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Hoplophobes' Field Day
Writer Andy Dolan leads off his article thus:
"Meet the pistol that fits in your pocket - and packs a hell of a punch.
"The SwissMiniGun is the size of a key fob but fires tiny 270mph bullets powerful enough to kill at close range.
"Officially the world's smallest working revolver, the gun is being marketed as a collector's item and measures just 2.16 inches long (5.5cm). It can fire real 4.53 bullets up to a range of 367ft (112m).
"The stainless steel gun costs £3,000 although the manufacturers also produce extravagant, made-to-order versions made out of 18-carat gold with customised diamond studs which sell for up to £30,000. "
The silliness continues, and it's worth reading the article, if only to see the inconsistencies. Is the muzzle velocity 270 mph (as the text says) or 300 mph (as per the headline)? That's a ten percent difference, and since both are round numbers, why exaggerate?
Later, the article claims "the gun shoots 2.34 mm calibre ammunition." That's about half the 4.53 mm number quoted earlier in the article.
Dolan goes on to quote "firearms expert" Jonathan Spencer, who give the muzzle velocity as 399 feet per second, about 272 mph. Spencer goes on to opine that though the bullets are tiny, the gun "could still prove fatal and in the eyes of the law was as dangerous as a machine gun." In the immortal words of Charles Dickens' Mr. Bumble, if the law supposes that, then the law is a ass, a idiot.Spencer continues,
"The general threshold for perforating the skin is about 330 feet a second.
"Apart from bone, skin offers the greatest resistance to penetration. If it can pass through the skin it is potentially lethal, even if the bullets are small.
Of course the "forensic scientist" neglects to mention that merely perforating skin is usually insufficient to kill, unless the perforation happens to occur at the exact site of, say, the femoral or carotid artery.
Genuine firearms experts express the power of a round of ammunition in terms of muzzle energy, expressed in foot-pounds. The reason is that a tiny, lightweight projectile will need to travel much faster than a larger one, to do the equivalent amount of damage. Just for the sake of comparison, Chuck Hawks estimates the muzzle energy of the venerable .25 ACP cartridge as a mere 66 foot-pounds.
You can extrapolate from this that the deadly-as-a-machine-gun mini revolver's muzzle energy can't be as much as half that. Hawks' estimate is based on a muzzle velocity of 815 fps, slighly more than twice that of the mini revolver. Moreover, the mini's projectile could not have as much as half the weight or cross-sectional area of the .25 ACP. These are the other paramaters that enter into the calculation of muzzle energy, or if you will, "deadliness." For those among the uninitated in gun knowledge, the .25 is generally derided as useless, occasionally referred to as a "mouse gun." A slightly better perspective is provided by gun writers such as Jeff Cooper and Mas Ayoob, who observe that the .25 is an expert's weapon, best usable by an assailant cagey enough to get very close to his prey, and perhaps deliver a round through an eye socket or ear canal.
My own perspective is this: at this moment, I am carrying in my pockets at least three implements that are deadlier than the Swiss mini revolver, and probably more deadly than the .25 ACP under most circumstances. My retractable ballpoint pen is a formidable stabbing/thrusting implement. Not far behind that is the key to my '97 Dodge Caravan, conveniently provided with a plastic grip. Self-defense and close-quarters combat courses generally teach that such a car key can be used with great effectiveness, if gripped in the fist with the key shank protruding. Then there's my cell phone, whose protruding antenna can be employed as a striking implement (concentrating the force of a blow into a small physical cross-section). And perhaps it's remote, but it would not be out of the question for me to use the edge of one of my credit cards as a slashing weapon.
But the real folly of this irrational fear of the mini revolver lies in its price. At the current rate of exchange, you would pay $5,981.61 for this little gun. By any method of comparison, that amount of money will purchase exponentially more firepower, in a weapon that if not quite as concealable, would be more accurate at a longer range. So who, exactly, could be expected to purchase the mini revolver with malicious intent?
In truth, this gun is a work of art, the weaponry equivalent of a Fabergé egg. Regard the photographs below, with an eye towards the fit-and-finish of this item. It's a piece of jewelry that happens to fire a projectile. No more dangerous than a hat pin or poison vial (both of which are generally considered items of personal adornment).
