“What Happens In Vegas, Stays In Vegas.”—Official Las Vegas advertising slogan

It turns out that that slogan is not only applicable to more risqué and naughty nocturnal activities. Thanks to a totally awesome venue known as Battlefield Vegas, the truism also applies to the opportunity to rent and shoot antique firearms that are extremely difficult if not downright impossible to find anywhere else in the country (unless you’re filthy rich and can afford to actually purchase your own).

As luck would have it, during the final week of 2024, Yours Truly happened to be in “Sin City” to witness my beloved USC Trojans win the Las Vegas Bowl, so as one of my pre-Game Day activities, I decided to mosey on down to Battlefield Vegas and take advantage of the opportunity to shoot two antique, historically significant semiautomatic pistols: the Imperial German “Broomhandle” Mauser on the late 19th century and the WWII-era Type 14 8mm Japanese Nambu.

C96 “Broomhandle” 7.63 mm Mauser History & Specifications

Movie buffs will recognize the iconic “Broomhandle” Mauser as the template for the BlasTech DL-44 blaster that Han Solo uses in the Star Wars film franchise.

But this gun’s real-world history is even more remarkable. Patented in 1896 (hence the alphanumeric designation), it was the first military semiautomatic pistol to prove itself both rugged enough and reliable enough for field use. Moreover, it saved the life of none other than a young Winston Churchill during the Battle of Omdurman on September 2, 1898

Dimensions included a barrel length of 5.5 inches, an overall length of 12,3 inches, a weight of 2 pounds 8 ounces, a standard internal magazine capacity of 10 rounds, and firing an original 7.63x25mm Mauser (AKA .30 Mauser) cartridge.

Type 14 8mm Japanese Nambu History & Specifications

The Type 14 Nambu entered production in 1926, an updated version of the Type A Nambu pistol developed in 1902 by Lieutenant General Kijirō Nambu. It was designated the Type 14 because 1926 was the 14th year of the reign of Emperor Taisho (Yoshihito).

Interestingly, the Nambu wasn’t the *official* issue sidearm of the Imperial Japanese Army, as IJA officers were expected to purchase their own pistols.

The gun had such a poor reputation for reliability – due in part to weak magazine springs and weak striker springs – that at least two of my colleagues at The National Interest, Peter Suciu and Kyle Mizokami, include the Nambu on their all-time Worst Guns lists. Also, various test-fire sessions with the Nambu on YouTube are plagued with malfunctions.

As for the 8x22mm cartridge, it’s a rimless bottleneck cartridge with a diameter of  0.320 inch, generating a muzzle velocity of 1,030 feet per second and 242 foot-pounds of muzzle energy with a 102-grain bullet. These ballistics put the 8mm Nambu round roughly on par with the .380 ACP round (which has an 0.355 inch diameter).

Range Report and Shooting Impressions

Battlefield Vegas’s rental Nambu will cost you $25.00 USD for shooting five rounds and $40 for firing ten rounds; their rental C96 Mauser will cost you 29 and 40 bucks respectively for those same round counts. Now, that might sound excessive, even with the cost of more conventional handgun ammo being what it is nowadays. However, from a business standpoint, these prices make perfect sense; after all, these are antique firearms for which spare parts are extremely difficult to come by in case something breaks, so naturally Battlefield Vegas is going to want to maximize their profit margin for each shot fired. (I suppose you could call that “getting more buck for your bang” as opposed to vice versa.)

The shop’s Nambu specimen was the following mini-history:

“This Japanese pistol was brought back to the United States by a US Marine when World War 2 ended and is a genuine piece of world history.”

So then, how did these classic pistols shoot for me?

Well, naturally I had to purchase the 10-round options for each gun in order to do at least a semi-proper evaluation. The ammo for the 7.63mm Mauser was PPU (Prvi Partizan) 85-grain full metal jacket (FMJ), whilst the 8mm Nambu ammo was a generic (no manufacturing specs listed anywhere on the box) 106-grain FMJ.

I was provided a single B-27 silhouette target for both pistols. For both guns, I divvied the eval into five rounds of head shots at 7 yards and five rounds of torso shots at 25 yards, “When in Rome, do like a Roman,” as the saying goes, so for the 7-yard stage, I used the old-school one-handed pistol shooting stance that was universally taught to soldiers before the late great Col. Jeff Cooper revolutionized two-handed handgun shooting in the 1950s and 60s; at 25 yards, I reverted to my preferred two-handed Classic Weaver Stance.

Both pistols had tolerable ergonomics and trigger pulls, much better than might be expected of mil-spec pistols; the Type 14’s didn’t have excess slack or creep, whilst the C96’s pull felt rather surprisingly like that of a newer vintage traditional double-action (TDA) pistol . The Japanese gun had the cruder sights of the two, whilst the German gat had tangent sights that could hypothetically (and rather optimistically) be adjusted for accurate fire at hundreds of meters.

Both guns enabled me to connect on all of my head shots, although surprisingly the 8mm gave me the tighter groups. At 25 yards, the Nambu gave me one 10-ring hit (just shy of the tie-breaking X-ring), two low-right in the 9-wing, one low-right in the 8-ring…and one flier way off to the extreme right periphery of the 7-ring. The Mauser gave me the tighter group at the farther distance, printing high-right, with one round just barely clipping the 10-ring and the rest taking the 9-ring.

The “Broomhandle” gave me flawless reliability, whist, unsurprisingly, the Type 14 had a failure to feed at Round #8.

Overall, a fun though all-too-brief range session getting to shoot these two pieces of history. Many thanks/Vielen dank/Domo arigato gozaimasu, Battlefield Vegas!

Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ). He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch , The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Company (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.