I bought my Tokarev clone when I realised that my eyes were starting to go (occupational hazard of journalists, that and booze).
I felt that the rather impressive flat-shooting capability of the 7.62 cartridge should help to make up for what I was having trouble seeing properly. It worked fine, although the eye problems were only cured with a $500 set of graduated quadrifocals.
But that wasn't all bad, either, because it left me with a heck of a nice pistol that shot VERY well indeed. And THAT was one of its problems.
My younger brother was shooting in the matches at Shilo and needed a WW2 type pistol for the CFB Shilo Battle of the Bulge shoot. This is a MISERABLE anniversary shoot and the weather but rarely co-operates, but the Match Goeth On Anyway.
So come the day of the Big Match and it's 30 below (-35 for you metric guys) and even Garands are freezing up. An Olympic shooter actually got his Garand frozen to the point that he would pull the trigger on Round Number One and the rifle would fire..... and eject Rounds 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 straight up, along with the clip! On my brother's team, the M-1 Carbine froze up... and a Thompson is not the ideal gun past 100 or so yards..... and the heavy rifles were not allowed to shoot anything under 225.
So Little Brother #### whips out George's Tokarev and proceeds to take out most of the 125-yard Carbine targets and ALL the 175-yard ones.
The following 4 years witnessed an impressive and heart-rending amount of pleading, begging, wheedling and outright self-abasement as I made attempt after attempt to regain possession of MY Tokarev. Little Brother simply would NOT return it until he found another (an original Russian, as luck would have it) which shot as well!
There is NOTHING wrong with the Tokarev pistol!
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