WHAT IS THE asp, AND WHY IS IT THE 'PERFECT' COMBAT 9MM PISTOL?

Holster maker by day. Behind the scenes after hours, he would close the blind and open the top secret safe that housed his prototypes, Paris Theodore would go to work on this less public sideline. He started with a Smith & Wesson Model 39 semi-auto pistol, a highly popular pistol that would eventually lead to the decline of the revolver. Over 25% of the original gun was discarded. Paris Theodore's design called for 286 changes, done by hand. So extensive were these changes he didn't call this a "conversion," but rather a "remanufacture". He began by chopping down the size of the slide, barrel butt and grip of the larger gun to create a concealment sized version. He made use of a computer(unusual in those days)designed for aviation developement to properly calculate the lightening cuts in the slide that gave the pistol perfect balance in the hand and helped tame 9mm recoil and move it closer to the .22 requirement.

It was Theodore who first come up with the idea of adding a forefinger hook at the front of the trigger guard that allows the index finger of the supporting hand to get a better grip, further forward on the gun to better control muzzle flip and keep the pistol on target faster during recoil. Of course then, most shooters still shot one handed. Theodore was radical for the time in designing features specifically for a two handed grip that would later develope into his patented 'Quell' system. That trigger guard spur became standard on the plethora of new gun designs that came along in the 1980's.

Next he smoothed and radiused all the curves, dehorned any sharp edges and angles to make a pistol that positively would not snag on clothing during a speed draw. He cut off the spur of the hammer completely. Although 9mm is common in the U.S. today, at that time in America .45 caliber was practically a religion. But in the rest of the world it was 9mm that was the most commonly available caliber, and using it let the shooter tap into the worldwide ammo availability and unequaled variety of bullet types, weights and strengths, the ASP could feed all of these rounds, and even empty cases. It also allowed the ASP to have a slimmer grip and a higher magazine capacity.