The .25 broomhandle. Which isn't really a broomhandle....

Ok, so I made allusion to this concept in the first post and never really expanded upon it. Well, stuck at home here with whatever feverish delusion strikes me (It's not the flu, but I feel just as funky), I figure it's time to post.

Compactness is the name of the game these days. Pistols keep getting smaller and smaller... Seecamps, Keltecs, Rohrbaughs, they keep shrinking. But they're at a bottom limit now with the current design strategum... roughly 9/16" thick or so, tiny grips, bore axis ratio up there because of the size... they aren't easy guns to shoot.

Why so thick? There's a good mechanical reason. Take a look at the keltecs... the trigger bar has to move past the magazine somehow, in order to reach the hammer/sear mechanism. That takes what already has to be roughly .400" wide and adds to it, plus the width of the polymer required for the grip. The modern design of pistol simply cannot be as narrow as possible because of the trigger bar.

Why am I emphasizing narrow? Because in my mind that's the most important aspect of the weapon for concealability. Men and women carry the 1911 in a high-hold IWB because it's THIN, without regard for length or depth of frame. Look at an NAA Guardian.... it's short, it's not deep.... but it's wide, and heavy. It's brick-like in the pocket, and impossible to locate in a holster. It's just... wrong. Designers are shrinking the *wrong dimensions*.

So here's my idea, and I may be ruining whatever patents I may get because I'm posting publically, but I'm in this for the guns, not the money. Anyways... the perfect concealable pistol must be as NARROW as possible, in order to fit along the body without printing. Length is a concern, but not as much as narrow. It shouldn't be terribly deep either, particularly in the grip, because that's the dimension that must conform along the curve of the hip. How do you accomplish this?

The key is in disregarding length. By doing this you can seperate the magazine well from the grip... the broomhandle layout, magazine ahead of trigger guard. What this accomplishes is having a mag well that's not being flanked by any other mechanism... it's only as wide as required to hold the magazine itself. And, with a different layout altogether, it need only be as wide as the walls to hold the follower (I.E. instead of the magazine sliding into a magazine well, it *is* the well, and latches into the receiver front and back). With a .25ACP cartridge I can see the magazine being roughly .28 to .30" wide. The widest part of this weapon would be the chamber and bolt, needing the extra width of material for mechanical purposes... and using a design constraint of .125" for the chamber walls, you now have a pistol that's a whopping .5", yes, one-half inch thick at the widest point and tapered at the nose and towards the grip down to .35 or .4".

The bolt would be standard blowback, perhaps enclosed like the Ruger .22 designs. It may also be on a sloped track... an upward angle. Why? Because if the bolt doesn't traverse over the area covered by the hand, then the overall bore axis can be lowered to a point where the bore axis is actually *within* the gripped surface... the bore could be made nearly inline to the first knuckle joint of the hand. The perfect pointable pistol, aiming as easily as pointing your finger. Flip would be nonexistant as the torque axis is aligned with the support axis. Recoil would be easily handled since it's just a .25acp. Power would be enhanced because insteadl of a <1" barrel like the pocket .25s, you'd have 2" or perhaps more. The load could be enhanced with a slower powder. All manner of new ideas fall inline to create what very well could be a revolution in concealable pistol design. With a middle/ring depth grip, the pistol would still only be 1.75" deep or so, less than the tiny keltec.

Can I start laughing like a madman yet?