Development
Before Jennings developed the MP-25, a friend who owned a small gun and pawn shop complained to Jennings, "I can't buy these guns any more, and I used to sell 500 of them a month." At the time, Jennings was running a machine shop that made parts for Southern California aerospace companies. Together, they cornered the market on small, inexpensive handguns, often called "junk guns" or "Saturday night specials." Raven Arms was born. Over the next 20 years, the company sold approximately 2 million pistols. In parallel with this growth, gun-control advocates started pushing legislation in Washington, in state capitals, and in city councils to ban inexpensive weapons.
In November 1991, a fire destroyed the Raven Arms factory. Jennings retired and sold Raven Arms designs to Phoenix Arms. Phoenix was owned in equal shares by his son Bruce Jennings, George Jennings' ex-wife, and George Jennings' children; four of his daughter's children; and by Raven's former general manager. The mainstay of the new company is still the .25-caliber Raven model. Phoenix also sells larger .25 and .22-caliber pistols, called the HP22 or HP25 "designed for personal protection as well as sport and target shooting."
As detailed in a 1992 article by Wall Street Journal reporter Alix Freedman, from an interview with Bruce Jennings, Jennings calls himself "the leading expert in the world on Saturday Night Specials." Jennings rejects charges that his family's inexpensive guns play a greater role in crime than more expensive guns made by up-scale manufacturers. Bruce Jennings founded Bryco Arms in 1992. According to the ATF, George Jennings' son-in-law, Jim Davis, founded Davis Industries, and Lorcin Engineering was launched by Jim Waldorf, one of Bruce Jennings' old high school friends. These companies and several others also linked to Jennings are known in the trade as the "Ring of Fire." In 1995, the three most frequently guns traced by the National Tracing Center of the ATF at the request of police departments trying to identify the point of sale of firearms used in crimes were the Lorcin P-25, the Davis Industries P-380 and the Raven Arms MP-25.
Read more about this topic: Raven Arms MP-25
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