A service pistol is any handgun issued to military personnel.
Typically service pistols are revolvers or semi-automatic pistols issued to officers, non-commissioned officers and rear-echelon support personnel for self defense, though service pistols may also be issued to special forces as a backup for their primary weapons. Pistols are not typically issued to front-line infantry.
Before firearms were commonplace, officers typically carried swords instead.
Read more about Service Pistol: History, Modern Issue, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words service and/or pistol:
“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I thought it was a wonderfully conceptual act actually, to fire a replica pistol at a figurehead—the guy could have been working for Andy Warhol!”
—J.G. (James Graham)