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Welcome to “Today’s EDC” from Chris.   Courtesy of Everyday Carry.

Hailing from the warm weather of Florida, Chris keeps it pretty simple with his Star 9mm pistol.  He indicated he carried the Star BM 9mm.  Really.  I had to Google it to make sure someone wasn’t trolling me.  Yes, a model BM.

For a backup he carries a North American Arms .22 Mag mini-revolver.

Then there’s the brass Fisher Space Pen and matching brass Olight.  In addition to the Barlow knife, he’s got one of those Leatherman Skeletools.

Interesting to say the least.

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52 COMMENTS

    • My very first pistol was a Star BM9, similar to the one pictured above but with a slightly longer barrel by perhaps 1/2″. Mid-size 1911 style single stack 9mm. Loved it to death. Sold it to a family member when I got another one that was in even better condition. These were the duty pistols of the Spanish police forces back in the ’70s and ’80s, and were shipped to enthusiastic buyers here in the U.S. when they eventually changed to something else.

    • Perry, do you have any idea how many Canadians we get in Florida every year? Especially in the panhandle? Our 20-30 lows in winter, though short lived, are balmy to them. And much less expensive than south Florida. I could go in any bank along the Gulf Coast and exchange U.S. currency for Canadian.

      • So that’s where they went. I thought we lost a bunch of Knucks to Naples. They went up to you??
        Whod a thunk it??

    • Plus, that isn’t Canadian money, but a map. The way navigation used to be done before GPS.
      Canadian money has a queen on it… take it from one who lives 50 miles from the border. Yes, in the “Constitution free zone”.
      🙂

  1. Very cool. Now I want a Star again.

    Dammit. Cool gun but I never had good luck with them on reliability.

    Handy 1911 format.

    • Specialist, a friend’s father defended himself with a Star PD .45 ACP years ago. Used to be the go to 1911 for those wanting something smaller than a Commander before Colt introduced the Officer’s. I wonder if he can draw that NAA with one hand. Looks like quality leather, but a tight fit if it’s not anchored on a belt.

      • I remember the PD well. Lots of spring replacement.

        They worked well enough with ball or 230 Hydrashock.

        My brothers BKM wouldn’t feed hollow points and batter the rear of the barrel.

        Stopped going into battery after 100 rounds.

        Strych9 says they got better on the later steel frames. For 259 dollars, it might be worth a shot just to have a cool old gun.

        • $150 from jgsales, $50 for a police issue holster. $20 spare mags as of January.

          Star-firearms.com they even will tell you the history and have digitized the SN database.

      • There’s a lot of people that carry a NAA in a pocket holster with the leather wet molded to fit it. If the holster is too tight, you can place a layer sandwich bag material around the revolver and insert it in the holster for a couple of hours. It’ll loosen up the holster to where it’s easier to draw. If you don’t want to stretch out the molding, then it’s pretty easy to use your thumb to push off the holster during the draw.

    • I’ve got a firestar. A .45 ACP Detonics clone. I even carry it occasionally, but it’s so heavy it’s a chore. Never had any reliability problems with it though. I’ve even ran above SAAMI max loads through it with no problems at all. But maybe I just got a good one. One that wasn’t made on a Friday night or a Monday morning.

      • I had a FireStar in 40 s&w back in early 90s almost got me kilt. But that’s another story.
        Me I don’t miss it one bit.

  2. Star BM, great gun. $179.00 at Classic. Extra mags hard to find. Get one before they are gone.

    My bet is this one is a recent purchase freshly cerakoted. Nice job. Good luck with the mags.

    • I got two from Classic for $179.00 each. Nice firearms and in very good shape. Good heft and feel. Found a source for a couple of spare mags for each one, too. I’m satisfied. Also, just the other day a fairly Local gun store was advertising the Star BM for $199.00. May have to acquire another one.

    • Looks like electro less nickel. Probably freshened it up from beater to neater.

      I kinda like it. Might send one to Machovskys.

  3. Many but not all of the Star BM pistols are often found with a non-inertia firing pin which makes it too dangerous to carry with a round in the chamber. It can go off if dropped. Do not try and modify this pin as spare pins are very difficult to find. Only a skilled gunsmith should attempt to alter this pin or it may be ruined.

    There was an aluminum framed version of this gun as well.

    The gun is a heavy one for its size as it has a steel frame. The gun is certainly rugged enough to take a lot of shooting.

    The BM it may not feed all manner of expanding bullets as it was not originally designed as such and its feed ramp is a bit more steep than most modern firearms. A good feed ramp polish and chamber thoating help here.

    The trigger pulls are generally quite good and accuracy quite good as well.

    Because of the all steel frame recoil is soft and recover time between shots quick even though the gun is a compact pistol.

    The sights are not bad either for a gun of this old a design.

