whatnickname
Member
Now here’s one that ought to stir up quite a bit of dust. First let me say that I’ve owned a couple. Both made by American Derringer. Both were used and purchased at a considerable discount. One was chambered 45 Colt / 410. The other was in 357 Magnum. Originally my thought was that the 410 might be good for snakes. However with the short barrel the pattern got pretty thin at fairly short ranges which limited its usefulness. 45 Colt was substantial, but then again you only have two shots and you have to manually cock the hammer. The 357 had a defective barrel. The recess for the cartridge rim was milled out of alignment with the chamber and would not chamber a round. Would like to have seen how they test fired that one at the factory. From a design standpoint there were safety issues if you carried one of these in your pocket. The spring loaded hammer block would easily disengage at which point you had a loaded gun in your pocket with the hammer resting on the firing pin that was in turn resting on the back of a primer. Had a friend that got out of his truck with one of these in his pocket and accidentally hit the door frame with the hammer of the gun and...BANG!
Fast forward to today and Bond owns a good chunk of this market with guns that are well made and much more safe. So all of this taken into consideration, do derringers have any practical value or are they range toys? What is the best caliber for one of these?
Fast forward to today and Bond owns a good chunk of this market with guns that are well made and much more safe. So all of this taken into consideration, do derringers have any practical value or are they range toys? What is the best caliber for one of these?