…Mr. Saturday night special / Got a barrel that’s blue and cold / Ain’t good for nothin /But put a man six feet in a hole…. Man, when Lynyrd Skynyrd makes a song about you, you know you’ve made it. The term Saturday Night Special is an interesting one for the gun world. When I say the term, you likely picture a particular type of gun, and the one you picture is likely different from the one that I do. It’s a type of firearm mired in controversy and the term echos off the walls of Congress and in the mouths of anti-gunners everywhere.
It’s also such a popular and widely-used term that Lynyrd Skynyrd made a song about it, and in 1994 someone used it to name a movie. Multiple books have conjured the name and it’s a name that sticks. We are doing a deep dive into the Saturday Night Special in a two-part series covering the origins, the controversy, and the legislation generated by these hot little pistols.
What’s a Saturday Night Special?
I suppose it’s important that we define the term before we start this massive deep dive. Well, sadly, I can’t. Saturday Night Special is a nebulous term, much like ‘assault weapon’. It’s a term of convenience used by the anti-gun crowd to condense multiple handguns under one banner.
I can say that the term seemingly only ever applied to handguns. In particular, it’s aimed at affordable handguns of a small caliber. The earliest ones were imported from overseas, but plenty of American-made handguns are classified as Saturday Night Specials. They can be both revolvers and automatics. Two of the defining features of this term are handguns and cheap. If it’s a cheap handgun, it is likely to be considered a Saturday Night Special.
On the revolver front, they tend to be double-action revolvers in small calibers. Automatics tend to be blowback operated, small caliber pistols. Blowback guns are fairly easy and cheap to make and work well with small calibers. They are often made from cheap metals, commonly ‘powder cast’ metals.
What’s in a name?
The term popped up as early as 1917 in a small town in southeast Kansas. The Coffeyville Daily Journal ran a series of notes about a fair that came to town:
“Special Officer Vaughn this morning arrested two young men giving the names of Ed Norville and Kelly Tipton at the fairgrounds for gambling. They were caught shooting craps at the park with a paid (SIC) of “loaded dice.” When searched, young Norville was found to be carrying a “Saturday Night Special,” or in other words, a cheap revolver…..“
In his 1973 book The Saturday Night Special, Robert Sherrill claims the name comes from Detroit. Specifically, because these firearms are sold to “Satisfy the passions of Saturday night.” Detroit police began referring to them as Saturday Night Specials, and the term caught fire.
Although the widespread use by Americans came in the mid to late 1960s, it popped up in the New York Times and was a major part of the 1968 Gun Control Act.
Early History Of The Saturday Night Special
Ever since the production of firearms began, people have tried to produce cheaper variants. This is nothing new. Poor people have always existed and still needed to be armed. While everyone knows the old Colt, S&W, and Remington revolvers, it’s worth noting those were expensive weapons. We know them because they worked well and when we say, “They don’t make them like they used to.” We are just dealing with survivorship bias.
You might know Colt, but do you know Hopkins and Allen? They were well known for their cheap, small caliber revolvers. Iver Johnson had the same reputation. The Sharps pepperbox sold for a mere 5.75. They produced simple, cheap little guns for those who couldn’t afford the Colts, S&Ws, or Remingtons out there.
While cheaper guns have always existed, the weapons we consider Saturday Night Specials come from the 1960s and beyond.
The earliest Saturday Night Special guns swam to the US. By that, I mean they were imported. Specifically, Germany produced and exported a wide variety of cheap revolvers. In the 1950s, Germany was going through the “Wirtschaftswunder,” or the economic miracle. World War 2 had just ended, and Germany had been torn to pieces. Literally, West and East Germany were separate countries.
Enter Rohm
West Germany doubled its exports due to the Korean War and a global shortage of goods. It was a great time to start a business, or well, restart a business in this case. Heinrich Röhm founded RÖHM GmbH in 1909, and they became quite successful in producing chucks. In fact, in 1940, they had a conveyor belt and were said to be the most modern and efficient factory in the industry.
Then World War 2 hit. Americans occupied the factory, but once the maps were drawn, they fell to Eastern Germany. The company was nationalized, and in 1946, the family moved to West Germany and started over. First, making toys out of scrap, but they quickly grew into multiple facets, including revolvers. The produced revolvers as Röhm Gesellschaft.
They produced RG revolvers like the RG 14 and RG 10 models. West Germany as a whole became one of the largest importers of firearms into the United States. However, not all were Saturday Night Specials. Rohm guns certainly fit the bill and were targeted extensively.
By the 1980s, Rohm became RG Industries in the states and opened up shop assembly firearms from parts and pieces imported overseas. They were the fifth-largest handgun producer in 1981.
Anti-Gunners Do their Anti Gun Thing
The most widely known act of gun control involving Saturday Nigth Specials is the Gun Control Act of 1968. What caused the federal government to pass the GCA?
