Pistol (courtesy stamfordmercury.co.uk)

The Leiscestershire Police—who’d like it to be known that they could organize a piss-up in a brewery if they so desired—have been running a gun amnesty. Because even a gun-free paradise like The Land of Hope and Glory has guns. “Leicestershire Police launched the amnesty two weeks ago in an attempt to collect residents’ unwanted and unlicensed weapons,” stamfordmercury.co.uk reports. “Oakham police station is among those collecting guns and ammunition. So far three shotguns and 20 rounds of ammunition have been handed in, along with a pistol . . .” An old pistol. And which pistol might that be?

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51 COMMENTS

    • Seriously? That’s your answer “Jay”; final answer are you sure that’s what you want to go with? cuz I get the impression you have given this a great deal of thought and I wouldent want to infer that you just blurted out the first british gun name you could think of.

  3. Looks like a pinfire. They were very populer in Europe for a time. Probably one of the cheap Belgium knock off guns. Made to resemble a better quality gun from a better known maker.

    • I can’t really guess the make and model, but since there is a cut out in the frame next to the hammer it looks like it is intended to load cartridges and that would lead me to believe that the hammer configuration is intended to fall on a rimfire cartridge. The device for ejecting spent cartridges is interesting and I sure wouldn’t want to be in a fight where I had to worry about a reload drill.

      • By the way, the newspaper article says this is, “…believed to be from the 1700s.” Not likely. I’m pretty sure cartridge pistols were not all that common before the late 1800s. And this is definitely NOT a front loader.

        • Of course, you’re correct. The pinhead journalists who wet their silk panties at even the mention of the word “gun” don’t know jack about the history of guns, much less anything about the gun trade that made this particular gun.

          This pinfire likely dates from somewhere between late 1860’s to possibly the 1880 range or so. It most likely came out of Belgium’s “gun trade” city, Liege. I’d wager that no one company made the entire piece, either.

          Liege has a long history in gun making, but in the late 1700’s, it was under French influence and the gun trade nearly sputtered to a stop.

          From the time when the French left them alone (1815 or so) to WWI was the very height of the gun trade in Liege. After WWI, it was reduced to mostly FN and Pieper (I think). Much of their output in their golden years made by hand.

          Americans would do well to study how the “gun trade” used to work in places like Liege, Birmingham, London and Suehl, Germany. The reason why there were so many guns made in these places, from the highest quality to the cheapest crap, was because there was an infrastructure in place to support anything and everything a gun maker needed to do. Need heat treating? There were shops that did nothing but. Needed a forging made? No problem. Needed blueing? Shops that did coloring and blueing – all day, every day. Needed an outfit to make you a custom barrel? There were probably three or four. All in the same city or region. And so on.

          Liege was one of the huge centers of the European gun making, but it wasn’t in the late 1700’s.

        • I think it is a front loader converted to cartridges, much like the Remington New Model Army used by Clint Eastwood in many of his old movies. The “ejection lever” on the front certainly has enough leverage to seat a ball.

    • Different guns. The Galand is a center fire, look at the hammer. The TTAG gun is a pinfire. And It has a hinged trigger. No doubt when it was new the pinfires trigger folded up against the frame. It never had a trigger gaurd. And the busted up lever looking fitting on the TTAG gun is probably the cartridge ejector, very European and more complicated than needed.

    • There probably should be a museum somewhere for the strange, ugly, cheap old handguns of the world. God knows, there certainly are a lot of them, and they can be much more bizarre and varied than the relatively few successful designs.

    • Hopefully the Brits involved will do the right thing in this case, like the folks involved in the MA buy-up I mentioned in the Digest did.

    • Almost fell off my work chair laughing when I read “Commonly referred to in shooting parlors as “The Nutcracker”… Fit and finish seem a bit high for a Romanov Dynasty pistol based on the photos… No idea if it is a Webley… Pretty sure it doesn’t have the trigger pull of a Webley Fosby.

  8. I offer you the words to the Decommission Song. Let’s please not get into debates about British and Irish politics (no one will like it). However I freely invite some creative soul to reword it for the US. . . I’m sure there are possibilities here.

