The Surprisingly Not Terrible Calico M950 9mm Pistol

I’ve bought a lot of guns, knowing they were “bad” guns. I assume guns like the Taurus Curve suck, but it was cheap and weird. I purchased the Calico M950 assuming it sucked, too. I expected it would have reliability problems out the butt. The problem with “creative” guns is that they rarely work well at all. The weird little features and design cues seem kinda neat, but they tend to be unreliable, prone to breaking, and not particularly enjoyable to shoot.

Designs like the aforementioned Taurus Curve, the USFA ZIP, the Remington R51, and more exemplify this issue. The Calico M950 resembles a gun that someone envisioned in 1985 for 2025. It’s got a futuristic look with an unconventional design. The magazine serves as the basis for this unusual design. It’s a top-mounted helical magazine that holds anywhere from 50 to 100 rounds.

Calico manufactured rifles, pistols, and submachine guns in 9mm and .22 LR. They even produced at least one prototype shotgun variant in 12 gauge, which they showcased at SHOT years ago, but I don’t think it’s still in production. Calico still has a website, which appears to be in disrepair. I’m not sure if they even still make firearms.

My Calico M950 Acquisition

The Calico Light Weapon Systems came to life in 1982. It’s an American company based in Elgin, Colorado, but originated in Bakersfield, California. The company produced semi-automatic and fully automatic firearms for police, military, civilians, and a select few movie productions. The 9mm variants of their guns employ a roller-delayed design, similar to the HK MP5. The .22 LR variants were simple direct blowback designs.

The Calico M950 is the basic 9mm handgun model. Mine has the 50-round helical magazine. I bought mine for about $400 at an auction with the idea that it would likely be totally unreliable. When I received the firearm, it was layered in what looked like some form of sauce.

As a messy eater, I’m not one to judge, but M950s aren’t great to eat over. In reality, the previous owner likely applied some form of lubricant or rust preventative. Over the years, it likely sat unfired, gathering every spec of dust it could and taking on a rich brown color.

It was the subject of much cursing as I attempted to clean it out with heat, rags, and more elbow grease than I wanted to spare. That stuff gunked everything up. I finally got the gun firing and called it a day. I say all that because some of the gunk appears in the photos and someone will likely point it out.

Calico M950: The Future As Seen In 1982

Interestingly, these guns were among the early adopters of polymer frames and utilized a significant amount of aluminum. When loaded with 50 rounds, the gun weighs a total of four pounds. The roller-delayed design is interesting and certainly beneficial. Straight blowback would work and would be cheaper, but would generate more felt recoil. Guns like the MP5 popularized the roller-delayed design.

You might notice what appears to be a magazine well at the bottom of the frame. That’s actually the ejection port. When fired, the shells eject downward through the port. That makes the M950 easy for lefties to pick up and shoot.

The M950 has an ambidextrous safety that sits in front of the trigger. That applied lubricant gummed the thing up terribly and was a huge pain to get free. The charging handle is located on the left side and is designed for right-handed shooters. It can’t be reversed. The magazine release is a pair of tabs on each side at the very rear of the gun.

You grab the helical magazine and hit the release, which makes removing the magazine relatively easy. As for rear sights, they sit on top of the magazine. Every time you swap mags, you’re swapping rear sights. The front sight sits on the tower that connects to the magazine. Theoretically, different magazines could impact your zero.

I doubt that’s a major issue for a pistol caliber firearm used almost exclusively at close ranges. The front sight can be adjusted for windage and elevation. At the end of the six-inch barrel sits a compensator that’s pinned to the barrel since the barrels aren’t threaded.

Loading the Calico

Most of the Calico’s reliability complaints seem to come from the helical magazine. The magazine design works, but you need to follow the instructions on how to load the magazine. The magazine requires you to twist a lever to provide tension. Too much or too little will cause failures.

The first step with these magazine is to press a button on the rear to ensure it’s not tensioned. From there, you begin loading. As you load it, if you encounter any resistance, you can press the button again, and it will release tension. If you load it to capacity to store the magazine, you hit the button one last time and go about your business.

If you intend to shoot the Calico M950, you then wind the lever seven complete rotations. Now you can safely shoot.

While the Calico offers 50 to 100 rounds without the magazine jutting out of the bottom of the gun, it lacks plug-and-play convenience. It’s easy to see why no military or law enforcement agency adopted their SMG variants. However, it’s incredibly easy to load since there’s no spring tension.

Shooting the M950

I expected this thing to be as big a mess at the range as it was when I purchased it, but I was pleasantly surprised by the gun. The roller-delayed action provides a smooth shooting design that handles exceptionally well, even in larger format pistols. The recoil is so tame I’d call it domesticated.

I ran into one reliability issue. Any time the drum was loaded to 50 rounds, the first round would fail to feed correctly. If I loaded the magazine to 49 rounds, I had no problems.

The magazine fed all 49 rounds as fast as I could fire them. Going through a few hundred rounds doesn’t take long, and it’s a lot of fun to shoot. I didn’t torture-test the gun, and I’ve fired maybe six magazines in all through it. As long as you only load the gun to 49 rounds, it runs brilliantly.

The top of the drum mag has witness holes marking seemingly random round counts. You get witness holes at 9, 23, 37, and 50 rounds. It works, mostly. The magazine isn’t difficult to disassemble and clean, and cleanliness is what keeps these magazines running smoothly.

Hitting My Shots

The M950’s sights are fine for the most part. They work and the gun can punch tight groups, but you havve to deal with height over bore issues. Being on top of that magazine, the sights sit super high, and for a weapon that fires 9mm and is seemingly designed for close-range shooting, that means most of your shots tend to hit low.

You can adjust the front sight to try to compensate for that problem, but at those uber-close ranges, it will always be a problem. At five yards, it hits three inches low. As you get out to 25 yards and beyond, it becomes much less of an issue.

At 25 and even 50 yards, I can reliably hit steel. At 25 yards, I’m hitting various-sized gongs with ease, and at 50 yards, I’m reliably keeping my rounds on my IPSC target. The trigger is a bit mushy, but it’s not so bad as to affect your accuracy.

The gun lacks an automatic bolt hold-open, but a manual option is available. The magazines are fairly tough to find and are expensive when you do, but I’d love to top it off with a 100-round magazine. The website advertises optics mounts, stocks, and more, but I’m not brave enough to give them my credit card number.

The Death Of Calico

What killed Calico was the 1994 Clinton Assault Weapons Ban. The entire purpose of the gun is that magazine, and no one wants a Calico that holds only ten rounds. The company came back after the AWB sunsetted, but I have no idea if it’s still operational. My model is an OG Bakersfield edition and, sans the sauce, it’s in fairly good shape.

I like mine a lot, but buyer beware…it seems like different models and magazines can be a problem. Maybe I just got lucky, but my M950 is staying with me.