All right, so which one were we doing next
Get my glasses.
Oh!
Right, these aren't glasses at all. It's a gun
Thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com
I'm Ian McCollum and today we're taking a look at the Llama PRESSIN.
This is a really interesting little covert firearm. That is just this perfect blend of
Subtle and covert and yet sort of public
So these originated in nineteen seventy eight and they were designed by a spanish military officer by the name of Juan
Bautista del Rio and
It was in response to an ongoing problem in spain of terrorist groups like the ETA
kidnapping
military and political officials and maybe industrial
people who could, uh, be ransomed for large amounts of money and there was this desire in these social circles to have some sort of
weapon.
uhm
They wanted something that they could defend themselves with in case of an attempted kidnapping and the idea was it had to be something
Hidden and covert because if he just walked around carrying a pistol
Well, first of all, I think a lot of these people weren't really comfortable with that public image
And of course if they were doing that anyone attempting to kidnap them would simply notice the pistol and plan accordingly. So
Bautista came up with this idea for a little two shot .32 caliber
pistol, that would be disguised in what is basically what looks like a sunglasses case. So that's a PRESSIN
That's a pressin case that sunglasses, pistol
sunglasses
Pistol, they made them in all sorts of fancy designer colors so you could take your pick as to which one you wanted.
And then this gave you two shots of a .32 caliber
Cartridge to deter or end a kidnapping. Now
I'm not sure exactly how effective this would have been but they're really interesting little guns. So let's take a closer look at this
So mechanically what we have here are two shots two barrels. There is a breech block back here with this locking block
so in order to
load it you pull this down and then
it's a little tricky to do you've got
See, those are your two firing pins and springs
So I pull this block down and then I pull that backwards and now I can put two cartridges in it
And then press this breech-block
forward and
push that locking block up that has
Compressed both of the recoil springs or both of the firing pin spring so it's now cocked
This lever is your trigger. We have a safety button right there. So when I push the safety and it simply
hits on the edge of the frame there and prevents you from
squeezing the trigger now the way this was intended to be used was in this little
faux
Sunglasses case there are two little holes at the front and you put the pistol
Facing that direction so you put it in there like that
The safety lines up right under this snap stud
so we can go ahead and close that and now it just looks like a pair of sunglasses and
If you need to use it you can
push the safety and then
squeeze it one shot, two shots.
When we pull it back out you can see the lever is now all the way depressed and
in order to bring it back we have to
recock
So the lever has popped out it is now ready when you pull this out it will extract, I'm sorry
It will not extract the two cartridges. You have to punch them out
This isn't made to be fired more than once in an incident. Now
So there are some markings on this
It the name is marked on the side, Pistola Pressin.
Caliber there on the side is 7.65 E, we'll touch on that in a moment.
And then it is serialized on the bottom., this is number 600
768 and it has actual Spanish official proof marks.
So this is a professionally manufactured firearm. These were in fact made by the llama company
However, they were never actually listed
in llamas catalogue and
The reason for that is while this was a publicly available gun, this was sold on the commercial market.
It wasn't intended to be for just anybody
This was originally approved by the government for manufacture
Specifically because they wanted, they, they agreed that
Llama could make a gun specifically for
VIPs for executive protection basically.
In fact, you'll notice here inside the case
They kind of had this, this is here so that like if you are
You know if you're searched by the police while carrying this they don't want you to freak out
They don't want the police to freak out and think you're a terrorist
so it says it's a pistol with the patent number and then this says "CAUTION
Pocket firearm authorized by the co- the Permanent Commission of arms and Explosives by the president of the government."
so this thing Lama did get explicit permission from the government to manufacture these and
Then down here. It's basically says keep your hands off it if you don't know what you're doing. Don't manipulate it
Unless you know how to so
If you're a police officer and you find this on someone hopefully you'll read this when you open it up
and and that'll prevent you from just like
immediately shooting the guy carrying it
Anyway Lama made these from 1978 until
1995 they made a total of about nine hundred of them
But they were never listed in any print Lama catalog and they're not actually marked Lama anywhere on the gun
So the while these were approved for manufacturer, they really kind of did give the heebie-jeebies to the Spanish state security service
Who was really quite concerned about...
