If i had a nickel for every time the Soviets accidentally designed an armor-piercing cartridge I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't much, but its weird that it happened twice.
My father had this gun as officer of Bulgarian special police service more than 15 years ago. In our country still in use in those structures, but forbidden for regular citizens. I remember it as veeeery small and light gun, even compared with FEG Walther PPK clones. Childhood memories :)
Visited the USSR back in 87 with a tour group, and at one point noticed a police officer carrying a PSM. Even as a teen I was enough of a gun geek to recognize the super thin profile of the butt and the fact that the holster was a little too big for the gun to sit properly, so likely meant for a Makarov. I was also nowhere near dumb enough to walk up and ask him about it...
The whole idea of making a very distinct firearm and round for use in secret assassinations seemed suspect from the very start. It's pretty counterproductive for covert work. Surely you'd want to use the most common and readily available weapon (that is reliable and can do the job) that was sourced far away from your nation's industry as possible.
If you really want to assassinate someone there were already plenty of guns available at the time. No need to engineer a new one from scratch just clone one of the existing designs.
vapin scoundrel Welrod uses basic. 32ACP and 9mm Para rounds and it's a simple gun. Soviet PB is built mostly out of Makarov's details and uses the same 9mm PM rounds (of course, with less powder to keep the subsonic speed).
9:33 "a little hard to read though" Of course it's hard to read, you are holding it upside down! It is a stamp of quality control (ОТК stands for Отдел Технического Контроля - Department of Technical Control, if literally translated). Still cannot decifer the digits near OTK sign though.
The unified barrel blanks thing was done in order to recycle flawed rifle barrels into handgun barrels, thus reducing the waste of the production and increasing the output of the factories. Or so I hear.
Acb Thr Well you could have a bent barrel or some other circumstance where only part of the barrel is damaged, so you could concievably merely truncate the useful section off and turn it into a pistol barrel. Or so I think.
When barrels get old from extended use the rifling tends to wear starting from the breach and muzzle, then spreads inward. Historically worn out rifles would be turned into carbines by removing the barrel, cutting off both ends, then using the leftover middle section as the "new" barrel, as the rifling would still be in good condition. Concidering the length difference of rifle and pistol barrels, an old worn out rifle barrel could potentially have the ends cut off, get milled down in size from the outside (to make the barrel thinner and lighter, still being strong enough for pistol level pressures), then cut into multiple pistol length barrels. Back when guns were often made on a smaller scale and hand fitted that would save a lot of time and money. I'm sure at the turn of the 20th century a heavily used Mosin-Nagant rifle barrel could be made into 4 or 5 Nagant revolver barrels fairly cheaply. A carbine could probably still be made into 2 or 3 pistols, perhaps after being already made form an existing full length rifle. Just my two cents.
That reminds me of my favourite shotgun. The KS-23. The barrel is made from 23mm anti-aircraft barrels that had manufacturing flaws. They were cut down and turned into a 23mm shotgun. A normal shotgun is 12 gauge. This would be 6.27 gauge. Significantly bigger.
Fun thing, I used to have one of these in a toy variant when I was a kid, back in russia thirtysomething years ago. :D Recognized it immediately, because it was nothing like the other ones available back then. My cousin had a makarov, which was heavier and sort of bulkier, but he was taller and older than me so it was alright. Ah, memories! :D
+Devin Tariel By flak???? Wikipedia says his wing got blown off; and now I've read a harrowing account of POW torture and I'm not even sure why. Wtf??? As for Patton, apparently neither a Peacemaker nor a Smith and Wesson magnum were sufficiently American or revolvery for him. He had to have both.
The Makarov 9x18 is my favorite range gun and extremely accurate due to the fixed barrel. Second favorite is the Walther PPK series in .380acp. Never seen the PSM but that would be a cool addition just for the rare factor. Imagine ammo would be an issue though.
You might recall that the Japanese haven't had a "real" army since 1945, so most Japanese people under 90 or so have zero experience of guns at all, and even the few who have served in the various Defence Forces or kidotai since have almost no combat experience of any description
@@A-G-F- Generally speaking, the Japanese are very good at making models and replicas of nearly anything. Just look at their static model and figure industry.
Honestly... the cultural differences are staggering. The Russians consider the Makarov "Big and Bulky" while the Americans think anything less than a 5" 1911 in .45 is a mouse gun...
To me it looks like a miniature version of the 7.62×25mm Tokarev round. I always liked shooting the CZ 52 chambered for it as opposed to the Makarov in 9x18mm just because its a little more challenging.
I hope we get to see a PSS sometime, although I understand how that might be practically impossible. Then again I've seen lots of practically impossible things on this channel. ;)
Seth Moyer A few have made it into western hands and Ian has shown a few weapons that number 5 or less in existence (to name a few, the BSW 9mm Gas-Operated Pistol, Streetsweeper, and the Pancor Jackhammer) so it's possible.
The Soviets made a 2 shot, captive piston cartridge low noise pistol for assassinations. Instead of a silencer, a captive piston in the cartridge was used to expel the bullet and keep the gasses/smoke/noise contained with in the cartridge itself, with teh piston remaining in the cartridge itself and sealing it ....so no silencer needed. (?) Eden Pastora was assassinated with the true 'assassins pistol', and not the PSM....
