Our man Martin and Karl Lippard have scheduled a get-together for a test of Karl’s NCO A2 1911. You may recall that Karl’s pitting his gun [CQB version above] against Colt and Springfield 1911s in the contest to become the next official Marine sidearm. Not that Karl thinks the other makers offer any real competition for his weapon, or gives a rat’s ass whether or not the military beancounters do the right thing and sign a contract with the Colorado gunmaker. In anticipation of Martin’s visit, I asked Karl for some pictures. I received more than a dozen images and the following comms from the man himself . . .
Hummm? Charles may have something in the way of pictures and I will look further. The history copy might be interesting. An old picture with the V.P. probably not [Karl, center, with Dan Quayle above]. The Sam Sloan picture is fairly recent although I weigh less now. Sam is the thinner person and was one of my machinegunners in Vietnam who paid a visit to our old factory across town . . .
We are poised to move to a 15,000 sq. ft. facility and due to the economy postponed that as the pistol comes out of production creating a market to move. As shown in Video it takes only one man to produce NCO’s, a factory of one, 15,000 ft. is excessive unless we are making a 1,000 units or more requiring assistance. For 14 years like my contemporizes I have worked at a home factory building small quantities of expensive sophisticated firearms. There are not more than a dozen makers (if that many) worldwide who design and make their guns at a home office, and mostly by hand. Fabbri, Gamba, Rizzini, Kreighoff, all still do.
I am the only one who designed his own firearms made to interchangeability standards of sophisticated steel using space age technology. I’m embarrassed to report I am the only gunmaker of this kind known to exist today and most certainly the only one in US gunmaking history.
The term “gunmaker” is a bit misused. It implies you make something of your own origin. I’m sorry to report if there is someone else who makes an original design of anything there would only be two of us to list. Hoenig makes his own gun. And of course me who makes, well, quite a number of guns and different things. And I make them like no one else has ever done before. So I’m a rare bird if not an odd duck.
Now in the Past Performance documents requested by the Marine Corps directly to owners, this one is probably hard to read. But it is from one of the pre-eminent gun collectors of our time. He also is a financial officer of one of the leading gun manufacturers today. In other words a world authority on firearms.
He sent me a copy of his report to Marine Corps. He owns three Combat NCO’s made by hand, and his father one. He has two new Combat NCO’s on order now serial number 3 and 4. Of their 25 million dollars in firearm collection there sits one of my shotgun actions as art; and among all the finely engraved pistols and rare guns sits Combat NCO’s; for sophistication of design.
With that background the Joey copy can be best understood. The Vice Presidential photo was presenting my credentials as a Trade representative for the Peoples Republic of China. Some say from this period of circa 1990 that China has done well. I opened that door for China in 1985 to a number of countries.
So pistol making is a small contribution barely worthy of mention. Unless you like pistols of course and prefer a smaller box.
Let me give you a small clue; something no one has ever heard outside of military circles. What is so important about the SolidRifle patent??? This patent buys America time to advance its arms and prevents “certain countries ” from arming themselves with this technology. Sorry, I have to delete the text. Too dangerous to follow this subject.
Now I have a pistol ready to assemble for you. Send a check and I might be able to shoot it Saturday.
Regards,
Karl Lippard
