10MM FIREARMS: Current & Out Of Production

Brugger & Thomet is a Swiss company that has been in business since 1991.  They started out manufacturing surpressors and rail systems for firearms (such as HKs), but have since expanded to producing firearms.

One of their main lines includes pistol caliber submachineguns for military and law enforcement use, such as the APC9.  This has since been expanded to include both the .45 ACP, and now the 10mm Auto.  The 10mm Auto version uses standard Glock 20 10mm magazines.

While expensive, B&T produces top-tier quality firearms and the 10mm version should prove to be an excellent firearm!
 

Beginning production in 1985, D-Max Industries built both a carbine and pistol based roughly on the British Sten design. Both guns use a side-feeding M3 Greasegun 30-round magazine and were available in 10mm Auto, .45 ACP, .41 AE, .40 S&W, .38 Super, and 9mm Parabellum. The stock (on the carbine), pistol grip and forearm are made of smooth walnut while and the vented barrel shroud is made from aluminum. All exterior metal surfaces are parkerized and then given a "MAX-Coat" finish. Barrel length for the carbine is 16.25" while the pistol barrel is only 6" in length. Retail prices for the guns were originally listed as $477 for the pistol and $487 for the carbine.

I believe that D-Max was hoping that their carbines would appeal to the law enforcement market, but this never really came to pass.  With it's ungainly appearance I suppose this isn't much of a surprise, but it's still an interesting concept and it's unfortunate the company didn't survive.  Maybe another idea that was a little too ahead of its time!

Grand Power at first looks to be yet another CZ derivitive, but the appearance is deceiving.  Built in Slovakia, it's a standard DA/SA pistol, but uses a rotating barrel system.  From what I understand this helps to soften the recoil impulse making for a smoother shooter.  It employs a polymer frame that houses a 14-round magazine.  While it comes standard with a 1911-style safety allowing for cocked-and-locked operation, there is also supposed to be a decocker conversion kit available.

This appears to be a very nicely made, and robust 10mm pistol.  Grand Power is not very well known in the United States, but their Stribog 9mm carbines and pistols are gaining a good reputation as an economical, but high quality firearm.

Let's face it.  Hi-Point Firearms does not exactly have the same reputation as Smith & Wesson, CZ, or Glock.  The primary focus of the company would seem to be price, and when you're going for the lowest possible cost when marketing a firearm you're going to have to compromise somewhere.  The Hi-Point pistols all employ a blowback system requiring mass to keep the chamber closed long enough for pressures to drop to a safe level.  This is common for guns chambered in .380 Auto and smaller, but most higher pressure rounds use different locking systems.

When Hi-Point added such cartridges as the .40 S&W to their lineup I thought this was just begging for trouble, but then to go one better they have added the 10mm Auto to their carbine offerings.  While I will admit to being intrigued, there are just too many other 10mm offerings out there that I would rather spend my money on.  Again, however, if you are limited on funds the Hi-Point might be worth a look.

Heckler & Koch has been a top-tier firearm manufacturer for decades, and while their prices have tended to be at the upper end of the scale, you usually got good value for your money when you purchased HK.

When the F.B.I. switched to the 10mm and adopted the S&W 1076 as their sidearm they wanted a long gun to go with it.  The HK MP5 had long been the Spec Ops 'gold standard' and so the F.B.I. approached HK about the feasibility of rechambering the 9mm subgun in the much stouter 10mm Auto.  In addition to enlarging the gun for the longer cartridge and beefing it up for the increased pressure and recoil, HK also incorporated a bolt hold-open catch requested by the Feds.  As there were two distinct different power loadings at the time (full power and F.B.I. Lite), HK had difficulty getting the gun to run reliably with all ammo.  Because of this the guns came with two different locking pieces, one designated high and the other low depending on the power of the cartridge being employed.

While the MP5-10 proved to be a beast of a subgun, it appears that the 10mm cartridge was just too much and the stamped sheet metal receivers started suffering from stress fractures.  I would assume that the F.B.I. still has these guns in inventory, but I do not know if they are still used.

Unfortunately HK has never produced a handgun in 10mm.  I love the original USPs and have both a full-size .40 and a compact .45.  I think these would make a great platform for the 10mm (and some have converted USP 40s to 10mm), but so far HK has not seen fit to officially introduce this caliber to its handgun lineup.

When this gun came out back around 2007 I was very impressed and just wished it were available in 10mm.  Well now it is and the Gen II guns are supposed to be better than ever.  The Kriss Vector is available in both a 16" carbine version, as well as a pistol and pistol with brace.

What makes the Kriss Vector so special is its recoil mitigation system.  The internal mechanism, located between the trigger and the magazine well, transfers recoil down rather than back helping both soften the kick and keep the barrel down.  These were originally designed in .45 ACP fully automatic submachineguns for police and military use, and the system works very well.