Bo Zo after the soviet union collapsed the hard-line communists, many of which were high ranking officers in the military, imprisoned Gorbatchev. Jeltsin, who had much public and international support, thwarted that attempt. And later many officers, fearing reppercusions, actually did commit suicide.
When firing the PSM, the smell of the burnt powder is identical to the smell of old paper cap pistol I had some 60 years ago. My ammo was the non-penetrating type without steel core.
Those cap guns that used rolls of paper caps were always my favorite, but they always seemed to break much faster than the ones that used plastic rings of caps. Also, they didn't feed like a real firearm, which wasn't as fun. However, you could fan the hammer on those things and tear through the roll really fast. Thanks for the memory.
Oh, memories! The paper roll guns were cheaply made with the mechanism made of thin sheet metal. Sometimes the metal mechanism wore through the plastic frame and just fell out. The guns made for plastic rings (or even better, linkable strips) were often cast metal. I had a Lahti that fed strips from a removable magazine, and with every shot it cut off and ejected the spent cap. Edison Giocattoli still manufactures these, check out their home page for some nostalgia.
so another wolf ammo fan? Boy some of those pistol rounds I've fired, particularly .380 (which is not used much in Russia I don't think) do stink up the range, and as a bonus - you get a dud round at least once per box! The AK ammo though, is dead reliable I must say.
The handgun of choice among professional hitpeople is the .22 caliber. It is the most common, least traceable round. The bullet generally penetrates on side of the skull and bounces around inside the "target" head. A professional can casually walk behind a "target" in the streets or at a store, fire one fatal round upward in the base of the skull. "Target " dead before it falls down, hardly any noise or mess, the professional melts into the crowd.
Long ago and far away, I saw a newly-promoted B.G. get his Colt 1903, which he accepted politely. About an hour after the ceremony I was called into his office and found him holding the pistol in the palm of one (very large) hand with a thoroughly disgusted look on his face. Our conversation was short. B.G. : "Get me a @**&% .45 !" Me: "Yes Sir!" I wonder how often this happened in the Soviet military.
I imagine it happened quite a bit. Lol who would want to carry a pistol that probably feels barely more potent than a cap gun? I would have requested a Tokorev, that shoots a round actually capable of defeating some soft body armor. The PSM seems pointless as the Makarov was only a fraction larger.
This seems likely for a gung-ho guy who's expecting to see action. But fast-forward ten or twenty years to when the same dude (or his Russian equivalent) is a peacetime officer stationed at home, in charge of the Department For Updating Railroad Maps Of Northern Caucasus or perhaps the Glorious Remote Radar Installation Maintenance Division. That's when you don't want three pounds of metal hanging from your belt every day.
The irony is in a few years he'll probably want it back. The whole point is that it's standard for some ranks to carry a pistol with them as a part of their uniform, however when you are never ever in a situation to use it, especially for a job where it will physically get in the way, then it's just a big weight you've strapped on, hence why they come up with these small guns.
When you mentioned the ATF, at one point, what I was thinking was, just like the SPAS 12, which I guess did not meet the rules for sporting purposes Shiz, that these two cool looking pistols also did not meet that demand, I always thought it is a Stupid thing the damn ATF does, because they decide not to think of it that way, but instead focus on things that should not matter in the long run, like these two pistols are really no different sporting wise then say A Glock or Ruger Handgun, and same with the Shotgun, the SPAS is no different then A Beneli M4 Super 90 or Remington 870 and so forth, I don't know if I am saying all this correctly, but that is just what I think, any ways good video good sir :)
I had the opportunity to buy one of these in the 1990's when I lived in the UK. I didn't get it, because the ammo would not have been easily, or at all available. But it was an interesting piece to hold.
Seeing that gun it really seems to be quite good for concealed carry, the slim design and stuff like the low profile safety. No matter the design intent I can absolutely see some of those ending in hands of people who require a concealed but still capable gun
Letty in Fast & Furious 6 had one of these. That was the first time I had heard of the pistol, so naturally I had to rush home and google it. Interesting little gun and Ian seems to always make they sound even more so.
The version in .25 acp would have been interesting also! There were aslo a few PPKs made in .25 acp. Those are the biggest guns as fare as I know that were ever made in .25 acp.
Oh, my neighbour is a former police officer, onse we argued about small pistol calibers (like 5,7mm FN) and he told me a story from Soviet times about a guy who managed to escape a crime scene after being hit in his back like 12 times with a PSM during a chace. What he basicly told me is to NEVER trust my life with any caliber with this small stopping power.
Small caliber is about light recoil and ammunition capacity so you can score those vital hits at short range. A .22LR is ballistically capable of scoring a fatal wound at 500m but the drift of the round is so great at that distance a hit at all is down to luck. The 5.7mm FN cartridge is capable of great accuracy within 150m. It was specifically designed to maximize short-range accuracy and armor penetration; the steel core slug will penetrate soft armor within that same 150m range. Stories of people escaping alive (at least for the moment) from engagements with small caliber arms like these are common because in many high intensity situations precise shot placement is abandoned in favor of volume of fire.
