Mauser M712

Mauser C96
"Red 9" Mauser C96 (9x19mm Parabellum) with stock
Type	Personal defense weapon machine pistol (M712 Schnellfeuer)
Place of origin	German Empire
Service history
In service	1896–1961
Used by	See Users
Wars	List of wars Spanish–American War Jungle Movement of Gilan Second Boer War Boxer Rebellion Xinhai Revolution World War I German Revolution Irish War of Independence Irish Civil War Finnish Civil War Mexican Revolution Philippine Revolution Philippine-American War Russian Civil War Easter Rising Spanish Civil War Second Sino-Japanese War World War II Chinese Civil War First Indochina War Korean War Vietnam War
Production history
Designer	Feederle brothers (Fidel, Friedrich, and Josef) Paul Mauser
Designed	1895
Manufacturer	Mauser, Hanyang Arsenal
Produced	1896–1937
Variants	"full sized" C96 (standard model) "Bolo" (short barrel, small grip) "Red 9" (9 mm chambering) M712 "Schnellfeuer" (full-automatic)
Specifications
Weight	1,130 g (40 oz)
Length	312 mm (12.3 in) (pre-Bolo) 271 mm (10.7 in) (post-Bolo)
Barrel length	140 mm (5.5 in) (pre-Bolo) 99 mm (3.9 in) (post-Bolo)
Cartridge	7.63×25mm Mauser 7.65×21 Parabellum (Rare) 9×19mm Parabellum .45 ACP (China) 9 mm Mauser export (rare) 8.15mm Mauser (experimental) 8mm Gasser
Action	Short recoil|double action
Muzzle velocity	425 m/s (1,394 ft/s)
Effective firing range	150–200m
Feed system	10-round internal magazine fed by stripper clip or removable magazine
Sights	V-notch rear tangent sight adjustable up to 1000 meters, inverted V front sight

The Mauser C96 (Construktion 96) is a semi-automatic pistol that was originally produced by German arms manufacturer Mauser from 1896 to 1937. Unlicensed copies of the gun were also manufactured in Spain and China in the first half of the 20th century.

The distinctive characteristics of the C96 are the integral box magazine in front of the trigger, the long barrel, the wooden which gives it the stability of a short-barreled rifle and doubles as a holster or carrying case, and a unique grip shaped like the handle of a broom. The grip earned the gun the nickname "broomhandle" in the English-speaking world, because of its round wooden handle, and in China the C96 was nicknamed the "box cannon" (Chinese: 盒子炮; pinyin: hézipào) because of its rectangular internal magazine and the fact that it could be holstered in its wooden box-like detachable stock.

With its long barrel and high-velocity cartridge, the Mauser C96 had superior range and better penetration than most other pistols of its era; the 7.63×25mm Mauser cartridge was the highest velocity commercially manufactured pistol cartridge until the advent of the .357 Magnum cartridge in 1935.

Mauser manufactured approximately 1 million C96 pistols, while the number produced in Spain and China was large but unknown due to the non-existence or poor preservation of production records from those countries.

Within a year of its introduction in 1896, the C96 had been sold to governments and commercially to civilians and individual military officers.

The Mauser C96 pistol was extremely popular with British officers at the time and many purchased it privately. Mauser supplied the C96 to Westley Richards in the UK for resale. By the onset of World War I, the C96's popularity with the British military had waned.

As a military sidearm, the pistols saw service in various colonial wars, as well as World War I, the Easter Rising, the Estonian War of Independence, the Spanish Civil War, the Chinese Civil War and World War II. The C96 also became a staple of Bolshevik commissars and various warlords and gang leaders in the Russian Civil War, known simply as "the Mauser". Communist revolutionaries Yakov Yurovsky and Peter Ermakov used Mausers to murder the Russian imperial family in July 1918.