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Geco, a German ammunition manufacturer with over a century of history, now part of the RUAG Ammotec/Dynamit Nobel group, has always led the way in handgun ammo making; its product line is well known worldwide for the excellent cost-to-performance ratio, and in 2012 the company has extended its product line with a series of market-specific loads for semi-automatic pistols and revolvers.
Be it in the USA, in Europe or in the rest of the World, revolvers still represent a good choice for those shooters requiring a simple yet reliable and hard-hitting mean of personal and property defence, a tried and true “point-and-click” interface, with over two hundred years of design history, revolvers have been the mainstay of military and police sidearms up to the mid-to-late 20th Century and are widely accepted as the best gun to go for especially for those shooters with a less than perfect experience, not to mention the steady number of aficionados worldwide. The lasting success of revolvers is all but unexplainable: they are easy to use and reload, and their low ammunition capacity is balanced out by the chambering, as usually this kind of firearms shoots very high-power loads with great stopping power, higher than most, if not all, of those used in defence-oriented semi-automatic pistols. Revolvers can also be carried concealed inside a purse or a pocket and fired from their inside in case of an emergency, and unlike semiautos they wonʼt risk jammings as a result of this.
Not is surprising that the .38-Special caliber remains the most popular worldwide for revolvers; this particular cartridge packs acceptable levels of stopping power with mild recoil and very little muzzle blast and climb. As a result, it is just perfect for small-handed shooters, like women, or for use in small-sized revolvers for concealed carry or backup purposes, where the use of higher calibers such as the .357-Magnum cartridge could make the weapon less than manageable. Geco now offers a whole line of loads for this universal revolver caliber, ranging from FMJ to jacketed hollow-points to the well-known, accurate Wadcutters, the best choice for the many sports shooters who still use revolvers in competitions.
Geco also shows to care about product-specific markets, such as the ones where otherwise widely popular ammunition are banned by statute. Thatʼs the case of Italy, Brazil and other countries, mainly south-American and Asian, where the 9x19mm caliber, also known as 9mm “Luger”, 9mm “Parabellum” and 9mm “NATO”, is forbidden to civilians as a “military-issue caliber” or “military ammunition”; all these markets at a certain point had to find a modern replacement for the 9x19mm, given that its forerunner, the .30-Luger, which was often used in lieu of it in guns sold in said countries, has fully demonstrated to be obsolete under any point of view, be it accuracy, range, or stopping power.
Situation has changed in the early 1980s, when the Israeli company IMI, through its ammunitions manufacturing subsidiary Samson, developed the 9x21mm-IMI cartridge specifically for the Italian market (hence why it has been often dubbed the “Italian Nine”). The 9x21mm-IMI caliber acts there as a perfect replacement for the banned century-old German cartridge, and has often shown to be able to outperform it in terms of both ballistics and accuracy, and will leave basically all shooters satisfied, especially if accuracy is what they look for in a cartridge: the “Italian Nine” is an incredible performer under this point of view, and thatʼs why GECO decided to push these features to their limit by bestowing German accuracy and quality in manufacturing two loads in 9x21mm-IMI chambering: FMJs for everyday use and LRNs to minimize risks of ricochets during indoor target practice.
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