    The full song lyrics follow:

    We remember back in time in the year of ’69
    You unleashed your dogs of war onto our streets
    We could not stand idly by and let our families die
    We fought you back and joined the IRA

    So stuff your f**king crown we Irish won’t lie down
    and give away our guns to foreign lands
    No semtex not our guns will you ever get from us
    You can stick your decommissioning up your arse

    Well you murdered free young men and you’ll do the same again
    Decommissioning you will never ever see
    As long as we have men like those famous fighting men
    Yes those famous fighting men from Crossmaglen

    So stuff your f**king crown we Irish won’t lie down
    and give away our guns to foreign lands
    No semtex not our guns will you ever get from us
    You can stick your decommissioning up your arse

    In memory of the ten they were Ireland’s bravest men
    We will not forget the ones who fought and died
    Decommissioning you can see will never ever be
    ‘Cause the IRA will always be around

    So stuff your f**king crown we Irish won’t lie down
    and give away our guns to foreign lands
    No semtex not our guns will you ever get from us
    You can stick your decommissioning up your arse

    You can tell the RUC those black bastards from Drumcree
    You’ll never march down Garvaghy road
    If you want to make a fight we will stand up for our rights
    You can take your fucking march and give us peace

    So stuff your f**king crown we Irish won’t lie down
    and give away our guns to foreign lands
    No semtex not our guns will you ever get from us
    You can stick your decommissioning up your arse

    Now Trimble you’re an ass if you think that it will last
    Six counties are under tyranny
    You can tell wee Tony Blair and Mo Mowlam if you dare
    They can stick their decommissioning up their ass

    So stuff your f**king crown we Irish won’t lie down
    and give away our guns to foreign lands
    No semtex not our guns will you ever get from us
    You can stick your decommissioning up your arse

    • “They’re hanging men, and women too, for the wearing of the green.”

      I’m not privileged to be Irish, but I know what to think about tyrants.

    • Up the long ladder
      and down the short rope
      To hell with King Billy
      and God bless the Pope
      If that doesn’t do ,
      we’ll tear him in two
      And send him to Hell
      in his red white and blue

    • IRA= I Ran Away.
      Nearest I came to terrorism was their Birmingham car bomb that went off November 2001. I was in bed in a hotel 500 yards away. They couldn’t even get that right as only the detonator went off.

  11. The caption under the picture at the original article reads, “This pistol which was handed in is believed to date back to the 1700s”.

    You betcha.

  14. It’s a Degueldre pinfire. I haven’t found too many specifics yet, other than a couple that were for sale at one point. Despite the lever being broken, the finish looks decent compared to the ones on the market, so I’d say it’d get $400 easy.

        • That’s similar to where I started too.

          The shape of the grip and the position of the screw triggered (pardon the pun) a memory from a book of mine. It’s kinda funny, when you see lots and lots of guns, what will stick in your head. At times, you could show me some absurdly small feature on a gun and I’d know which gun make/model/revision it is from something as small as a screw installation, a bolt knob, a rear sight, etc. There’s just some little features on guns that tend to catch my eye and they stick in the wetware for a long time.

      • Apparently, Degueldre was based in Liege, but most of the revolvers have British proofmarks, so some form of combined production is likely. Most of the details I found were autotranslated from Belgian websites, so I still have questions.

        • I mentioned this below, but it seems Tipping & Lawden copied a couple of Lefaucheux designs for the British market and that handle seems reminiscent of their pistols. The Hammer looks certainly looks Franco-Belgian.

  17. I heard of a gun buyback where some lady turned in a Sturmgevhr (sp?) from WWII. The police were nice enough to tell her that she was crazy to turn it in and she got $20k for it, even in rough condition

    • Hartford, CT, last December. Sturmgewehr 44. The PD apparently refused to “buy” it. I remember there was some question as to whether the amnesty paperwork was proper (or existed at all) and NFA status, but never heard any follow-up.

  19. Judging by the handle and the trigger geometry I’d say it was a Tipping & Lawden Pinfire Revolver circa 1860ish – maybe a Tranter design.

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