Weapons are a time capsule into the years in which they were created. In many ways, the history of weapons are the story of us as humans. Some of the earliest known tools made by humans are weapons that early man used to hunt and defend themselves from a dangerous world. This continues on till today. One of the great leaps forward in innovation was the semi-automatic firearms. One such firearm is the Mauser C96 Pistol.

Famed firearm designer Paul Mauser in 1896 designed this pistol. While not the first semi-auto pistol designed, that honor would go to Schönberger-Laumann 1892 with his Salvator Dormus pistol. However, these and the subsequent updates did not gain overall popularity. Mauser would change that with the Bolo pistol.

The features of this pistol are antiquated by today’s standards but at the time it was revolutionary. To load this pistol, you would take your cartridges in a stripper clip and feed it from the top down. Today’s guns feature a detachable magazine for quick loading. While the Bolo is much slower to load compared to say a Glock 19, it was lightyears ahead of the revolvers before it.

The C96 was chambered in 7.63x25 Mauser a centerfire cartridge that would be the basis for the highly successful 7.62x25 Tokerev cartridge the Soviet Union would deploy throughout World War II and even into the Cold War. Pistols were mainly for officers in warfare until the Second World War. The C96 quickly became a highly popular pistol among the officer class and were quickly bought privately by them.

These pistols would see service all the way through World War II. These firearms provided officers a great advantage over their counterparts with five and six shot revolvers. The C96 also got a full-auto variant called the Red 9.

Prior to World War II, sub-machineguns were not in full usage yet. The Red 9 variant gave troops the ability to have a smaller light machinegun as opposed to the heavier models of the time in World War I. These were not highly effective though due to their limit magazine capacity (10 rounds) and lack of a detachable magazine.

In pop culture we see the C96 Bolo pop up quite a bit. Perhaps most famously as Han Solo’s laser pistol in Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope (1977). The prop department took real firearms and modified them to give a more futuristic look to them. This has resulted in many Bolo pistols being historically damaged as people have copied the Han Solo look with them.

Despite this the Mauser C96 Bolo pistol deserves some love for being the first commercially successful semi-auto pistol in the world. It was a great leap forward in technology and we would not have the pistols that we enjoy today without this important step. It was a real privilege to have such a firearm come through our shop. We highlight this particular pistol on our “From the Vault” series on Youtube.