I have a friend that I've known since Kindergarten that manages a pawn shop. I stopped in to B.S. with him earlier this month and there was a guy there selling a few guns. I didn't check it out to closely, but one of the guns he wouldn't buy from the guy was a Makarov semi-auto. His reason was that ammo can be hard to find for it, at least locally.

So I started thinking about maybe trying to buy the gun myself. I know that the Makarov is a 9x18mm, and the Luger is a 9x19mm, but other than that what are the differences?

More to the point, can Luger cases be trimmed back to use in the Makarov?

If I can get the gun at a fair price it would be the first handgun I would be loading for, though I eventually want to reload for my .44 mag, and my .380.

I know that today components for just about everything are going to be hard to find, but if the dust ever settles will I still have a hard time finding components for the Makarov? Primarily cases?