The most awesome .25acp.

Remember when you are talking about .25 you are talking about half of .50

My .25 acp line-up consisted of a PSA Baby Browning, Beretta 21a, Hawes M25 and a Walther TPH. My favorite by far is the TPH.

usp9

Your Hawes' .25 is rather interesting. I don't believe I have ever come across this particular .25 before. Do you know if it was made by J.P. Sauer and Sons in West Germany? One of my first single action revolvers, a Deputy Marshall, was also made by Sauer and imported by Hawes.

.38 Special said:

Some years ago I had the opportunity to buy an S&W revolver put together by Hamilton Bowen for the .25 Auto. It's hard to imagine a sillier thing, but any gun from Bowen is going to be very good, and the price was obscenely low for a full-blown custom - something like $750 if I recall correctly. I don't remember my excuse for not buying it, but I do still regret it.

View attachment 1074603

Click to expand...

That is amazing...! I'm partial to off-beat firearms, and that certainly fills the bill!

[QUOTE="usp9,] My favorite by far is the TPH.[/QUOTE]

I have over a dozen .25s and none of them come close to the TPH. The US version is rare as hens teeth. I have only seen 2 in the wild and I thank my lucky stars that I bought the first one. I wouldn't pay what the guy wanted for the second one. To be fair I wouldn't sell mine for that price either.

I seem to recall that by the time Walther released the German made TPH, it no longer conformed to current import law. At that time their sale was limited to LEO's.

That probably has a lot to do with scarcity.

Carl N. Brown said:

Remember when you are talking about .25 you are talking about half of .50

Click to expand...

That's some messed up math right there.

chicharrones said:

That's some messed up math right there.

Click to expand...

Two .25's = .50.

"I have two twenty-fives, one for each of ya."

Accurate quote from a popular film.

Electricmo said:

John Browning designed for gentlemen to carry. History says 25% of people shot by it are incapacitated. Interesting stat.

Click to expand...

I'll bite. What history are you claiming here?

I wouldn't mind having one for fun time shooting. Beretta has a few nice looking pistols chambered in .25 acp, the 950 BS, 21 A, and 20. And I do like a good looking gun.

The .25 ACP is essentially the centerfire answer to the .22 in terms of reliability. Would I use it for self-defense? Definitely not my first choice, especially given that I have other pistols in much more suitable calibers. But I do think it would be fun to shoot and have.

Shivahasagun said:

Two .25's = .50.

"I have two twenty-fives, one for each of ya."

Accurate quote from a popular film.

Click to expand...

The engineer in side me is saying:

"ACK-shually, FOUR .25's = .50."

Carl N. Brown said:

Remember when you are talking about .25 you are talking about half of .50

Click to expand...

Might be more fair to use the .50GI (at left; 45acp at right for comparison):

[]

I own an old BERETTA Jetfire in .25ACP and I would choose it before any similar sized pistol in .22LR. I have never had the BERETTA not fire when the tripper was pulled. I have had .22 rimfires not go off when the trigger was pulled for various reasons.
I also think the .25ACP would be much better than a pocket knife. We can skip the comparisons with the MARINE KA-BAR if you please.
Saying that, I would MUCH RATHER HAVE something more effective like even a .32ACP BERETTA Tomcat.

Jim

bannockburn said:

usp9

Your Hawes' .25 is rather interesting. I don't believe I have ever come across this particular .25 before. Do you know if it was made by J.P. Sauer and Sons in West Germany? One of my first single action revolvers, a Deputy Marshall, was also made by Sauer and imported by Hawes.

Click to expand...

I suspect but do not know for sure that Sauer manufactured these for Hawes. However I've never found any other connection to Hawes than Sauer. This particular model was imported by about six importers total.

usp9

I suspect but do not know for sure that Sauer manufactured these for Hawes. However I've never found any other connection to Hawes than Sauer. This particular model was imported by about six importers total.

Click to expand...

While looking for similar examples of your .25, the consensus of opinion by those that had them for sale online was that they were probably made by Sauer. And as you say I didn't come across any other German manufacturer being mentioned.

RetiredUSNChief said:

....
The .25 ACP is essentially the centerfire answer to the .22 in terms of reliability. ...

Click to expand...

Reliable sources say John Moses Browning actually did design the 6.35mm Browning / .25 ACP to duplicate the 2 inch barrel ballistics of the .22 Long Rifle within the design parameters of substituting
(a) sturdy centerfire case using small pistol primer for more reliable ignition and
(b) full metal jacket bullet to stand up to multiple cycles of feeding from magazine to chamber and ejecting unfired cartridge to reinsert in the magazine.

