Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am of course here at the Rock Island Auction House, and you would probably
expect that I would be looking at some gun that they're going to be selling coming up.
Well I am, although the table here
in front of me is devoid of guns
because I am actually wearing this particular gun.
This is a sneaky little gun designed and patented in 1990 by a guy named R.J. Braverman.
He first partnered up with the American Derringer Company to manufacture these in like 1993-94.
Then he split off and formed his own company, and made them himself from '95 to '97.
At which point he went out of business, because it's not necessarily the most practical gun ever.
The company did make a little bit of a comeback and existed from 2002 to 2004,
and then went out of business again.
And what he was manufacturing is actually kind of interesting because it is not an NFA item.
... First off, unlike a lot of people expect,
and unlike pretty much all of the other guns in its category.
It is a pen gun.
Now the National Firearms Act includes a category called "Any Other Weapon",
which includes some kind of like leftover stuff from the other categories.
It includes things like smoothbore pistols,
and, among other things, it includes guns that are disguised to not look like guns.
Which generally includes guns disguised to look like pens.
Or canes for example, or anything else.
What Braverman did was he came up with a design
where you cannot actually fire this until you open it up,
like so.
And now in this configuration ATF decided
it is distinctive enough that it looks vaguely like a handgun,
and so they categorised it as a handgun, and not an NFA "Any Other Weapon".
Which definitely makes Braverman's pen pistol (which by the way he called "The Stinger"),
different from all of the other pen guns out there on the market.
Now, why don't we go ahead and take a closer look at this,
because it's kind of tiny, and I bet you can't see any details at all from back there.
So here is our Braverman Stinger pen gun.
I've got a regular actual pen here as a size comparison, so pretty much the same size.
The Stinger's bigger in diameter, and it's significantly heavier
because it's all made out of stainless steel.
Alright, these were actually made in five different calibres.
This particular one is in .25 Auto.
But you could also get them in .22 ... Long Rifle or .22 Magnum rimfire, as well as .32 ACP.
And you could get a conversion unit for .380 ACP as well.
Now the way they work is you actually pull them apart, this cocks the striker spring.
Pull it apart, and you bend it down not quite 90 degrees.
A little trigger pops out, and we have this collar safety.
So in its standard position like this,
which is how it sits when it's compressed, when it's folded up,
because this surface meshes with that surface, that's the safe position.
Once you open it up, before you can fire it you have to rotate it, like so, to the fire position.
And then pressing up on the trigger will fire it.
Just like that.
Once it's fired, the only way to re-cock it is to actually close it,
and then ... reopen it and repeat the process.
Now, ... in order to close it, by the way, you have to pull the whole thing up that direction,
and then lift it up.
And it automatically resets the safety to safe when you do that.
Now the barrel assembly here is threaded on.
So this is how you would load or unload the piece
is by taking the barrel off,
put your cartridge in there,
or pop your empty cartridge case out.
And then thread it back on.
These barrels are rifled, although I can't imagine it does really any good whatsoever.
It simply prevents these things from falling into a different
NFA category of Any Other Weapon for being un-rifled.
Now the .380 is significantly bigger than a .25 auto.
In fact it's actually a two-piece conversion kit,
with basically an adapter to bring up the diameter of the tube,
and this has a little spring-loaded transfer firing pin.
And then a separate .380 barrel.
It's interesting that Braverman's instruction sheet that came with the .380 conversion
actually specifically says you should not shoot the .380 much.
That they provided it for
the people who think that .25 or .22 is insufficient as a defensive calibre.
But it will sort of void your warranty if you use it.
What they say is you've got a one year warranty on this thing,
or you did originally when they were made.
But if you had warranty issues, because you were shooting the .380
they would fix them but they would actually charge you.
You'd be paying 25 bucks an hour plus shipping, handling, and parts for any repairs.
Because apparently with sustained use it would bend or warp various parts of the gun.
So practice with the .25 and carry the .380.
Which is assuming, of course, that you are actually interested in carrying this as a defensive weapon.
It ... was marketed as a last-ditch backup.
It certainly fits that criteria: it has no sights, it has barely a two inch barrel, ...
and it is very difficult to hold in any sort of usable way.
This is a point-blank weapon only.
Because of the safety mechanism on it ... and the setting it up,
it's not quite the sort of thing that you can fire at a moment's notice.
It takes a couple seconds to pull it out, set it up, get it ready, and then fire it.
The other kind of interesting thing about this is it really is bigger than a pen
up at this end.
In fact it kind of almost looks more like a tyre pressure gauge.
But that's not nearly as cool and sexy as a pen gun,
so I can see why they didn't go with that.
As long as you've got it covered, it doesn't look like gun.
It might look like a kind of odd pen, but I don't think many people would give it a second glance.
Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
It's an interesting look at a little unique pistol shall we say.
If you'd like to own this one, of course they're not manufactured anymore,
but this particular example is coming up for sale here.
If you take a look in the description text below you'll find Rock Island's catalogue page on it.
You can look at their pictures, their description, place a bid online if you'd like.
And just the thing if you need that concealable backup gun,
and you're not concerned about it kind of taking a little bit of time to get into action.
Thanks for watching.