    There is a .45 acp version of this gun called the PD with an aluminum frame which as to be expected did not hold up well to the pounding of the .45 acp cartridge even though the gun had a plastic buffer but the buffer often soon disintegrated and Star did replace the buffer twice with a different grade of plastic all to no avail. The .45 Acp was actually one of the first small concealable .45 carry guns being much smaller than the Colt Commander aluminum framed gun that did not hold up very well either.

    I have always liked Star Pistols with my favorite being the Star M30 which was probably the most rugged maintenance free double stack 9mm ever made. In one test Interarms made it went 100,000 rounds without any parts breakage beating the 1911 by a good 80,000 rounds. It truly was a masterpiece of engineering. That is the gun that the U.S. Military should have chosen when they instead chose the aluminum framed weak slide Beretta 92 that many times went nuclear in shooters faces because of the weak slide configuration which gave up the ghost with continuous diets of hot military ammo proving it was not the best choice as a military firearm if longevity was paramount.

    With todays micro 9mm pistols the old Star is a bit dated and large and heavy and the newer plastcky pistols are much lighter in weight and are generously throated for modern expanding bullets.

    With many Star BM’s now on the surplus market its a nice range toy or budget home defense gun for the majority of people of the younger generation who today unfortunately are much poorer than the older generation who could and still can afford much more expensive pistols.

    • Your analysis of the Star PD is spot on, had one disintegrate on me with less than a hundred rounds back in the 70’s.

      • vlad is copying word for word from someone else’s review of the Stars. He’s never touched a real pistol. He just does this once in a while to try to claim he knows about guns.

        An entire comment without calling us uncivilized for not having UBC’s, mental health checks on every gun purchase, etc. etc.

        • I would surmise that this is correct. His post appears to be a cut/paste job of a few different sets of top results for Google searches and complaints on boards.

          If he was knowledgeable he’d know that the BM is not considered drop safe with a “standard” firing pin in Condition 2 but that it’s considered safe in Condition 1 or Condition 3, the ways it was designed to be carried. Further, Star and a number of other manufacturers made inertial firing pins for the BM and BKM pistols. The swap is cheap and easy even today with Echeverria having been out of business for a bit over two decades.

          The PD had a fair number of complaints against it for not lasting a long time. Star changed the buffer to a long-lasting version in the early 1980’s and changed it so that the swap was easy. They also knew, and told users, that the aluminum alloy tech wasn’t as good as they would like and so regular spring changes were necessary to keep the gun from tearing itself apart. This was something they learned the hard way with the BKM/BKS and PKM (aluminum alloy versions in the B and P model lines respectively). Lo and behold, if you follow the proper maintenance schedule the gun runs like a top pretty much forever. A lot of people didn’t follow those instructions and the gun paid the price for that neglect. The later years of the PD did however suffer QC issues as Star started to go downhill later on. Better spring kits for those guns, that extended the replacement schedule, eventually came out but I don’t know how easy they are to get a hold of today since I don’t own an alloy framed version of either the B or the P. Supposedly the BKM/BKS are pretty darn rare these days. Personally I’ve never seen one for sale but then I haven’t looked either.

          Further, his analysis of the reason a BM won’t reliably feed all JHP ammo is also incorrect. Specialist and I discussed this at length a couple months back.

          The big part of the feed ramp on the BM pistol is on the frame and the gun was designed/made before JHP was common, that’s true. However the ramp is basically the same angle as both the G19 and the FNS-9c (I just physically checked to verify this). It’s not exact but it’s close enough that there’s no way it matters.

          The issue is similar to that reportedly encountered with some 1911’s (I say reportedly because my experience with 1911’s is reasonably limited), in that the ramp is part of which is on the frame rather than the barrel. The gun feeds fine if the barrel and the feed ramp line up, but they don’t always because they’re not toleranced to do consistently because the gun was meant for FMJ where this is not an issue. In the BM the ramp is actually two pieces, the ramp on the frame and a sharpish lip on the bottom of the chamber which has play forward and back as well as up and down. The result is that a JHP round sometimes get’s hung up when the barrel doesn’t line up perfectly with the frame ramp and creates a gap that’s large enough that the edge of the JHP round’s opening can get stuck on the lower edge of the barrel’s “chamber ramp”. Remington Golden Saber (IME) fixes this with a narrow enough hollow point that it misses the edge and jumps that gap reliably. FTX style bullets will do the same thing quite reliably. You can polish both parts of the ramp all you want, it doesn’t change the fact that the barrel isn’t always in the right alignment with that frame ramp to allow a JHP with a wide “face” to jump the gap correctly. How exactly you would fix that to run other JHP rounds, if it’s even possible, would be a question for someone like Dyspeptic.

        • Even Vlad is probably smart enough to figure out how to type “ipconfig /renew” into the command line or PSH. or go through the menus to release his IP and have it reassigned.