When the 10mm version was first released the only magazines available were the standard 15-round Glock magazines, but now Kriss offers mag extensions (like their .45 extensions) that bring the capacity up to 30 rounds.  ETS also offers their 20 and 30 round clear plastic Glock 10mm magazines which should work well with this gun as well.

L.A.R. Grizzly is basically an enlarged and beefed up 1911 design.  The original Mark I was built for the .45 Winchester Magnum cartridge, but over the years numerous other calibers have been added.  The pistol had a 5.5" slide and was most commonly seen with either a 5.5" or 6.5" barrel, but there were also 8" and 10" barrels made for hunting and competition.

I do not believe that the 10mm was available as a factory built gun, but rather was only offered as a conversion kit like the .45 ACP and .357 Magnum.  While I can see the appeal of the .357 version (due to the cartridge's longer OAL), but the .45 and 10mm kits seem a bit of a waste.  The conversion kits were not cheap and for a little more money you could probably purchase a basic 1911 in either of these calibers.

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Back when the 10mm was still a 'young' cartridge there were very few long gun options.  Considering that the added power of the 10mm Auto provided much more reach than just about every other semi-auto pistol caliber it lended itself well to the same role as the vintage .38-40 Winchester which was chambered in both Colt revolvers and Winchester lever actions.

One of the first companies to offer such a gun was Olympic Arms AR15.  The upper receiver was a simple blowback, much like a beefed up Colt 9mm design.  A small pin just above the bolt catch held a spring which reached up, riding under the bolt and operated as a rudementary ejector.  The lower receiver was standard AR15 and used modified 20-round Uzi .41 AE mags with a block welded to the back.  This block not only allowed the magazine to fill the magwell, but it also had a notch cut into it which would engage the standard AR15 mag catch.

My personal example worked flawlessly, but boy was it fugly!  Improving the gun was a constant project and it has gone through multiple versions (it's current form is in the picture at the top of this page).  The first issue was the magazine.  It worked, but was clumsy.  I ended up purchasing a Colt 9mm mag block and ever so slowly opening it up with a file and sandpaper to allow the larger magazines.  This seemed to work fine, but the supply of .41 AE mags quickly dried up.  It was about this time that a number of small companies started building dedicated .45 caliber AR lowers.  I picked up one of the CNC Gunsmithing lowers that was designed to work with M3 Greasegun mags.  All that was needed was a slight tweaking of the feed lips and I had 33 rounds of 10mm on tap in easy to find and relatively inexpensive Greasegun mags.  The final stage was the barrel modification.  I've always been a fan of the Colt XM177 and so I sent the gun to Jason at Investment Grade Firearms.  He cut down the barrel to 10.5" and modified one of his HK53 5.5" four-prong flash surpressors for the larger 10mm round.  It still runs like a top!

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As everyone knows, Smith & Wesson has been around a LONG time and has extensive experience manufacturing firearms.  In addition to this, Smith & Wessons have been a staple of the law enforcement community for close to 100 years!  When various agencies began trading in their revolvers for semiautos in the 1980s S&W pistols were an obvious choice.  The lineage of the Model 39 is easy to see in S&W autos all the way up through the 3rd generation pistols, and these latest guns were well built and reliable.

Following the infamous F.B.I. shootout in Miami in 1986 the federal agency decided to look for a new cartridge to replace the 9mm which had failed so miserably.  What the F.B.I. actually wanted was the .45 ACP, but in an attempt to make the testing at least appear more open and fair the 10mm Auto cartridge was thrown in at the last minute to compete with both the 9mm and the .45 ACP.  The 10mm surpased the .45 in performance, but could be downloaded to duplicate it while still retaining the potential for more powerful loadings.  When the F.B.I. decided to adopt the 10mm a call was put out for pistols.  Colt already produced their 1911 in 10mm, but its single-action design was not what the agency wanted.  Smith & Wesson stepped in offering a 10mm version of their 45xx series pistol.  Interestingly enough, the gun Smith & Wesson provided for initial evaluation was not a full-size 4506 or mid-size 4566, but rather the small 4516 converted to 10mm.  While certainly compact, it proved to be a bit of a handful for even the experienced shooters testing the gun and so, along with the agency's requirement for a Sig-style frame mounted decocker, Smith & Wesson produced the 1076.

Smith & Wesson ended up producing six different guns in the 10xx series.  The 1006 and 1066 were the full-size and mid-size guns designed around a standard SA/DA trigger system with the traditional slide mounted safety/decocker.  The 1026 and 1076 are the full-size and mid-size version of the gun with the frame-mounted decocker.  Finally, the 1046 and 1086 were the full-size and mid-size guns employing a DA-only trigger system.  All guns used a single-stack, 9-round magazine, but both an extended 11-round and 15-round magazine were made available to the F.B.I.

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Thompson/Center Arms has been around for decades and has built their business on the use of single-shot handguns for hunting and competitive shooting.  While being limited to a single round of ammunition may seem a serious drawback, this design allows the quick and easy changing of barrels so that you can switch to different calibers and barrel lengths by simply removing the handguard and popping out a pin.