Gun Of The Week.

The Gun of the Week this time around is what is almost certainly the most crude firearm ever produced by a major government, the Liberator pistol.

The idea for this little jewel initiated in the O S S, the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA. They wanted 1 million cheap but effective handguns weighing less than 1 pound that could be produced quickly and delivered easily to resistance movements.

This weapon went from inception to production in 13 weeks. The final cost was less then $2 per weapon. They were made of sheet metal stampings and a few springs. The O S S viewed them as a weapon a resistance fighter could use to shoot an enemy soldier and take his weapon from him. They came in a small cardboard box with a 12-step comic strip type instruction sheet and 10 rounds of ammunition, which stored in the hollow butt of the gun. The "extractor" was a wooden rod. The sights are incredibly basic and the trigger pull is awful. It has no manual safety. The barrel is not rifled. As far as I know there are no reliable records of it ever having been used for it's intended purpose.

You do see these every now and then at gun shows however since they were not originally serially numbered and are not rifled there can be legal problems with possession of them.

If any of Paco's readers have a gun they want featured here, please let me know. It would be helpful if you could send along a decent quality jpeg photo.