Well, the simplest answer is two Kennedys and a King. The assassination of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King JR. occurred fairly close together and were all done by firearms. This brought public support for the GCA, and the changes were sweeping. The GCA banned mail-order sales, established federal licensing for dealers and manufacturers, and created import restrictions and serial number requirements.
For our discussion today, the most important is the import requirements. The GCA created the ridiculous Sport Purposes standard for imported firearms. As in, imported firearms must “be generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes.” The ATF says those are hunting and competitive target shooting. The ATF does not consider practical shooting as a qualifier either.
The Point Standard
For handguns, this created a points standard for automatics and revolvers. The points were based on everything from barrel length to what type of sights and grips the gun has. This point system became a de facto ban on imported cheap, small caliber weapons. It also banned high-quality weapons like the Walther PPK, leading to the creation of the PPK/S.
Was this a great victory for the anti-gun crowd?
No, not really. It just became an annoyance. Smith and Wesson produced the .22LR Escort to satisfy the demand for cheap guns once Rohm seemed out of the market.
Companies like Rohm still imported revolvers, but they did it in pieces and assembled them in the United States. Additionally, a ton of small American companies popped up producing pot-metal automatics. These guns became the new generation of Saturday Night Special.
The “Ring of Fire” consists of six companies out of Los Angeles that all grouped somewhat close together and most produced cheap little automatics. Of the six, only Arcadia Machine and Tool produced high-quality firearms that didn’t fall into the Saturday Night Special arena.
Raven, Lorcin, Bryco, Davis, and Phoenix Arms were the other five. (As a side note, Bryco used to be Jennings and would be Jimenez Arms in the future.) Together these companies produced 34% of all handguns in the United States.
Robert Sherrill, a very anti-gun reporter, wrote a book called The Saturday Night Special and Other Guns in 1973. On page 280, he offers this criticism of the GCA:
“The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed not to control guns but to control blacks….”
Not The First Ban on Saturday Night Specials (Or the Last)
This isn’t the first time that anti-gunners, racists, and elitists have worked together to prohibit the poor from owning firearms. In 1870 the Tennessee Legislature passed the Act to Preserve the Peace and Prevent Homicide. This act banned the sale of any handgun except the expensive Army and Navy model revolvers. In 1882 Arkansas passed an identical law.
Extending beyond the GCA, numerous states passed laws that targeted these pot metal guns. These laws would prohibit the sale of firearms made of materials with low melting points, like zinc and well-powdered metals in general. Minnesota, Illinois, Hawaii, and New York City all have these laws on the books.
Are Saturday Night Specials the choice of criminals?
Sure, but so is every other gun. The real question is, were these firearms used more often than other guns for criminal purposes? That was the accusation and part of the reason why the GCA passed. Without a doubt, there were some high-profile shootings involving these guns before and after the GCA.
Sirhan Sirhan wielded a rimfire Iver Johnson Cadet in his assassination of Robert Kennedy. President Willian McKinley caught a .32 S&W from an Iver Johnson, and Giuseppe Zangara killed a Chicago mayor while attempting to kill Franklin Roosevelt with an Iver Johnson.
After the GCA passed, Saturday Night Specials were used in the assassination attempt of President Ronald Reagan and Beatles member John Lennon. The Reagan assassination involved a Rohm RG 14, and the Lennon assassination involved a Charter Arms revolver.
While these situations raised the profile of Saturday Night Specials, were they really a threat to the general public?
Evidence to the Contrary
According to the Police Foundation, no, not really. On February 22nd, 1977, the Police Foundation released a report titled Firearm Abuse: A Research and Policy Report. The report authored by Steven Brill is fairly extensive, but in regards to Saturday Night Specials:
“Data show the frequency with which higher-priced, well-known brands of handguns appear in the samples of firearms believed to be involved in murder, robbery, assault, and other felonies. This evidence clearly indicates that the belief that so-called Saturday Night Specials (inexpensive handguns) are used to commit the great majority of these felonies is misleading and counterproductive….”
In 1985 James Wright and Peter Rossi wrote a paper called Armed Criminal In America for the National Institute of Justice. They interviewed various criminals and felons about their weapons and how they acquired them. What they looked for in a firearm and more. When they began observing the handguns owned by criminals, they found that:
“…125 of the most recent handguns owned by these men were Saturday Night Specials, which amounts to 14%. This, moreover, is certainly an overestimate of the true SNS percentage, since at least some of the short, small-caliber weapons would not have been especially cheap.”
Saturday Night Specials Redeemed
I can’t help but think that Saturday Night Specials are another American boogeyman, like the Satanic Panic, assault weapons, and whatever else is being peddled to sell fear. I wouldn’t recommend Saturday Night Specials for self-defense by any means, and even cheap guns these days greatly outperform the cheap guns of old.
With that said, I still think they are neat pieces of American gun culture and history. Heck, I even own the Rohm RG10, a .22 Short revolver that most certainly qualifies as a Saturday Night Special. Pull the trigger and it goes bang.
What do you folks think? Am I wrong?
What’s your experience with the Saturday Night Special?
Share below!
