A gunshot is always serious, but some calibers are more serious than others.
Some of the cheapest guns available are autoloaders chambered for the .25 ACP round, which is larger in size but lower in power than the truly pitiful .22 Short cartridge. Anything less effective than something with the word "short" being used as a descriptor must be looked at askance.
Guns of this type were highly prized by soldiers fighting in the trenches during WWI, but I have never been able to dig up even a single incidence during that war where such guns managed to cause an injury that wasn't self inflicted. You might feel better having a .25 tucked away in your trench coat somewhere, but the only people who seemed to be in any danger from them were their owners.
Scorned while I was working for the police as the weapon-of-choice for small time drug dealers and back alley pimps, they are confiscated by the score every month across the nation, pulled from the pockets of suspects in any large city. The only time I ever heard of a somewhat serious use for the round was in the James Bond novels, where the most esteemed of British spies arms himself with a Beretta Model 418. Thank goodness he was forced to give it up in the opening scenes of the first movie, Dr. No (1962).
Fiction aside, the decidedly lowly .25 has been pretty much absent from serious police and military use. Absent from serious use anywhere but in France, it seems.
(Please click on all pictures to see if a larger image is available.)
That is a .25 autoloader known as the St. Etienne Policeman. Manufactured by the enormous firm of Manufrance, a company which started out as a mail order business which branched out into firearms as well as just about everything else, the Policeman was intended for use by police in small towns and villages. It was essentially similar for the .25 pocket pistol sold to the general public as a self defense gun, but was fitted with a longer barrel.
This gun was produced from about 1920 until 1966, so it was considered to be adequate for police duties in the more bucolic areas of France for close to five decades. Like I said, it is the only general issue police or military firearm I have ever heard of that was chambered in the measly .25 ACP cartridge.
The first round had to be loaded from using a tip-up barrel since there seems to be no way to work the slide manually. It would appear that the acorn-shaped knob on the end of the bolt was there to protect the firing pin from recoil, but I am at a loss as to how it accomplished this.
It would appear from the photos that the St, Etienne Policeman was a robust and solid design, made to last through heavy use. Pity that it wasn't chambered for a more robust and solid caliber.
(All pictures and info came from this website, which is a treasure trove of antique guns. Well worth the time to browse if you are interested in antique arms and firearm development.)