ACP

The last weekend was spent doing two things: consolidating my non-blogged Andalusada writing (scattered across dozens of files when it's recorded at all), and overhauling my other blog's writing about Andalusada's logic. In particular, the second installment of that, about GURPS.

Both of those consolidated on a specific detail: gun porn. And then, last night, I fatefully wrote this:

Take the CRC, for instance, which uses 7.65mm Mauser because Argentina did IRL - that was also the standard caliber of Belgium, home of FN and the world's de facto armorer; in Andalusada, where Belgium doesn't exist, the Triple Alliance has been assigned to a new role as one of the arsenals of the world - which changes a lot of gun sales because they're otherwise such a noxious place.

I didn't even know that until I typed it out myself, and yet it's an obvious thing from what I know about the CRC. Making it the home of Andalusada's *Fabrique Nationale is so obvious I'm surprised I hadn't thought of it earlier. All it needed was a name - and as of this morning, it's had a name: ACP.

It's a happy accident, that ACP is gun-related IRL, but citing Rule of Canny I'm completely okay with that. (In-verse, it actually stands for "Confederal Arsenal of Patagonia.")

ACP's role within the CRC

ACP was groomed to be the CRC's arsenal before there was a CRC. The first factories were set up in the early days of the Baltazarist War; the whole thing only fell apart after the acrimonious breakup of Balthasaria...

• ACP is, rather significantly, one of the early promoters of the 8.8mm caliber as an international thing. In particular, they were an early promoter of 8.8mm semiautomatic pistols.

Patagonia was very much the South of Gran Peru, pretty much all of Cabralia is obliged to buy its guns from ACP; while the CRC doesn't formally charge membership dues, "conformation" is cursed by smaller nations as a hated tithe into Patagonian coffers. (They, however, know better than to protest about it. ACP, as the joke goes, uses customers for target practice.)

ACP and the global arms market

At a time when the rest of the world still favored their own personal calibers (none of which were interchangeable, but almost all of which were roughly equivalent ballistically), the CRC was the first to embrace international standardization. This standardization made ACP very competitive by the time the world transitioned to smokeless powder: the CRC is self-supporting (and, simply, has good enough engineering) that it provides a fairly comprehensive catalog. At heart, though, the CRC's bloc is fundamentally a caliber bloc, and ACP has a number of globally-recognized ones behind it:

• 7.65x53mm ACP: Quite simply, one of the best rifle rounds the world has yet produced. It's incredibly widely exported, and sees a lot of use in the Levant (the Turks used it prior to the tawa'if period, and it's still seeing a lot of use there even now.)
• 7.65mm Corso: The standard pistol caliber. (It generally fills the .32 ACP niche; unlike .32 ACP, though, 7.65mm Corso is actually 7.65mm, rather than being underbore.)
• 7.65mm Largo: A more recent production; basically a wildcat, necking down an 8.8mm case to 7.65mm, inspired by a French design of the same. Think .32 NAA for the idea.
• 8.8mm ACP: Also a standard thing; the world's .380 ACP equivalent.

This straightforward core of standard calibers supports a pretty expansive catalog: ACP supports more products than it actually uses itself. (There's actually a fairly big resale market within the CRC; if you're planning to launch a coup, you may not want Patagonia to know what you're doing in advance.)

• The ACP 09/19 Conformado: A pretty simple blowback-operated pistol, but it's ACP's bestselling export - counting the illegal copies, it's the bestseller by at least an order of magnitude, possibly two. In 7.65mm Corso, the CRC issues it as its standard sidearm; front-line officers generally supplement it with something heavier, and rear-echelon officers most commonly use it for suicide to avoid capture.

The only major imitation on ACP's international market is their public relations - specifically, that the CRC is held in the same low esteem as Rhodesia or Israel, just barely this side of an international boycott. The G.P. of Cabralia (which has been on the receiving end of enough ACP products to have captured and reverse-engineered a fair number), in particular, is notorious for violating ACP patents and selling clones overseas; the official response to any legal complaints is "Do something about it, if you're so unhappy." Since gunning down Cabralian lawyers to make a point is ill-received on the world stage, ACP has settled for being litigious and advertising itself as tomorrow's Sansinger products today.

This is a stub. Only I can improve it by expanding on it.