The Turbiaux Protector is an example of a palm pistol.
A palm pistol, also known as a squeeze pistol or colloquially a squeezer, was a type of pistol introduced around the late 19th century. These were developed in the early 1880s in France by Jacques Turbiaux, with pistols of this type seeing production up until the early 1910s when they would fall out of favor.
History[]
The palm pistol was developed in the early 1880s by Jacques Edmond Turbiaux as a means of self-defense which could be easily concealed in the palm of the hand. The first pistol of this type, the Turbiaux Protector, entered production in 1882. A number of similar designs would follow suit, including ones by Etablissements Rouchouse & Cie and Manufacture Française d’Armes de Saint-Étienne.[1]
The main marketing feature of these pistols was their size, allowing them to be easily concealed within the palm of the hand. Using these pistols required tucking the barrel between the second and third fingers of the user's hand and using their palm to press against a sliding wedge on these guns which would fire them, making them akin to small repeating pistols. These pistols had a fairly long lifespan, being produced until the 1910s when sales of these pistols began to dwindle due to the introduction of semi-automatic pistols, some of which were even smaller and more compact than the palm pistols they replaced, causing them to become obsolete and quickly fall out of favor.[1] No palm pistols were manufactured past the 1920s.
The concept appears to have been revived around 2008 by Matthew Carmel with the Constitution Arms Palm Pistol, which has yet to enter production as of 2020.[2]
Examples[]
- Turbiaux Protector
- Chicago Palm Protector
- Manufrance Gaulois
- Rouchouse Merveilleux
- Rouchouse Renovator
- Tribuzio pistol