Exactly the point, most of the time "precise shot placement" is the thing only for the shooting range and plinking, but in real high intensity situations there's never enough time to think and be precise, so the speed and higher firepower is nesessary.
GreenHellTube practice makes all the difference though. your groups may open up under stress, but muscle memory makes sure they're as tight as they can be reasonably expected to be.
"Stopping power" is a loaded phrase. as was mentioned by others, 22LR has plenty of stopping power at 500 yards but is hard to be accurate enough with it at those ranges. I work on an ambulance and once saw a guy who had been shot at least 10 times with a 22 LR. He died eventually but the shooters accuracy wasn't great so it took a while to happen. Would the same shot placement but with a larger caliber round have done the deed faster? Maybe. If you want to stop a threat, shot placement is what matters. Not "stopping power".
Well as Ian and Karl have mentioned quite a few times, there is a reason militarizes don't really take pistols seriously. Because pistols are just not that effective at killing, unless you of course are using something insane like a S&W 500. After all there is a really most shootings that happen involve people just being injured and not killed.
It's a beautiful little pistol. The reason to not use 22LR for a defensive pistol (other than the obvious lack of power when compared to service calibers), is the rimfire case which is a less reliable primer than centerfire ammo. This is why the 25 ACP was created. It makes you wonder why the Russians didn't just use a slightly higher pressure 25ACP instead of creating a new cartridge. Increasing the pressure in the 25 ACP even just slightly would create a round with as good to better ballistics and would still be capable of using steel core projectile ammo
Odd that Soviet general officers felt it was so important to have a smaller sidearm than the already small enough Makarov, to the extent that a whole new gun *and* cartridge needed to be designed.
LOL Makarov too bulky? I carry one of those around in my pocket as a concealed carry gun. I wish I could get the psm, but the ammo makes it illegal for me to have one.
wildyracing1 really fmj is best because the weapon is designed to function with it . for example some older 9 mm pistols from ww2 wont reliably cycle hollow point ammo ..what a silly law ..you must live in an anti gun state .
Back in the day it was tested and defeated threat level 1 and 2 body armor. Don't remember if it was tested against threat level 3 though. Cool and interesting pistol and cartridge. I'd like to see it against more modern body armor.
It says something about the soviet system that they could simultaneously speak of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and yet spend years developing a prestige weapon for high ranking officers.
Because they were just as corrupted and in love with money and power and class-ism as the West? The modern USA has fallen off quite a bit from its original ideas too, with a 'defense' budget that eats up over half of all discretionary spending, and foreign bases and entanglements galore.
Watching this again post-Popenker collab, I wonder how accurate the anecdotes about its lethality are. It's like the anecdotes (and even photo evidence) of some people failing to self-forever-sleep with .22 short or even .22lr pistols, even though ballistics show those rounds to be capable of penetrating skulls normally. Are the examples bad rounds/bad luck, or are the tests/examples not perfectly transferable to human results? Some Russian assassin better answer this.
Hi Ian, loving the videos! You probably don't want to do too much editing, but it would be great to see the names of certain weapons, parts or in this case the different cartridges displayed on screen. It could make it easier to follow your story, with such visual support. Just a suggestion, though!
The loading for this is just sad. I mean I have read about the cartridge and thought that (with the speculated velocity's) it would of made for a spectacular SMG/PDW round. To only find it to be so weak just leaves me coldly dispointed.
Now I'm curious about the cartridge. It seems like an East bloc.22LR or .17HMR. Are you aware of any varmint/sporting rifles chambered in this neat little thing?
I think the ATF rules cover importation. If one was already here, you coud buy it (I think, I am not a lawyer). But since it could not be imported to USA, you are unlikely to find one.
Hope you can get your hands on a Drotik and Pernach one day, I'd love to see a video on those. And Parker Hale PDW and Bushman IDW, but that's just daydreaming.
There was a gas/signal version you could buy freely, it cost 140 euros. It was made by Izh (Izh 78-8) and it was an exact copy of the real thing except for the barrel. It was even made of steel and not that funny alloy they usually use for gas/signal guns. Also, put it in safety and when you push the safety lever 1 or 2 mm to the left you remove the firing pin. Then you can remove the safety lever as well.
It would be nice if you could do some vids on US Gun Legislation, because it seems pretty confusing to us benighted foreigners (presumiably also to most Americans as well). This seems like a perfect concealed carry weapon: small, light and accurate; not going to blow a target away but make your presence known. Why discourage a weapon that will most likely injure but not kill? (caveat: I know .22 LR can kill, and if Ian can find one of the silenced .22 sniper rifles issued to the British Auxilary Units during WW2 we would all have a very educational show) ((For those interested, I'm not sure of the make other than they were .22, silenced, with telescopic sights and- according to one book- " for use on sentry dogs and collaborators. "))
Sam Russell because a lot of times, things aren't that simple. In the end you need to shoot until the threat is no longer, whether they flee, surrender, are injured to a high enough degree, or dead. While it's great if there's an outcome where no one has to die, but if it happens and you hold back, chances are it won't end well for you
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
"whoops, we accidentally made another cartridge that penetrates body armor"
🤦🏻♂️😑😒
Bone of forehead is only armor it have to penetrate.
