Pistol Phylogeny Part 6 – Conclusion

CONCLUSION & FURTHER THOUGHTS AND DREAMS

If the reader has deigned to read all the previous five parts of this prospectus, then congratulations.  The author would like to first apologize to the stalwart reader for his proclivity to use obscure words, and yet probably still make a large number of grammatical and technical mistakes.  Additionally, he would like to apologize for referring to himself and the reader in the third person this whole time; what started as a self-humoring joke soon became a literary challenge, and so on.  And yes, those are all photos, diagrams, and gifs taken by the author himself.  Due to the expense of creating a library covering the breadth of this topic, the author will have to admit to his sources mostly being videos on specific guns, “Handguns of the World” by Edward Ezell, and his own personal findings in collecting.  (Also, to be clear, the quips about taking money were jokes… mostly.)  Finally, the author would simply hope that while much of the information he has presented may seem mundane to the average reader of this site, it will hopefully be able to serve as an aggregate of this information centered around a somewhat novel, and hopefully accurate and enlightening, set of intriguing definitions.

The author is aware that this listing is incomplete, and there is much he would like to add to it someday.  Amongst those things are:

• The inclusion of operating systems for guns that would not be considered “reasonably purchasable” – prototypes and other unique, bizarre, and otherwise unobtainable items.
• A more complete listing of handguns in each category, and a deeper review of their placement when considered in context with their firing, feeding, and safety mechanics.
• A historical analysis of each operating system and locking type, tracking the instances of convergent, divergent, and derivative evolution in these designs.
• A scientific side-by-side comparison of each practically available system, as measured by recoil impulse, reliability, accuracy, etc. compared to a static baseline, and documented ad nauseam.

Perhaps someday the author will have the necessary access, finances, and assistance to complete his collecting goals and pursue this ever-expanding vision for a book, but until then he shall content himself with sharing a much longer than intended portion of his passion here.  Thank you to the reader and to C&Rsenal for hosting these ramblings.

Enjoy these bonus images of some of the author’s other more interesting long guns.