We love learning about all things related to history, including the more peculiar items. When it comes to peculiar, nothing gets quite as unique as guns.
We’ve seen gun-knife hybrids, liquid guns, cane guns, even guns hidden in trees! The following item, however, was so ambiguous that the owner had no clue what it was at first!
While looking through his grandfather’s old tool box, he found a palm pistol from 1895! This is one of only about 13,000 Palm Pistols ever made by the Chicago Arms Company, and is worth quite the pretty penny.
The Protector Palm Pistol is a small .32 rimfire revolver designed to be concealed in the palm of the hand. It was unique in that the revolver was clasped in a fist with the barrel protruding between two fingers and the entire handgun was squeezed in order to fire a round.
It was first patented and built in France in 1882 by Jacques Turbiaux and sold as the “Turbiaux Le Protector” or the “Turbiaux Disc Pistol”. Later in 1883 it was built in the USA as The Protector by Minneapolis Firearms Co..
Peter H. Finnegan of Austin, Illinois bought the patent in 1892 and founded the Chicago Firearms Co. to make and market the pistols. In anticipation of the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, he contracted the Ames Sword Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts to manufacture 15,000 pistols.
Ames made 1,500 of the pistols by the deadline of the exhibition. Finnegan sued for damages and engaged in a lawsuit with Ames. The company countersued and settled with Finnegan, but, through the years, had amassed a large production run of 12,800 pistols. The company sold the inventory and abandoned the design by 1910.
What do you think of the Protector Palm Pistol? Should this be a design that comes back into style for personal protection? Use the comments section below and share your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you!
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