If i had a nickel for every time the Soviets accidentally designed an armor-piercing cartridge I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't much, but its weird that it happened twice.
@@tomaspabon2484 what was the other one ?
@@JohnDoe-gq6yg 7.62x25 Tokarev I think
Lol when a makarov is considered "big and bulky"
He even calls bs by saying 'if you can call it that' lol
russians in general are small. Also bear in mind it was made during a time when they had barely any food.
A Walther PP with the ergonomics of a 2x4....
@@MA-wq2ih dont underestimate a 2x4. 😄
Daane Mest “Russians in general are small” uh. The USA and Russia have exactly the same average heights for both males and females. 5’9 and 5’4.
My father had this gun as officer of Bulgarian special police service more than 15 years ago. In our country still in use in those structures, but forbidden for regular citizens.
I remember it as veeeery small and light gun, even compared with FEG Walther PPK clones.
Childhood memories :)
Visited the USSR back in 87 with a tour group, and at one point noticed a police officer carrying a PSM. Even as a teen I was enough of a gun geek to recognize the super thin profile of the butt and the fact that the holster was a little too big for the gun to sit properly, so likely meant for a Makarov. I was also nowhere near dumb enough to walk up and ask him about it...
couple years later and he'd probably be offering it for you for a pair of jeans..
What did he say?
@@alexm566there is another way he can keep both the gun and jeans💀
ПСМ - Пистолет Самозарядный Малогабаритный
*Pistol Selfloading Compact*
You could write it in latin alphabet without cyrilic
@@Kacpa2 fuck off
Thank you Russia
@@Kacpa2 pistolet samozaryadnyj malogabaritnyj, is what i believe the transliteration/romanization would be
Малогабаритный (Compact) ли, или малокалиберный (Small Calibre )? I have suspicion the second one. The calibre is 5.45 mm.
One of anecdotes about requirments that was put before designers, that PSM has to be "no wider than box of matches".
yeah boxes of matches are quite thick in Russia
No thicker than the thin pistol!
Good thing for the designers at Tula the requirement didn't say a book of matches.
@@chapiit08 In that case you can use a 2mm Kolibri pistol 👍
The export variant of it .25ACP IZh-75 (ИЖ-75)
The whole idea of making a very distinct firearm and round for use in secret assassinations seemed suspect from the very start. It's pretty counterproductive for covert work. Surely you'd want to use the most common and readily available weapon (that is reliable and can do the job) that was sourced far away from your nation's industry as possible.
If you really want to assassinate someone there were already plenty of guns available at the time. No need to engineer a new one from scratch just clone one of the existing designs.
Designed for Special Operation Forces in wartime for killing sentries not for covert, deniable assassinations during a Cold War scenario.
vapin scoundrel Welrod uses basic. 32ACP and 9mm Para rounds and it's a simple gun. Soviet PB is built mostly out of Makarov's details and uses the same 9mm PM rounds (of course, with less powder to keep the subsonic speed).
I counter with the Wellrod.
Also Chinese Type 64 silenced pistol, modernfirearms.net/handguns/hg/ch/type-64-e.html
Russian gun with a bottleneck cartridge:exists
Internet forums: its unstoppable even an tiger 2 was scared of it.
My first thought was "Oh my god, those cartridges are adorable!"
love these tiny center fire cartridges
Say that as it rips through your chest
Vieledspy lol
smol boolet
Hehe
great video as always
9:33 "a little hard to read though"
Of course it's hard to read, you are holding it upside down!
It is a stamp of quality control (ОТК stands for Отдел Технического Контроля - Department of Technical Control, if literally translated). Still cannot decifer the digits near OTK sign though.
The unified barrel blanks thing was done in order to recycle flawed rifle barrels into handgun barrels, thus reducing the waste of the production and increasing the output of the factories. Or so I hear.
Does that make that much sense though? If a rifle barrel turned out poorly you're having to re-line the barrel anyways right?
Acb Thr Well you could have a bent barrel or some other circumstance where only part of the barrel is damaged, so you could concievably merely truncate the useful section off and turn it into a pistol barrel. Or so I think.
What Mdudeman said. At least that's almost exactly what I heard and had in mind when writing my comment.
When barrels get old from extended use the rifling tends to wear starting from the breach and muzzle, then spreads inward. Historically worn out rifles would be turned into carbines by removing the barrel, cutting off both ends, then using the leftover middle section as the "new" barrel, as the rifling would still be in good condition.
Concidering the length difference of rifle and pistol barrels, an old worn out rifle barrel could potentially have the ends cut off, get milled down in size from the outside (to make the barrel thinner and lighter, still being strong enough for pistol level pressures), then cut into multiple pistol length barrels.
Back when guns were often made on a smaller scale and hand fitted that would save a lot of time and money. I'm sure at the turn of the 20th century a heavily used Mosin-Nagant rifle barrel could be made into 4 or 5 Nagant revolver barrels fairly cheaply. A carbine could probably still be made into 2 or 3 pistols, perhaps after being already made form an existing full length rifle.