        • TTAG doesn’t let me post while using a VPN, which sucks. So, if Vlad Tetanus is using a VPN then he wouldn’t be able to post. Wait, Vlad, please start using a VPN!

    • strych9 Needed a whole page of lame excuses which disproved nothing I originally posted and he is wrong about the second form of shit plastic buffer Star used it did not work either. That was documented by many gun writers decades ago.

      And lets get realy Strych your not bullshitting anyone about replacing a ton of parts to keep the Star running. The average Joe is not the most mechanically inclined nor does he at this late date have access to all the parts you claim are so easy to get and they when available are not cheap either. That’s mostly bullshit too. Nor does the average Joe want to put up with such headaches either when in a modern gun or a better designed one he can shoot for a long , long time before he needs to replace parts that are available because the gun he bought is still being manufactured.

      Strch9 is obviously working for the gun industry making excuses and sugar coating the BM’s problems so the importers can sell off the stock of Stars that recently came into the country strych 9 is fooling no one as to his real motives in his post i.e. its profit and money. I on the other hand who do not work for the gun industry can tell the truth about the gun as I am not a prostitute for the gun industry.

      Its only in recent times that gun manufactures have invented the new wave of plastic pistols that most all have short shallow feed ramps that were designed to feed expanding ammo. What I said about the Star being outdated is true and while we are at it that goes for the original 1911 design as well, not that its feed problems with modern ammo have been vastly improved over the years and the same would be true if you made the same modifications to the old Star design as well. But it is not being made so what I originally posted is quite true its not the best gun for self defense unless you chose your expanding ammo carefully. Some brands may work and some will not feed reliably.

      By the way I do have one of the BM’s and I like it for what it is. A trip into the past being made of all steel and quite a bargain for the money. But I am under no illusion about ever carrying it when I can carry a smaller, lighter, more reliable and higher capacity gun made to feed all expanding ammo. Now that’s the naked truth and I can say this because I do not work for the gun industry.

        • Better is to ask the troll questions that you suspect he won’t be able to answer. This will clearly show everyone reading that he’s lying. For example, in this case, one might ask him to explain the difference between carry in condition one, two, and three. He already made claims to know all about this, so if he has to paste the wikipedia page on “condition two”( for example), it will be pretty obvious that his basic knowledge ends with his ability to cut and paste.
          To a gunsmith, it’s already obvious that whoever he plagiarized this from, they don’t know what “condition two” is any more than Vlad himself does. Pointing this out when he is unable to answer the simple question will also make his ignorance obvious to the layman shooter as well.
          I don’t see this tactic as feeding the trolls. I see it as embarrassing them into blessed silence from their incessant babbling.
          Ahhhh. Vlad-less peace and quiet…. A worthy goal, IMO. Anything that would stop him from reposting whole books would sure be welcome.
          Next up for copy and paste… “War and Peace”? Only the troll knows for sure

        • To Knute

          ” For example, in this case, one might ask him to explain the difference between carry in condition one, two, and three.”

          Your to ignorant to see that when strych9 posted that originally it was a sly attempt to lay a smoke screen around the truth and that was when you carry the BM with the hammer down those that did not have inertia firing pins can indeed fire when dropped. If you understood basic gun design that is irrefutable. My post stands as accurate and truthful and all BM owners should be aware of this or suffer at their own peril if they drop one that does not have the inertial firing pin. No amount of your sarcasm , name calling our just plain being disingenuous with the public will change the truth about the gun.

        • Vlad: So then guns WITH inertial firing pins(like a 1911A1) cannot fire when dropped? That IS what you are saying you believe, correct?

        • Well, it would appear that asking Vlad what he believes is too difficult of a question. perhaps he is waiting for his master to tell him what he thinks?
          Anyway, let’s go for something even easier.
          VLAD? I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU!
          Assume you are at a range with an empty semi-automatic pistol and a loaded magazine. Let’s say it’s a Star BM. What steps would you take to put that gun into condition 2?
          Surely you can hit this baby out of the park. Its a barely moving softball. Or can you????

        • To knute head

          “Vlad: So then guns WITH inertial firing pins(like a 1911A1) cannot fire when dropped? That IS what you are saying you believe, correct?”

          I never said that nor did I imply it. Nice try at entrapment but do you think your dealing with someone as inexperience as yourself. Your out of your league. The answer is that some 1911’s (original design) can indeed go off if dropped. This was proven way before WWII and Colt was so worried about it they developed a passive firing pin lock before WWII but never put in in their guns until the 1980 model was made. Try again Genius your out of your league.

