The GIGN Still Use Revolvers to Take Out Bad Guys

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The GIGN, which in its native French stands for the “Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale” is one of the foremost and most respected special operations units in the entire world. In part, because they’re one of only such groups who still shoot bad guys with a revolver. 

More specifically, the GIGN and its numerous operatives are incredibly fond of the Manurhin MR-73, both because of its legendary reliability and the fact that, like them, it’s super French.

Not quite this French, but you get the idea.
Not quite this French, but you get the idea.

Another feature of the gun appreciated by GIGN operatives is that it can be customised to a degree seldom seen outside of Call of Duty games, allowing them to alter it to their liking with cool scopes and shit. This gels well with the GIGN’s ethos of allowing operatives to use whatever weapons they feel most comfortable using on a mission and as a result, it’s not uncommon to see GIGN operatives walking around wielding MR-73 revolvers outfitted with sniper scopes and bipods so that they can use them as make-shift sniper rifle if they really want to.

We weren't fucking kidding.
Sadly, there’s no word on how many operatives use it to do “sick 360 no scopes”.

The gun is so popular with operatives that many opt to carry one with them even if they’re already carrying another, supposedly superior kind of pistol or sidearm, just in case because they can reliably expect it to put a bullet in a terrorist’s dick 100% of the time they pull the trigger.

But here’s the best part, the GIGN are so good at what they do that they rarely even need to use these guns anyway with only 15 confirmed kills to their name prior to the 2015 Paris attacks (which really fucking skewed their numbers) despite taking part in well over 1000 missions at that point. To put these numbers in perspective, the GIGN arrested 1000 suspects and rescued around 500 hostages during the same time period while only losing 2 of their own men.

This impressive, virtually unparalleled record is likely the result of the GIGN’s insane training regimen which tasks every potential recruit with becoming an adept long-range marksmen capable of neutralizing a suspect with any weapon they’d reliably expect to find during a mission. Although they’re trained to never let themselves be disarmed, recruits are also trained how to break limbs with their bare hands and possibly their eyebrows meaning that even if you disarmed a GIGN operative and were literally stood pointing a gun at his face, statistically, he still has the upperhand.