Just my two cents.
That reminds me of my favourite shotgun. The KS-23. The barrel is made from 23mm anti-aircraft barrels that had manufacturing flaws. They were cut down and turned into a 23mm shotgun. A normal shotgun is 12 gauge. This would be 6.27 gauge. Significantly bigger.
"Super Secret Squirrel". I haven't seen anyone use that phrase without trying until today. Hail Gun Jesus.
Super Sekret Soviet Skvirrel
@@dndboy13 Natasha Approved.
I love the slim profile of the PSM!!!! Great video as always Ian!!! Love from Canada!
I honestly think this thing is sexy as hell. Almost like a sci-fi/dystopian cyberpunk Makarov.
I'd definitely like one in .380 for a compact hiking pistol ✅️
Fun thing, I used to have one of these in a toy variant when I was a kid, back in russia thirtysomething years ago. :D Recognized it immediately, because it was nothing like the other ones available back then. My cousin had a makarov, which was heavier and sort of bulkier, but he was taller and older than me so it was alright. Ah, memories! :D
Me too even tho I grew up in West Germany lol
Till this day I have no idea how I got my hands on it
ah yes the good ol' days where you could own realistic toy guns
This gun has a reputation for being used to assassinate squirrels?
Yeah, Rocky was acting very shifty. He had to be dealt with.
No no no, Ian said it was designed for use against pedestrians!
And I thought US has harsh laws against jaywalking.
starfleethastanks
Kevlar armored squirrels at that!
It is after all a .22 long
My father served in the Moscow police, and he had such a gun as an official weapon. I was always amused by small cartridges similar to toy ones.
unless you're Patton. then apparently you shoot at aircraft with a revolver...
Jeffery Price Hey don't forget Dieter Dengler and how he was shot down
What a pearl ey?
I lol'd but they were ivory no? I believe he had some pretty specific feelings on the subject.
Dogan Patton was quoted as saying "only a New Orleans pimp carries a pearl handled pistol".
+Devin Tariel
By flak???? Wikipedia says his wing got blown off; and now I've read a harrowing account of POW torture and I'm not even sure why. Wtf???
As for Patton, apparently neither a Peacemaker nor a Smith and Wesson magnum were sufficiently American or revolvery for him. He had to have both.
The Makarov 9x18 is my favorite range gun and extremely accurate due to the fixed barrel. Second favorite is the Walther PPK series in .380acp.
Never seen the PSM but that would be a cool addition just for the rare factor. Imagine ammo would be an issue though.
Hah, Masamune Shirow must have bought the lore, since all the sidearms in the later Ghost in the Shell series are chambered in 5.45x18.
You might recall that the Japanese haven't had a "real" army since 1945, so most Japanese people under 90 or so have zero experience of guns at all, and even the few who have served in the various Defence Forces or kidotai since have almost no combat experience of any description
@@talltroll7092
Then how they manufacture the finest airsoft replicas out there?
Theyre gun nuts!
@@A-G-F- Generally speaking, the Japanese are very good at making models and replicas of nearly anything. Just look at their static model and figure industry.
@@DeadMeat991
They have a thing for quality stuff
You can count on Ian for good video, good information, good diction, and great vocabulary.
Thanks man. You're the Steely Dan of gun channels.
Honestly... the cultural differences are staggering. The Russians consider the Makarov "Big and Bulky" while the Americans think anything less than a 5" 1911 in .45 is a mouse gun...
I like 9x18, but am really interested in researching this new (to me) 5.45x18. Thanks for this.
Many thanks for making accurate historical reviews of weaponry (especially - russian weaponry). It's pleasure to watch this kind of videos!
To me it looks like a miniature version of the 7.62×25mm Tokarev round. I always liked shooting the CZ 52 chambered for it as opposed to the Makarov in 9x18mm just because its a little more challenging.
I hope we get to see a PSS sometime, although I understand how that might be practically impossible. Then again I've seen lots of practically impossible things on this channel. ;)
He literally got a gun were only one exists so I think he should be able to get a pss... at least I hope so!
That piston design is how the PSS works as well, so maybe that's why we don't have any here in the US.
Or a PB. I love the PB.
Seth Moyer A few have made it into western hands and Ian has shown a few weapons that number 5 or less in existence (to name a few, the BSW 9mm Gas-Operated Pistol, Streetsweeper, and the Pancor Jackhammer) so it's possible.
The Soviets made a 2 shot, captive piston cartridge low noise pistol for assassinations. Instead of a silencer, a captive piston in the cartridge was used to expel the bullet and keep the gasses/smoke/noise contained with in the cartridge itself, with teh piston remaining in the cartridge itself and sealing it ....so no silencer needed. (?) Eden Pastora was assassinated with the true 'assassins pistol', and not the PSM....
According to some articles, these had a reputation as a "suicide special" during the fall of the USSR.
If you were a cornered high ranking officer, it makes sense to have a "way out" by your side at all times.
