

[Southern Son]

I lost interest when he said that the Luger was WW2 and evil, plus the guns he kept pointing all over the place in the shop, the most interesting bit was the bloke who couldn't speak making "Muaser" 9mm pistols marked as made by Norinco in China.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

Can't make a Luger. . . . These guys make ANYTHING, fitted with a file.

Maybe you can't make a real, reliable, nice looking Luger without some quality
equipment, but I have seen a picture of a guy in India with FILE and no other
tool at all, making the frame for a S&W snub copy. You greatly underestimate
what can be done with simple tools if you have some skill and patience and
a file, and labor is dirt cheap. No problem to put 200 man-hours (file-hours?)
into a S&W frame (or Luger frame) and then go on to make the next part.

Bill

I don't know if you have owed a Luger or ever shot one but I have owned several and shot a lot more. I do not and will not believe anyone can make one with a file and a piece of steel held between his toes no matter how many days he put into the effort. The milling required on the frame design would not be possible with a file. A few years ago a gun smith in San Francisco was making Luger with very modern equipment. He was going to offer them in .45 ACP. I am not sure if he would make a 9mm or not but his prices started at 14K. I don't know if he ever sold any.

[Thumbcocker]

When I was attendingEastern Illinois University in 1980-82 I worked in the libriary as part of the work study program. With a small scholarship and BEOG grants and work study I could make ends meet and have a whalloping $20 per week to spend. My 1966 chevy truck took $12.50 to fill up so I had lots of money to live the wild college lifestyle.

In the library I worked with several international students one of whom was from Pakistsn. We bonded over our mutual love of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. Fazil said that there were areas in north Pakistan where the government and the army would not go and that they ruled themselves. He also said that the people there could reporduce any gun in the world. He said that you could leave a gun with them and come back in a week and they would have several copies made and you owuld not be able to tell which one was yours.


Fazil had some connection to this area through family and talked about going there for hunting trips. He said that they used .303 Enfileds (which he pronounced three nought three) and stayed as guests of his family or family friends. He explained that food clothing Enfields, guides, and lodging were all provided. He said that when he and his family returned home their host sent two or three cars loaded with produce and other gifts home with them. It was a very bad thing to refuse the gifts or try to pay for anything while you wera guest.


I always wonder what happened to him.

[10x]

I saw this video on PBS several years ago. I just watched it again and what made me sick both times was when the reporter took the artillery Luger off the rack and asked if it was WWII and the man said "yes". Then the bozo said "evil in my hand". Yep, that pistol can think really bad thoughts. I saw three
artillery Lugers on the racks and if I were there I would have to make an effort to brig them home with me. The 9MM Luger is the only military weapon made since 1900 I regret not keeping. Some nice ones have passed thru my hands. I can't help but wonder what happened to all the Lugers the German army carried into Russia.

Sent to foundries and turned into Moison Nagants, T33s, tanks, and eventually Ladas

[Artful]

I don't know if you have owed a Luger or ever shot one but I have owned several and shot a lot more. I do not and will not believe anyone can make one with a file and a piece of steel held between his toes no matter how many days he put into the effort. The milling required on the frame design would not be possible with a file. A few years ago a gun smith in San Francisco was making Luger with very modern equipment. He was going to offer them in .45 ACP. I am not sure if he would make a 9mm or not but his prices started at 14K. I don't know if he ever sold any.

two of the original DMW 45 ACP Lugers are known to exist #2 and #21
http://www.lugerforum.com/45Luger.html

But you may be talking about were made by John Martz Operating out of his home workshop in California, John Martz is best known for his alterations and upgrades of Luger and P-38 pistols, all of which are performed by him and often take several months of work. His 45's were cut and welded together out of 2 lugers to make a wider version to handle the 45 ACP.

or currently there is another company planning on making .45 ACP Lugers
http://www.krausewerk.com/45luger.html
http://www.krausewerk.com/images/469_IMG_1494.JPG

[Artful]

Wonder how much they would charge to make me a Savage 1907 45 ACP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUqTwtMmAVE

[LUBEDUDE]

Very interesting story Thumbcocker. (Post #16)

It appears that your friend, Fazil was not embellishing!

[GOPHER SLAYER]

Artful, it has been so long since I saw the article, or maybe it was a video, I can't be sure. It seems that he was making his pistols out of raw stock. I could be wrong. On very rare occasions I am. But more to the point I was making. If John has to make his pistols by welding two others together, why doesn't he just hold the raw stock between his toes and resort to filing. Surly he could make the 45ACP Luger using a file in less than fourteen months. After all they can do it in the Khyber pass.

[MtGun44]

I have looked at and shot Lugers, and it isn't at all important if you believe
anything. Believe in whatever you like, fairies and flying to the moon on
a kite if you wish, no skin off my nose and I'm not interested in being disagreeable
about something this unimportant. Facts are facts regardless of any particular
person's belief in them.

Skilled hand work is far more capable than most modern Americans imagine,
and skilled workers with even fairly simple machinery can make almost anything.
A huge amount of the work on "finest quality" English double rifles and shotguns
was done by a very skilled man with a file, and they are literally works of art.

I am not suggesting that the Khyber Pass gunsmiths do it the way the Indian
guy was doing in the photo that I saw. They have all sorts of normal machinery
to make guns, and VERY low labor costs, and a LOT of experience copying guns.

Where they would seem to fall down is metallurgy, long term durability (related
closely to metallurgy) and interchangeable parts. I would imagine that they have
to hand fit everything, so "drop in replacement parts" seems unlikely. This is what Eli
Whitney brought to the gun trade (interchangeable parts) in the mid-19th
century at the time when ALL guns were made like they are today in Pakistan's
rural areas.

It would indeed be quite interesting to see what they could do with a rare gun
like the Savage .45 ACP pistol.

Bill