Hans-Christian Vortisch has started blogging– and if you are any shade of gun nut, his site will blow you away. This post on H. P. Lovecraft’s guns is fascinating even if it’s patently obvious that the man wouldn’t have lasted twenty minutes in a Call of Cthulhu game. And this in depth piece on the Heckler & Koch P7M8 is positively engrossing.

Seriously, I haven’t read tender prose like that since Larry Corriea’s Hard Magic:

The P7M8 is a short, sleek pistol with no protruding controls other than the ambidextrous magazine release. The safety lies in the squeeze cocker. By squeezing in the contoured bar in the front edge of the grip, the firing pin is cocked; by releasing it, the firing pin is uncocked and the weapon is safe again. Moreover, the squeeze cocker acts as a slide release. This improves reloading times; my reloads with the P7M8 are faster than with any other pistol. Once the slide locks open, eject the empty magazine ‒ either with your thumb or with the trigger finger; the latter is faster for me ‒, insert a fresh magazine, and tighten your grip thereby closing the slide and cocking the firing pin again. This is faster than hitting a slide release or retracting the slide, as is necessary with most other designs. Of course, you should normally reload before you’re empty, but this isn’t always feasible with a low-capacity pistol like this. Unlike with many other pistols, the magazines always fall free; the magazine ejection is so positive that it almost works with the pistol upside down!

You know, maybe it’s time to admit that Roger Moore’s Walther PPK is passé. Maybe it’s time to look into something a little more relevant, like Hans Gruber’s P7M13. And if you’re looking to entertain firearm aficionados at the tabletop, you’ll want to take a look at Hans-Christian Vortisch’s GURPS Tactical Shooting. And even if you don’t play role-playing games, you’ll still want to read Shooting Dice!

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R. I. P. Alan Rickman, February 21, 1946 – January 14, 2016