Bo Zo after the soviet union collapsed the hard-line communists, many of which were high ranking officers in the military, imprisoned Gorbatchev. Jeltsin, who had much public and international support, thwarted that attempt. And later many officers, fearing reppercusions, actually did commit suicide.
KiwiKemist It was commies killing themselves.
@KiwiKemist
Yeah the capitalists had the popular support, that said, those communists saved a lot of helicopter fuel.
@@Pijawek yep, but the calibre of that weapon was so small, they had to shoot themselves five or six times in the head to be sure they are dead...
It's a little known fact that the Soviets made this thinner, to make sliding into those DM's all that much easier.
When firing the PSM, the smell of the burnt powder is identical to the smell of old paper cap pistol I had some 60 years ago. My ammo was the non-penetrating type without steel core.
Those cap guns that used rolls of paper caps were always my favorite, but they always seemed to break much faster than the ones that used plastic rings of caps. Also, they didn't feed like a real firearm, which wasn't as fun. However, you could fan the hammer on those things and tear through the roll really fast.
Thanks for the memory.
Oh, memories! The paper roll guns were cheaply made with the mechanism made of thin sheet metal. Sometimes the metal mechanism wore through the plastic frame and just fell out.
The guns made for plastic rings (or even better, linkable strips) were often cast metal. I had a Lahti that fed strips from a removable magazine, and with every shot it cut off and ejected the spent cap. Edison Giocattoli still manufactures these, check out their home page for some nostalgia.
so another wolf ammo fan? Boy some of those pistol rounds I've fired, particularly .380 (which is not used much in Russia I don't think) do stink up the range, and as a bonus - you get a dud round at least once per box! The AK ammo though, is dead reliable I must say.
As always, great video. Love the information and history.
The handgun of choice among professional hitpeople is the .22 caliber. It is the most common, least traceable round. The bullet generally penetrates on side of the skull and bounces around inside the "target" head. A professional can casually walk behind a "target" in the streets or at a store, fire one fatal round upward in the base of the skull. "Target " dead before it falls down, hardly any noise or mess, the professional melts into the crowd.
but you need to get really close to the target for that to work
Another great video... When Im bored I look up one of your vids, always something new to find out about fireams and their history and development ✌️👏
I love how Ian's pronunciation of Makarov is in between American and Russian lol
I did note, the cartridge is in centerfire, rather than rimfire, very much like the .25 auto. Thanks for showcasing this!
I've been waiting for this one!
Ummm, wasn't there supposed to be shooting?
I was looking forward to that myself.. guessing next video
Wayne Hartneck Lol
stay tuned
Jimmy Cricket what he said
+Jimmy Cricket the shooting video will post tomorrow
Very interesting and informative. I appreciate your expertise and professional commentary.
Long ago and far away, I saw a newly-promoted B.G. get his Colt 1903, which he accepted politely. About an hour after the ceremony I was called into his office and found him holding the pistol in the palm of one (very large) hand with a thoroughly disgusted look on his face. Our conversation was short. B.G. : "Get me a @**&% .45 !" Me: "Yes Sir!"
I wonder how often this happened in the Soviet military.
I imagine it happened quite a bit. Lol who would want to carry a pistol that probably feels barely more potent than a cap gun? I would have requested a Tokorev, that shoots a round actually capable of defeating some soft body armor. The PSM seems pointless as the Makarov was only a fraction larger.
This seems likely for a gung-ho guy who's expecting to see action.
But fast-forward ten or twenty years to when the same dude (or his Russian equivalent) is a peacetime officer stationed at home, in charge of the Department For Updating Railroad Maps Of Northern Caucasus or perhaps the Glorious Remote Radar Installation Maintenance Division.
That's when you don't want three pounds of metal hanging from your belt every day.
The irony is in a few years he'll probably want it back. The whole point is that it's standard for some ranks to carry a pistol with them as a part of their uniform, however when you are never ever in a situation to use it, especially for a job where it will physically get in the way, then it's just a big weight you've strapped on, hence why they come up with these small guns.
Good soldier learns to work with what he gets. Spoiled soldier cries like little baby and gets killed. Don't be spoiled soldier.
Smart soldier works to get what he needs. Be smart soldier.
Thanks for the video Ian. That piece was machined nicely. The fit and finish were very good.
Great Video. Very informative.
Pistol rounds look so mean with a necked down case.
I am super happy you got one to do a video on. Best Day Ever.
Great video. Keep up the good work.
When you mentioned the ATF, at one point, what I was thinking was, just like the SPAS 12, which I guess did not meet the rules for sporting purposes Shiz, that these two cool looking pistols also did not meet that demand, I always thought it is a Stupid thing the damn ATF does, because they decide not to think of it that way, but instead focus on things that should not matter in the long run, like these two pistols are really no different sporting wise then say A Glock or Ruger Handgun, and same with the Shotgun, the SPAS is no different then A Beneli M4 Super 90 or Remington 870 and so forth, I don't know if I am saying all this correctly, but that is just what I think, any ways good video good sir :)
Jack Reacher capture that gun in Portland Maine in 7th volume of his adventure. :)
What’s great is the idea that a senior level officer is qualifying with his “pistol” and going to use it in any capacity.