Apparently .22 LR was the smallest defensive handgun round worth considering acceptable for ballistics, but rimfire ignition problems and the plain or copperplated lead bullet and thin rimfire case were just not robust enough for life-or-death defensive use in an autoloading pistol.

I think the .25 bullet diameter of 6.35mm Browning was dictated by the size of a cartridge head that would accept the industry standard small pistol primer. I am tempted to speculate that, if there had been a smaller industry standard centerfire primer, John Moses would have given us a centerfire version of the .22 long rifle cartridge and the Baby Browning vest pocket pistol would have been chambered in 5.56mm Browing aka .22 ACP.

(The Lilliput primers were a curio and were not an industry standard.)

Not a photo of mine, but what I have, a walther model 8. It is a pre war gun.


I think I will echo what others have said, and what the poster with the story with the sword covered. It is better then nothing, I think it is better then rim fire. I have seen with my own two eyes a guy get shot 5 times with a beretta neos (22lr) 6 times before he decided he better sit down and stop being a jerk.....6 times. This was a big dude, and the shots to the body....but I guess never hit anything that would flip the off switch. Would a 25 be better, don't know but seems it should be.....would a 32 be better over a 25, seems it should be, would a 380 be better than a 32 seems it should be.....you get the drift.

In reading that sword story, I come away thinking, two things. In reading that story he stated he was trying to get to two other larger guns, one glock and one revolver that ended up being in parts....now we all know if you have a 32" blade stuck in you I would bet you are not the most thinking person on the planet, but I wonder if he had just crossed off the little 25 because of all the stories and posts we read on this flavor as being not enough. Was it not in his mind because he had in his brain after reading post after post as it was just this side of useless. We will never know, but the brain does work in funny ways.

Those people that read this stuff know this guy did pretty well in the hits on target area, and it goes to show it is something useful.

Electricmo said:

Here’s the statistics from a study I found..
25ACP

# of people shot - 68
# of hits - 150
% of hits that were fatal - 25%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation - 2.2
% of people who were not incapacitated - 35%
One-shot-stop % - 30%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) - 62%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) - 49%

Click to expand...

I wasn't clear. Source for your data?

Double Naught Spy said:

I wasn't clear. Source for your data?

Click to expand...

He's citing the study done by Greg Ellifritz.

Its as pretty good collection of raw data. The author fully admits its small samples, incomplete, and that it doesn't all make sense but that there is some useful information in it and one can find trends.

He doesn't really advocate anything other than pointing out bigger guns seem to work better than smaller ones, the "service" calibers didn't seem to be very different, the little guys (.22, .25, .32) seemed to work slightly less often, location of the hit is #1, and that in the short term, the person shot largely determines their own reaction to being shot.

Some calibers were lumped together (.357 mag, .357 auto / .45 acp, .45 Colt / .32 acp, .32 s&w Long, etc.)

Bullet construction wasn't included. (Didn't have the info)

People shot includes criminals, Police, innocent victims, mutual combatants, etc.

But, there are trends.

I occasionally pocket-carried my Beretta .25 before concealed carry (with license) became legal in my state. I did so only when I thought it might become necessary to use it. I was committing a misdemeanor (SOL long over), but paying a fine is better than being dead. My first rule of gun defense has always been "having any kind of gun is better than not having a gun." Now, concealed carry is legal without a license. Times do change.

My Colt Vest Pocket has had a new firing pin fitted so it is undead.

Here's a pic of my Walther Model 8. It's a very early model made in 1920. .

When the American made Walther TPH came out, I bought the .22lr. Figured it was cheaper and easier to shoot and just as good as the .25.

Huge mistake. It was one of the biggest POS I ever bought. I don’t think it made one magazine without a jam.

Got rid of it and bought the Beretta 21A a few years later. And finally got a Seecamp .25 when they were re introduced. Had I bought the .25 TPH, I’d still have it and, likely not bought the other 2.

Got a want for one of these a few years back. Again, right when the Seecamp came out. So, my itch for a little stainless .25 was scratched. And, I’m OK now. Anybody have one?

Shivahasagun said:

He's citing the study done by Greg Ellifritz.

...The author fully admits its small samples, incomplete, and that it doesn't all make sense...

Click to expand...

Thanks for the response. I had a feeling it was along those lines. What the author freely admits pretty much invalidates the grandiose proclamations of performance percentages from an actual statistical evaluative perspective. When the entirety of the sample was 68 from a caliber that has been around for over 100 years, you really have to question how much is missing.