unauthorized
Sorts of people getting them
They certainly didn't want ETA terrorists running around with a bunch of these and that actually went into part of the design decision
So that caliber 765 E, these use a special cartridge
it is 32 acp but cut down from a
7.65 by seventeen millimeter case down to a 15 millimeter case so you have to have a short cartridge
that means you can't take regular 32 acp and chamber it in the gun and it means that should you
Kidnap someone who's carrying one of these and acquire the gun that way you can't really use it
You'll have the two cartridges that are in it, but you won't be able to get any addition ammunition
So that was that was their attempt to prevent these things from from getting out into the wild, I guess
It's a really interesting little gun
and of course because these were going to be carried by
You know fancy sort of businessman, politician, sort of people
They made these cases in a whole variety of different colors so you can get one that would match your wardrobe you
They didn't make one in tactical black
Because the people that this was intended for we're not going to be carrying one in you know, tactical black Nylon
No, just really cool to see this array of
fake glasses cases
So the idea of course was to provide this sort of covert emergency weapon
and as part of the
Llama wanted to keep this quiet, the government wanted to keep it quiet for a number of reasons
But among them they didn't want these terrorist groups
Recognizing that their potential victims might be running around with little Derringer concealed in a glasses case. So
So there were always kept very very quiet sold by
suspect word-of-mouth and you know
You know a guy who knows a guy and you can get a Pressin and if you might think you need one
That said they ultimately did shut down manufacture of these for a couple reasons for one thing the guys who are buying them
Didn't generally actually carry them because these things are a little bit heavy this weighs 280 grams
That's about 10 ounces
And if you drop this into you know, the the pocket of your sport coat
It does kind of weigh more than you'd normally put in that pocket and kind of makes the coat sag and well
that doesn't look good and it's
uncomfortable and unpleasant and then
The people who are carrying these we're people who let's be honest didn't really have a clue what they were doing with guns
You know
Which end the bullets come out of is probably about the extent of their firearms training and there was at least one
incident of a negligent discharge of one of these things in public and that
the combination of
they're not actually really being used to do any good and maybe they weren't a great idea in the first place and now it looks
Like some idiot is going to accidentally shoot a constituent in you know on the street
Well, let's let's just make these go away. And so
Llama ended up deactivating a large number of them when the company went under in the 90s
Now the way the trigger works is you just press this lever in and it does have two discrete sears in it
So there are two barrels and if you press just a little ways
You get one click that's the first round firing and then a little farther and you get a second one
So if you have some trigger discipline there you get two discrete shots. You'll notice if you have it outside of the case
there is this little thumb rest here so you can kind of
Meet you know rudimentarily point the thing
If you don't have any good trigger discipline and you just grab the thing out of a panic click click and you fire two shots
simultaneously
Now the problem that comes to my mind is if you're being kidnapped by
Literally a team a group of ETA terrorists and you only have two shots of underpowered 32 ACP
I wonder how useful this would really be because it seems to me like
What you're doing is guaranteeing that unless you miss if you manage to hit a guy
You're gonna wound him and it's gonna be painful and you're gonna make the rest of his buddies
Really quite angry when they're already planning to kidnap you and this might not actually help the situation. Now, certainly, there may be some
Conceivable circumstances where something like this could actually get you out of trouble
But I don't know that they were ever very effectively used
a lot of them did end up on the Spanish market deactivated and
There was some trouble at one point of these being reactivated this sort of thing always gave the security services nightmares
Because of its concealable sort of design despite the fact that it had been government authorized in the first place
And perhaps the most interesting thing to me
the the Llama company gave a very fancy Damascene PRESSIN to King Juan Carlos the first and
apparently after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, Juan Carlos
gave Reagan one of these as well, which I'm sure the Secret Service immediately did not let him carry but
Anyway, really interesting little piece of modern. You know that
Normally when you have the really covert sort of guns, they're they're not being done by officialdom
This is a really interesting case where it really was Oh anyway, hopefully you enjoyed the video
Thank you very much for watching and tune back in to Forgotten Weapons for another cool firearm