LAST EDITED ON Nov-23-15 AT 02:09 PM (EST)
 
>Well, true, it isn't. But at the same time, it is more powerful than
>the .32 ACP, and it is fairly clear that the scene is taken straight
>from the book, where it makes a LOT more sense what with the original
>gun being a .25.

True, although despite Major Boothroyd's snide remark about the Beretta's suitability for a lady's handbag, the matter at issue was not actually its stopping power anyway - it's the Beretta's perceived unreliability. Bond protests that he's never missed with it, and M snaps that it jammed on him in the last job and he spent an inconveniently long time on the DL in consequence. "You're licensed to kill, not be killed." (In the novel this is a direct reference to the end of the previous volume, From Russia, With Love, where the gun didn't actually jam but got hung up on its holster so that Bond couldn't get it into action in time. In the movies, FRWL happened after Doctor No, so who knows what M is referring to. :)

At any rate, reliability might still have been an issue with the .380 Beretta - which makes it kind of ironic that the real British secret services abandoned the PPK after some high-profile malfunctions in the '70s. :)

And speaking of which:

>Still, I have to say that, what with the immense amount of tech that
>showed up in the movies, of all SORTS of sci-fi flavor, it is a bit
>surprising that they hung onto the PP/K so desperately. Hell, they
>even traded back after he, briefly, carried the P99.

Well, that's an artifact of movieland. The PPK is visually distinctive, and its silhouette is part of the 007 brand. Bit like Aston Martin cars. Remember during the Pierce Brosnan era when they got a better marketing deal from BMW? Remember how weird that seemed? Same kind of thing. :) The PPK is part of the brand, that brand puts butts in seats, and most of those butts' owners neither know nor would care that the PPK has been obsolete as a service weapon for decades.

A lot of the "continuation" novels, where the visuals are less important, have played around with 007's armament, occasionally with hilariously ill-researched results. In the '80s, particularly, you had John Gardner arming Bond with stuff he had plainly seen in Shooter's Bible without actually having any idea what it was or did; my personal favorite was the one where Bond carried a Heckler & Koch VP70Z, because cool German polymer-framed wonder pistol, and despite being portrayed as a firearms snob of a fairly high order, never once makes mention of the fact that it made a man carrying one in a shoulder holster look like he was shoplifting a fridge-freezer, or that it had a trigger pull like a construction staple gun. :) (Or that its design deliberately reduces muzzle velocity - a strange design decision on H&K's part, one might argue. But then it was originally conceived as a very small submachine gun, and only got repurposed into a Service Pistol when it became obvious that that wasn't going to sell.)

>Supposedly, they
>made an entire run of [CZ 75s] with the national emblem of Sweden, the three
>crowns. Ordered for the Swedish military, and then never delivered
>for, you know, reasons.

I've read a few different versions of the CZ 75/Sweden story; in most, the Swedish Army showed enough of an interest in placing an order that CZ made major design changes to the pistol at their request, and then they didn't order any - which is why we don't have the original version with the elegant-looking short slide rails any more. I wouldn't doubt that there was a prototype or test production run with Swedish markings as well, but I've never seen one. Then again, I'm not a Serious CZ Collector. Most of what I know about it comes from that one issue of Gunsmith Cats. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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