Daily Archives: Jun 28, 2026

The word “modern” gets applied to handguns so often that it can lose all meaning. In the 9mm world, a design earns that label only when it changes what shooters, armorers, and institutions start expecting as normal. These ten pistols did exactly that. Some introduced higher capacity, some changed materials...

Polymer sidearms dominate modern service inventories, but metal-framed pistols never disappeared from serious use. In specialized roles, older steel-and-alloy handguns still offer traits that matter: recoil control, predictable handling, mature support gear, and decades of armorer knowledge. That staying power is less about nostalgia than repeatable performance. These five handguns...

Handgun caliber arguments usually go sideways when they get reduced to folklore. The more useful question is simpler: which rounds become unforgiving when ignition, penetration, expansion, and recoil all have to work at once? The answer is not always about raw power. Modern testing keeps pointing back to the same...