Old-School Autos: ArmaLite AR-24

It has graceful lines, an upswept beavertail that lends flair and a rounded slide instead of the blocky, difficult-to-conceal slide that most gunmakers automatically put on their pistols these days. It appears to belong to a more elegant era, when guns were made of steel and wood, not plastic and alloy.

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The AR-24 pistol was brought to market by an unlikely company, ArmaLite. The company is well known for making AR-15-style rifles, but until September 2006 it had never been associated with a line of pistols. ArmaLite is located in Geneseo, Illinois, but the AR-24 is manufactured in Turkey by a company calledSarsilmaz, a 120-year-old firm that produces firearms for the Turkish Ministry of Defense, including a pistol that served as the starting point in designing the AR-24.