Courtesy of Breach Bang Clear

WTW: The Bauer Baby Browning Clone

Mike the Mook

A surprising trend among collectable handguns in recent months has been increasing price of .25ACP pistols. This was a round developed by John Moses Browning to mimic the ballistics of a .22lr round fired from a 2″ barrel in a more reliable centerfire configuration. Essentially, Browning developed the round based on a small pistol primer.

The round is notoriously underpowered, but ammo manufacturers have loaded commercial hollow-point bullets with slightly higher velocities for self-defense purposes. In rounds like this we usually hope for greater penetration over expansion. Most hollow points in this caliber never expand enough, plus their light weight leads more to fragmenting as opposed to creating a wider wound channel.

Still, we have a few .25 ACP pistols laying around. This week’s entry is the Bauer 25, based on the world famous Baby Browning.

The founder of Bauer Firearms, Robert Bauer, had previously worked for DeSantis Holsters. He parted ways with DeSantis and relocated to Fraser, Michigan, in 1972 where he established his plant to build an updated version of the Baby Browning. Later guns are referred to as “Fraser 25”, and were not a rip-off design. More on that later.

Made of stainless steel , the Bauers were chambered in .25 ACP and held six rounds in the magazine. One of the first semi-auto pistols to be completely manufactured from stainless steel, they were made between 1972 and 1984. They proved to be decent sellers, as the 416 stainless construction protected them from the ravages of moisture and rust, a needed characteristic in a pocket pistol.

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