Space Guns.

Another trailer has dropped for Andor, the latest of the Disney Star Wars series, and there's been some negative feedback regarding what appears to be an AK-47 in one of the shots.  Some viewers have found this to be completely unacceptable, and have voiced their disapproval in no uncertain terms:

Sigh...

Whereas I appreciate the passion that fans feel regarding what they consider to be insults to beloved franchises, in this case I feel that it reveals a lack of background knowledge regarding the origins of the Star Wars arsenal and the degree to which they can be considered to be "space guns".  This is also one of those rare situations where my other hobby - military history - overlaps with my genre interests.

Let's look at some examples from A New Hope, starting with the Imperial DL-19 Heavy Blaster, which is a WWII German MG34 with virtually no modifications other than covering up the ammunition feed.

DL-19 Heavy Blaster

MG34 Light Machine Gun

The E-11 blaster, standard Imperial Stormtrooper issue throughout the original trilogy, is a Sterling submachine gun with some modifications tacked on, the magazine replaced with a cut-down plug, and a dodgy looking scope - by the way, is there a single scene in any of the movies where a Stormtrooper unfolds the stock and fires their blaster from their shoulder?

E-11 Blaster

Sterling Submachine Gun

And we'll end with Han Solo's iconic blaster, which is a Mauser C96 with a nicer looking scope than the E-11, and some added greebly dressing - the term used by the Star Wars prop team to describe the process of layering props and sets with futuristic accessories. Impressively, there's no attempt at all to conceal the distinctive hammer mechanism, even though I'm pretty sure Han isn't shooting 7.63 Parabellum.

DL-44 Blaster

Mauser C-96*

Coincidentally, the original DL-44 prop is up for auction - sort of.  After production completed for A New Hope, most of the gun-based props were returned to the supplier, the Bapty & Co. prop house, where they were stripped of their greeblies, and put back into stock.  After all, there was no expectation that the movie would prove to be as popular as it was, and as such there was no reason to preserve the props. Following the success of the first film, cast resin versions of the gun were used in the next two episodes.

After finding what he believed to be the original Mauser used to create the DL-44, the owner of Bapty asked the original lead armorer from the film to see if he could find the remaining parts needed to rebuild the prop.  The resulting creation, which will go up for auction by the Rock Island Auction House at the end of August, contains approximately 80% of the original version.  However, only serious fans need apply, bidding is expected to start at $300,000 USD and could easily exceed half a million - not bad for something that isn't really a space gun.

- Sid

* This image has been flipped horizontally for ease of comparison.