We The People Holsters knows that the history of guns is filled with its fair share of bizarre and unusual weapons throughout the centuries. Man’s innovation and desire for new weapons to do unique and different things knows no end. That being said, there have been some very strange gun designs along the way.
1. The Duck’s Foot or Webfoot Pistol
The desire to shoot more than one bullet simultaneously is what led to this invention. This gun is so named because it has four barrels spread out like a duck’s webbed foot from the main body of the gun. They were wildly popular because the assumption was that they could defend you in a brawl with several attackers. The problem was the way the barrels were often splayed meant that your attackers had to be at exactly the right angles at exactly the right time and within a foot of your person in order to shoot and successfully wound them all.
2. The Apache Revolver
When it comes to secret agent groups, they get all the fun, er, weird weapons people dream up. That’s exactly what happened with the Apache revolver, which is not named for a Native American tribe, but for the secret French underworld group. This bizarre item is part revolver, part knife/shiv, part brass knuckles, and all lethal in the hands of dark figures that know how to use it. Despite it sounding bad-ass, it’s actually one of the ugliest and most complicated weapons ever made.
3. Stinger Pen Gun
It might make it through airport security because it looks like a fancy pen, but you still don’t want to get caught with this pen gun. It shoots a single shot, Cold War spy style, when you bend it at an angle in the middle to transform it into gun mode. It won’t write at all, but it can kill. While you are able to own such unique “novelty” weapons, you are not allowed to use them in most states.
4. Speaking of AOW’s (Any Other Weapons), Check out Gun Canes
Once upon a time, swords were cleverly disguised in foppish men’s walking canes. (You know in case a duel just happened to break out on the street.) Fast forward a couple of centuries, and single or double shot guns replaced knives and swords in gun canes. You didn’t (and don’t!) have to even draw the gun from the cane because the length of the cane doubles as the barrel for the weapon.
5. The Palm Squeezer Pistol
Leave it to the French to design a pistol that fires off TEN rounds all while being completely concealed in the palm of your hand! These gems were very popular weapons and quite probably the first and best “conceal and carry” weapons in history. A small round disk fit into your palm, a tiny barrel protruded from between your first two fingers, and the squeeze trigger butted right up against the heel of your hand. You could easily sneak the palm squeezer pistol into court or into a poker game and shoot off more than half of the tiny caliber rounds before anyone would know what hit them.
6. The Pepperbox Pistol
Mark Twain once said of the Pepperbox pistol, “Sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it.” This crazy weapon predated automatic revolvers and even carried their popularity into the modern revolver era. However, their firing mechanisms could be lethal to just about anybody and anything in their path. They were terrifying to fire and equally terrifying to hear one being fired. Mr. Twain observed that only the person not firing it and standing behind the person firing it was the safest place to be.
7. The Undetectable in Security Plastic Gun
Somebody somewhere thought it was a good idea to create a plastic gun that couldn’t melt when fired and could get through airport security without a ton of special paperwork. Sure, nobody likes getting held up and cross-examined for transporting guns on a domestic or international flight, but this gun’s designer didn’t realize he was giving terrorists an easy out. Absolutely no part of this gun was detectable going through security alarm gates, and therefore was subsequently banned from future production for obvious reasons.
8. The Heart Attack Gun With Ice Bullets
Some think this gun doesn’t exist and it’s just a conspiracy theory or a work of fiction. However, several reputable sources report that it’s real. The bullets are ice with a core of shellfish toxin in the center. When fired, the bullet enters the target, melts before the target can be transported to the hospital, and the toxin is released into the bloodstream. The person dies of a seemingly run-of-the-mill heart attack, and no one seems to be the wiser.
9. Guns Made of Bones
One bizarre New Zealand artist has made a set of working dueling pistols from small animal bones. It is quite possibly one of the most bizarre sets of pistols ever made. The artist goes “on walkabout” to collect the bones of small dead animals near his New Zealand home, and then uses gun mechanisms wrapped in the bones to create the pistols. Weirder still, these guns can, and do, shoot teeth. They are both eerie and fascinatingly gross at the same time.
10. The Taurus Raging Judge
Instead of multiple barrels, the Taurus Raging Judge only has one barrel, but it shoots three different kinds of ammo. You can simultaneously load its six chambers with .45 Colt, .454 casull, and .410 casull shells. It packs a serious wallop, and the long barrel version would make Dirty Harry excited. If you spot this beast of gun in the wild, you should try holding it just once.
The Last Round
As you can see, weird guns are just par for the course here. They are as fascinating and as exciting as they are weird. True gun aficionados and supports of the Second Amendment rights can equally appreciate and admire these fantastic weapons. Thank you to the team at We The People Holsters for sharing these fascinating guns with us!