Near the climax of Broad Headlights, our favorite femme fatale, Ginger Pappalardo, pulls out a Stechkin machine gun pistol. That’s when things got imminently more hairy. That is one dangerous weapon in the hands of anyone, much less a hothead Sicilian girl with a love grudge. But where did she get the darned thing? It’s not something that you would ever run across at a garage sale in most of the Western Hemisphere.
In case you didn’t know, a Stechkin is a military weapon designed for, and used by, the Soviet Armed Forces. Soviet doctrine was always to lay as much lead downfield as possible with the hopes that superior firepower would minimize any other particular shortfall that could inhibit your tactical position, such as needing soldiers that knew how to aim. Hence, a machine gun pistol. They did come with an optional wood stock, which most grown men would have opted to use so that they would have half a chance of hitting a barn at 50 feet with more than just the first bullet. The thing was like holding a brick that just came out of the furnace that recoiled like a raccoon being pulled out of a trashcan. But Ginger couldn’t be bothered with the wood stock. It clashed with her Gucci shoulder bag.
But that still doesn’t answer the question, how did she get her hands on a Soviet machine pistol? They were never imported to the United States and there is no way to eliminate the full automatic fire select, so there was never any market for them.
And besides that, it’s a horrible choice for a girl with crime on her mind.
The grip stretches out forever to accommodate a double stacked twenty round magazine. The average woman would struggle to get her hands wrapped fully around that handle just to secure the weapon. Her index finger would likely only reach the trigger with the very tip of her fingernail, causing a massive amount of trigger pull, and because her other fingers would barely meet on the other side of the grip, the gun would be prone to slip and twist with every shot.
We know that Ginger is out of her mind, but that couldn’t possibly be her weapon of choice as she takes out her revenge on mankind, could it? My own theory is that it was a weapon of convenience. She didn’t so much seek it out, as stumble across it. My guess is that she come across after she had broken into Cramden’s place looking for the Egyptian vessel.
Cramden could have easily brought one back with him from Vietnam. In the book Land War Fantasia, he takes one off an enemy patrol in Cambodia.
