Meet the Desert Eagle: The Super Gun That Had 'Rifle' DNA

The Desert Eagle was never officially picked up by any major military or police force and is primarily the realm of gun enthusiasts and hunters looking for a show-stopping sidearm. In case of a rifle malfunction the Desert Eagle’s hitting power could spell the difference between a successful hunt or serious injury. 

In the mid-1980s, a powerful new handgun quickly achieved gun celebrity status. The Desert Eagle was an innovative design that ported over heavy revolver rounds to the semiautomatic pistol platform. The pistol was featured in dozens of action films, and although expensive and not widely adopted by military services the Desert Eagle gained a cult following. 

Traditionally, heavy bullet calibers such as .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum were exclusively used by revolvers. Revolvers, with fewer moving parts, are mechanically stronger and can withstand the pressures of heavy handgun calibers. Semiautomatic pistols, on the other hand, were limited to .45 ACP or smaller calibers. If a gun enthusiast wanted a handgun in .357 or .44 Magnum, he or she was limited entirely to revolvers. 

The Desert Eagle changed all of that. First introduced in 1983, it was unlike any other pistol in common use. The bolt face, which uses multiple teeth to lock into battery, was derived from the M-16 and AR-15 family of rifles. Unlike other pistols the barrel was fixed in place, and rather than use a blowback system the Desert Eagle used a gas piston system derived from the  Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle . This was necessary to accommodate the high chamber pressures and recoil of using heavy caliber cartridges. Traditional pistols rely on the energy from a shooting a gun to drive the slide backward and cycle the action. The slide grabs the empty bullet casing and spits it out, picks up a fresh round from the magazine, and cocks the pistol.