New to me Broomhandle

[alvin]

Back in 1920s, a warlord in Shansei province (China) made around 8500 those .45acp broomhandles. It was not hot at that time at all -- the volume was too small, and the quality was inferior comparing with those of German ones or Spanish ones. In 1950s, most of them were dumped into blast furnace during the "Great Leap Forward Movement" to contribute their steel weight. If history continues in its normal track, that should be end of this 45acp broomhandle.

But, this 45acp gun found its 2nd (actually, 1st) favoritism in 1980s, due to some newly assembled ones were imported into the United States. So far, the best description I found was this one (copied from the link below):

"Between the years 1985-1990 approximately 350 of these guns were imported into the US from TTN International in Taiwan through three different importers, Navy Arms being one of them. One of the importers IAR managed to import broken guns and parts and assembled them in the US. They didn't function very well, if at all. There were no guns recently produced by the Chinese for export. That is a rumor. It would have cost the Chinese government thousands of dollars to remake machinery to produce these guns. The original machinery was destroyed when China was taken over by the Communists."

See:
http://www.gunsinternational.com/Bro...n_id=100231770