Its low weight and narrow build would make a good cosmonaut pistol...
You have the best gun channel for the gun aficionados interested in more than entertainment.
Not going to mention toe off center goatee? I love this channel!! Can watch all day... if it weren’t for work.
PSM: so Soviet army paymaster can feel like James Bond!
Oi IAN! Thanks for your kickass content!
I had the opportunity to buy one of these in the 1990's when I lived in the UK. I didn't get it, because the ammo would not have been easily, or at all available. But it was an interesting piece to hold.
Haven't watched this yet, but wondering if Ian will use the word "ameliorate" at some point.
And now do a video on the PSS :D
Such an innovative design in a time where firearms development is stagnant.
Seeing that gun it really seems to be quite good for concealed carry, the slim design and stuff like the low profile safety.
No matter the design intent I can absolutely see some of those ending in hands of people who require a concealed but still capable gun
ПСМ пистолет специальный малогабаритный translates to Pistol Special Small (scaled down).
Letty in Fast & Furious 6 had one of these. That was the first time I had heard of the pistol, so naturally I had to rush home and google it. Interesting little gun and Ian seems to always make they sound even more so.
0214Bub so that's what it was
I'm curious how a Makarov would've performed Chambered in a 9mm mak round necked down to this 5.45 round.
Really can't wait for your AK-53 video.
When are you doing shooting on this little guy next vid?
That's a cheeky little round. Like a smaller 5.7x28. Looking forward to the shooting video :-) Keep up the good work!
Cheers, ASC.
I have seen one with factory made suppressor, with little longer barrel for it and with different cartridges
The version in .25 acp would have been interesting also! There were aslo a few PPKs made in .25 acp. Those are the biggest guns as fare as I know that were ever made in .25 acp.
I think the Heckler & Koch HK4 in the .25ACP/6.35mm version is slightly bigger than the Walther.
Oh, my neighbour is a former police officer, onse we argued about small pistol calibers (like 5,7mm FN) and he told me a story from Soviet times about a guy who managed to escape a crime scene after being hit in his back like 12 times with a PSM during a chace. What he basicly told me is to NEVER trust my life with any caliber with this small stopping power.
Small caliber is about light recoil and ammunition capacity so you can score those vital hits at short range. A .22LR is ballistically capable of scoring a fatal wound at 500m but the drift of the round is so great at that distance a hit at all is down to luck.
The 5.7mm FN cartridge is capable of great accuracy within 150m. It was specifically designed to maximize short-range accuracy and armor penetration; the steel core slug will penetrate soft armor within that same 150m range.
Stories of people escaping alive (at least for the moment) from engagements with small caliber arms like these are common because in many high intensity situations precise shot placement is abandoned in favor of volume of fire.
Exactly the point, most of the time "precise shot placement" is the thing only for the shooting range and plinking, but in real high intensity situations there's never enough time to think and be precise, so the speed and higher firepower is nesessary.
GreenHellTube practice makes all the difference though. your groups may open up under stress, but muscle memory makes sure they're as tight as they can be reasonably expected to be.
"Stopping power" is a loaded phrase. as was mentioned by others, 22LR has plenty of stopping power at 500 yards but is hard to be accurate enough with it at those ranges. I work on an ambulance and once saw a guy who had been shot at least 10 times with a 22 LR. He died eventually but the shooters accuracy wasn't great so it took a while to happen. Would the same shot placement but with a larger caliber round have done the deed faster? Maybe. If you want to stop a threat, shot placement is what matters. Not "stopping power".
Well as Ian and Karl have mentioned quite a few times, there is a reason militarizes don't really take pistols seriously. Because pistols are just not that effective at killing, unless you of course are using something insane like a S&W 500. After all there is a really most shootings that happen involve people just being injured and not killed.
I love your videos! l've fallen asleep binge watching them on multiple occasions. I'll be sure to drop by patreon when I'm not busy.
1 suggestion Ian lighter backdrop cloth for a dark coloured gun
A pistol that flat would be easy to hide.
It's a beautiful little pistol. The reason to not use 22LR for a defensive pistol (other than the obvious lack of power when compared to service calibers), is the rimfire case which is a less reliable primer than centerfire ammo. This is why the 25 ACP was created. It makes you wonder why the Russians didn't just use a slightly higher pressure 25ACP instead of creating a new cartridge. Increasing the pressure in the 25 ACP even just slightly would create a round with as good to better ballistics and would still be capable of using steel core projectile ammo
Great video, as always:)-John in Texas
great video !!
Best regards from Tula !
Odd that Soviet general officers felt it was so important to have a smaller sidearm than the already small enough Makarov, to the extent that a whole new gun *and* cartridge needed to be designed.
they didn't 'felt' it. PSM was created as a concealed carry weapon
Вячеслав Скопюк despite the fact that a makarov isn't the hardest things to conceal anyways.
Really similar philosophy to the Germans and the PPK during WW 2. High Ranking Officers need a gun, but a P-08 or P-38 was considered too bulky.
LOL Makarov too bulky? I carry one of those around in my pocket as a concealed carry gun. I wish I could get the psm, but the ammo makes it illegal for me to have one.
