I love weird guns. I have tons of guns that aren’t great at any particular thing outside of just beign weird. My weirdo collection includes shotguns, rifles, handguns, and even other firearms. Something like a Winchester 1911 SL is a bit more interesting than the latest AR-15. Weird firearms rule and today we are looking at a specific genre of weird firearms that I call bizarre concealed carry guns.
Are these bizarre concealed carry guns useful?
What is interesting about these guns is that they are designed for defensive use and concealment. Most weird guns aren’t necessarily made for a specific task, especially not for self-defense. However, these bizarre concealed carry guns certainly break the molds. With that said, just because they are bizarre doesn’t necessarily make them bad.
It most certainly doesn’t make them good firearms either. With that said, I’ll leave the judgment of their usefulness up to you.
S&W Performance Center Model 327
This is as normal as our list of bizarre concealed carry guns is going to get. It’s a Smith & Wesson revolver, so how weird can it be? Surely they aren’t making dumb novelties. No, they certainly aren’t. Like every S&W revolver, the PC Model 327 is a rock-solid, well-made revolver. What makes this a weird gun is the configuration of the whole thing.
It’s a ‘snub’ nose .357 Magnum revolver, not too out of the realm of normal. What’s weird is the massive frame size paired with the ultra-short barrel. If you’re not familiar with the Model 327, it’s an N-Frame gun, not a J or even a K-frame design. N-frames are huge and traditionally reserved for guns like the 29, which is a .44 Magnum.
The main benefit of this massive frame is the eight-shot cylinder. Eight shots of .357 Magnum isn’t anything to mess around with. The grip and frame size stand in stark contrast to the short barrel, but it’s fairly lightweight for daily carry.
Taurus Curve
Oh yeah, of course, the Curve gets a mention. The Taurus Curve is what happens when imagination runs amok and gets turned into a gun. It got a lot of ridicule, but even if it wasn’t a successful gun, I can’t help but appreciate the creativity and some of the features. This bizarre concealed gun literally has a curved frame.
The Curve is a pocket-sized .380 ACP, similar to the Taurus TCP. The frame curve allows it to blend in better with the curves of the body. The gun comes with a trigger cover and belt clip for holster-less carry. Of course, it can only curve in one direction, and that makes it a right-handed option unless you want to do some odd cross-draw configuration.
I think the frame-integrated light (and lesser extent, laser) is a neat feature, even if its power was fairly anemic. It’s a bit innovative in that regard.
Taurus View (and Non-View)
Yep, another Taurus makes an appearance on our list of bizarre concealed carry guns. This particular Taurus is a version of their Model 85 revolver. The Model 85 is normally a snub-nose design, but Taurus took it a snub-nose further with the View. They trimmed the barrel to an inch and pinned a sight to it. They then reduced the grip to barely anything. That’s weird enough, but the kick was the clear Lexan plate that allowed you to examine the inside of the gun.
It’s a bizarre-looking, five-shot .38 Special that’s incredibly small. However, I’m not sure if the cuts and trims would make that much of a difference in concealment, with the frame remaining the same size.
Taurus also made View without the Lexan plate. These guns made it to market in very limited numbers. The Non View seems to be a bit more common in case you need a snub nose version of a snub nose.
COP .357
The COP .357 Derringer is such a bizarre concealed carry gun that it’s most famous for its role in the film Blade Runner. This derringer was designed in the early 1980s and was originally attended as a backup gun for police officers.
As the name implies, it’s a .357 Magnum, but unlike most derringers, it featured four barrels instead of two. The idea was to create a gun roughly the same size as a .25 ACP but chamber it in the much more powerful .357 Magnum.
The gun featured a double-action trigger design, so all four rounds could be fired rather quickly. The problem was that the gun was super heavy, and the trigger was absurdly heavy with a long pull. It weighed almost two pounds and, oh yeah, was terribly inaccurate.
Full Conceal Folding Glock
Yo dawg, you wanna career a Glock in your back pocket? Well, Full Conceal can make it happen. Full Conceal didn’t create a gun, but they did change a normal gun into a bizarre concealed carry gun. They took the Glock platform and designed it to fold in half.
The grip folds upwards and sits against the rail. This creates a harder-to-detect package, though it’s not necessarily a smaller package. Everything folds upward and unfolds fairly quickly. The grip is essentially cut in half and rigged up with a new trigger guard that acts as a hinge.
It’s definitely bizarre, but according to reviews, the dang thing works.
Standard Manufacturing S333 Thunderstruck
Volley fire is where one trigger fires two rounds from two barrels at the same time. It’s not a machine gun, according to the ATF, and rightly so. Only one company I know of experiments with volley fire, and that’s Standard Manufacturing. They designed a .25 ACP pistol, but it was vaporware, then Standard released the S333 Thunderstruck.
The S333 Thunderstruck is a volley fire revolver that chambers .22 WMR. This little Magnum fires two rounds with every trigger pull. Why? Well, I guess it’s a double tap with a single trigger pull. Two barrels aren’t the only weird thing about this gun.
The gun features a huge trigger that uses two fingers to fight through the heavy trigger pull. The gun holds eight rounds. The latest generation features a slightly longer barrel to better help stabilize rounds after the first generation had some keyholing issues.
Kold Baby Hammerless
Finally, let’s get to an OG deep concealment .22. Not a .22LR, but a .22 Short. The Kolb Baby Hammerless might be the smallest double-action revolver ever. I could be wrong on that, but c’mon, look at this thing. The Kolb Baby Hammerless is a double-action .22 short with a unique folding trigger design.
They are ultra-small and could fit into my change pocket on my jeans without issue. I wouldn’t trust a .22 Short for self-defense, but I can appreciate this early 1900s bizarre concealed carry gun. The ultra-small size, double action, and enclosed hammer design are just awesome all around.
Stay Weird
Weird guns are often innovative guns. Not always, but let’s be fair—the first double-action revolver was a little weird, the first semi-auto was certainly weird, and typically before a weapon becomes innovative, it’s weird. That being said, there are graveyards full of weird and bizarre guns that never contributed to anything. I will always appreciate the weird and the bizarre, even when they don’t do anything to help push technology forward.
