In the post below, I discuss an odd little pocket pistol that is operated by squeezing the gun. But what I didn't mention is that this isn't the first palm squeezing pistol design that hit the market.
That honor is reserved for a nifty little gun that, while it originated in France, eventually became very popular in America. That gun was marketed here under the brand name of The Protector.
(As per usual, click on all pics to see if a larger image is available.)
The idea is that you would grab the gun and make a fist with the barrel sticking out between two of your fingers. Tighten up your grip and the gun would fire.
The gun was originally patented in France in 1882 by Jacques Turbiaux, which was at least ten years before the squeeze pistol called a Gaulois made an appearance. He obtained a US patent in 1883, but it wasn't until 1891 or so that the Minneapolis Firearm Company started to offer the gun for sale.
The weapon uses a revolving magazine with all of the cartridges pointing out away from the center. Each squeeze of the palm pistol would fire a cartridge, and spring action would revolve a new cartridge into place when you relaxed your grip. The gun had to be disassembled to be reloaded.
You can see one of the little bitty cartridges peeking out from one of the chambers.
Firearms which used this type of action were known as "turret guns", and there was some experimentation in the late 1800's to see if they would fill a niche. Below are some pictures of a 9 shot, .41 caliber turret rifle.
Just by looking at the mechanics of the design, I would have to say that I am impressed at the strength of the gun. But it does give me pause since some of the cartridges would be pointing back at me as I fired the weapon. Conventional revolvers might have limited you to six shots, but at least they were all facing towards the bad guy instead of being oriented towards my face.
Getting back to the Protector, there were two different versions of this gun. The first one was a ten shot version chambered for a 6mm short cartridge, and it was this version that the Minneapolis Firearm Co. offered for sale. In 1895, when the company was bought out by the Chicago Firearms Co., the design was beefed up to accept the same 8mm cartridges that the Gaulois I keep mentioning used. This seven shot pistol was named the Chicago Protector.
But no matter which version you preferred the ballistics were terrible, mainly because the muzzle velocities of most of the pistols from that time were very low. There was a reason why derringers of the day would fire a large caliber round, since a massive slug would be sure to do some decent damage even if it was moving along at 600 fps or so. The Protector and Gaulois palm squeezers offered multiple shots in a concealable package, but I for one would have preferred something with a bit more punch.
(I obtained some pictures for this post from this website. I also found a few at the National Firearms Associationtarget=same, a website maintained by a Canadian gun rights organization.)
Comments (2)
Weren't these called needlers or needle pistols as well? No, I'm not talking about the guns from Star Frontiers, but something to do with their firing mechanism.
Posted by Brass | January 15, 2007 5:08 PM
Posted on January 15, 2007 17:08
I was - as usual - looking at some of these at a gun show this past weekend. Such a fun little thing and obviously designed for defense since it's totally useless for offense.
Posted by KCSteve | January 16, 2007 3:27 PM
Posted on January 16, 2007 15:27