@@itsfyeo1520 thanks for the link! I'm a Canadian, I've always been curious to the ins and outs to American firearm regulation
wildyracing1 really fmj is best because the weapon is designed to function with it . for example some older 9 mm pistols from ww2 wont reliably cycle hollow point ammo ..what a silly law ..you must live in an anti gun state .
Back in the day it was tested and defeated threat level 1 and 2 body armor. Don't remember if it was tested against threat level 3 though. Cool and interesting pistol and cartridge. I'd like to see it against more modern body armor.
It says something about the soviet system that they could simultaneously speak of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and yet spend years developing a prestige weapon for high ranking officers.
WalkaCrookedLine
All pistols are equal .....However some are more equal than others !
@@jeffkardosjr.3825 I didnt realize arms development was cheap
Because they were just as corrupted and in love with money and power and class-ism as the West? The modern USA has fallen off quite a bit from its original ideas too, with a 'defense' budget that eats up over half of all discretionary spending, and foreign bases and entanglements galore.
You could make a novelty pistol just gluing together THREE PSMs. Better than the "double-1911"... :)
Got all excited to see this shoot into kevlar. Then the video just ended. Oh well...
RabidMortal1 What a buzzkill
+Forge North It did, there was a follow up vid, it went through.
My god... did you just call it a "squirrel assassination tool"?! Brilliant.
Watching this again post-Popenker collab, I wonder how accurate the anecdotes about its lethality are. It's like the anecdotes (and even photo evidence) of some people failing to self-forever-sleep with .22 short or even .22lr pistols, even though ballistics show those rounds to be capable of penetrating skulls normally.
Are the examples bad rounds/bad luck, or are the tests/examples not perfectly transferable to human results?
Some Russian assassin better answer this.
Hi Ian, loving the videos! You probably don't want to do too much editing, but it would be great to see the names of certain weapons, parts or in this case the different cartridges displayed on screen. It could make it easier to follow your story, with such visual support. Just a suggestion, though!
Is that the deathly hallows symbol on the side of the gun? Wizards with guns, now there's a blockbuster for ya.
I CAST GUN
Who’s here from Brandon Herrera
Yeah me too
yup
I like the no frills, all business aspects of the Makarov pistols.
Is it the same PSM that was featured on Larry Vicker's channel? I imagine there's like 5 of them in the USA
Are you going to upload another video with shooting?
The loading for this is just sad.
I mean I have read about the cartridge and thought that (with the speculated velocity's) it would of made for a spectacular SMG/PDW round.
To only find it to be so weak just leaves me coldly dispointed.
Now I'm curious about the cartridge. It seems like an East bloc.22LR or .17HMR. Are you aware of any varmint/sporting rifles chambered in this neat little thing?
You say it doesn't meet the ATF standards for pistols, so what does that imply as far as owning, purchasing, or carrying one? Just curious.
I think the ATF rules cover importation. If one was already here, you coud buy it (I think, I am not a lawyer). But since it could not be imported to USA, you are unlikely to find one.
I saw a dealer who had 3 0f them for sale brought back from Granada I think.
Hope you can get your hands on a Drotik and Pernach one day, I'd love to see a video on those. And Parker Hale PDW and Bushman IDW, but that's just daydreaming.
One of my personal favourite handguns, mostly due to it's size and calibre, as well as rarity (atleast in the West) Overall a cool little blaster
There was a gas/signal version you could buy freely, it cost 140 euros. It was made by Izh (Izh 78-8) and it was an exact copy of the real thing except for the barrel. It was even made of steel and not that funny alloy they usually use for gas/signal guns.
Also, put it in safety and when you push the safety lever 1 or 2 mm to the left you remove the firing pin. Then you can remove the safety lever as well.
in the cartridge comparison the primer on the psm round looks so huge... guess it's cause the diameter of the case is smaller?
How about a show on the S4M pistol?
It would be nice if you could do some vids on US Gun Legislation, because it seems pretty confusing to us benighted foreigners (presumiably also to most Americans as well).
This seems like a perfect concealed carry weapon: small, light and accurate; not going to blow a target away but make your presence known. Why discourage a weapon that will most likely injure but not kill?
(caveat: I know .22 LR can kill, and if Ian can find one of the silenced .22 sniper rifles issued to the British Auxilary Units during WW2 we would all have a very educational show)
((For those interested, I'm not sure of the make other than they were .22, silenced, with telescopic sights and- according to one book- " for use on sentry dogs and collaborators. "))
Sam Russell because a lot of times, things aren't that simple. In the end you need to shoot until the threat is no longer, whether they flee, surrender, are injured to a high enough degree, or dead. While it's great if there's an outcome where no one has to die, but if it happens and you hold back, chances are it won't end well for you
You said you were going to shoot it. Will the shooting be hosted here or on InRange?
Wasn't the PSS more the assassination gun? Since it was suppressed
Do a video on the PSS even if u can't find one, I'd love to hear u talk about it
ua-cam.com/video/zDgzfuj6xDI/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/FNwazAS2CMY/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/e3hCPvorr9Q/v-deo.html You asked for a PSS pistol.