          The difference between the inertia and non- inertia firing pins is that the non-inertia firing pin is resting against the primer when the hammer is in the down position while with the inertia system the pin is not because its held back in the firing pin tunnel by its spring. When the firing pin spring in the inertia system gets week it can let the firing pin run forward with enough force to fire off the gun when dropped. Even if the spring is new if the 1911 is dropped from a great height which was at about 20 ft in the Colt tests the 1911 could also go off but for all practical purposes when handguns are accidentally dropped by John Q. Public its usually out of their hand to the floor which in most cases will not set off a 1911 with a working firing pin spring in it. Extra strength springs have been available for 1911 guns for years

          Neither the inertia or non-inertia system is fool proof hence the development of the passive firing pin block which most modern handguns have which again makes the Star and the older original 1911 system less safe and obsolete as far maximum safety is concerned.

          And to be clear the passive firing pin safety system can malfunction as well if not properly made. Glock had a secret recall called an “upgrade” because their original passive firing pin safety system proved defective “in some of their guns” but not all of them and some of their guns went off when dropped. The newer Glock passive firing pin system is not the same as the original obviously. To be fair other gun companies had no recalls on their passive firing pin safety systems and they usually work quite well but any mechanical devise can get dirty and or contaminated because of lazy indolent owners who never clean or lube their guns which can cause them to wear out or malfunction eventually. But the passive firing pin safety is still the best design going in today’s world.

          All this once again goes right back to my original post stating the Star BM is an outdated design. Colt only recently in the last few years has been offering the original design once again that does not have the passive safety series 80 design but continues to offer the 80’s design as well. You takes your pick and then takes your chances if you chose the non- passive safety design. All this is possible because traditionalists kept screaming they wanted the older design and the U.S. being a non-civilized country does not put handguns under the Consumer Safety Protection Act which would have outlawed that older design faster than a cat can jump off a hot tin roof. But when did human life ever take precedence over the blind greed of manufacturers in the U.S. , Never when it comes to guns.

          In conclusion the Star models that did not have an inertia firing pin system are an accident waiting to happen and the older Colt systems although not completely safe are far less so if they have springs that are not worn out. I might ad that carrying the Star or the original Colt system at Half Cock is not a solution either as if the hammer shears off in two pieces and or the sear shears on impact in a fall the hammer can move forward and set the gun off in a fall.

          Of course most Far Right Wing guys like you will say “don’t confuse me with the facts” and none of this can be true and if it is true it will not happen to me. The grave yards are full of gun owners and motorcycle riders that were all hatched out of the same nest. Its called Darwinism in motion.

        • You must have missed the question, since in your 8 page response you ignore it entirely. Allow me to refresh your rather short memory.
          Assume you are at a range with an empty semi-automatic pistol and a loaded magazine. Let’s say it’s a Star BM. What steps would you take to put that gun into condition 2?
          Surely you can hit this baby out of the park. Its a barely moving softball. Or can you????

        • Vlad:
          Hey, I thought of one so easy that even you might know it:
          Q: what is the end of the gun that the bullet comes out of( the side you are supposed to point at the target), called? What is the business end of a firearm called? The most basic of terminology, that every gun owner knows. The name for the front end. What is it?
          Quick now…. google copy and paste is cheating!
          HINT>>>>>>> six letters long…. everyone else on this page knows. Do you?

        • Geez Vlad. You surprise me. I think you might be able to tell that I don’t have much respect for you, but I thought that even you could answer that one in 20 minutes. I told you it was 6 letters long. There’s a hundred free crossword dictionaries that could find this out in less than a second.
          The first letter is an “M”! Can you get it NOW?

  4. I had a Star Bm, good gunm, the magazine lips git tweaked and would jam on hollow points, got a new mag and fine. I gave it to my oldest son, it’s his carry gunm. I shot a Freedom Arms mini revolver once, and though they work alright with that short barrel you don’t get much punch. I know some of you guys can’t play around with ballistic penatration and what not, I can’t anymore either, however you’d be amazed at the difference inches matter in .22 LR. in a short barrel a .25 ACP beats it

  5. Like my little Star BM old blue, made some Mexican bocote wood, darker striped looks good against the blued frame. Have 2 mags. Would have no problem carrying, easy to remove the magazine safety, Just a spring steal insert that can come out no tools. Shoots everything so far.

  6. it was mentioned that this was inspiration for the mustang.
    seems like the last of the nice surplus. this and a cz82.

  7. That’s a very interesting carry. I like Star pistols though. My dad carried a Firestar M43 in the 90s. I was fortunate enough to find a Firestar M243 in great condition at a local gun show last year. I haven’t carried it but I love taking it to the range.

  8. I fully support CCW, but only in the state of Florida would a private citizen carry 2 weapons. Is that even legal?

    • Why wouldn’t it be? Lots of people carry a backup. Whose business is it how many guns/knives/clubs/harsh words a person carries?

  9. I wish STAR Firestar, Astra, and Megastar) would have never run out of business.. they made Solid pistols and we’re all Steel little tanks..

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