In celebration of the Cars, Cards, and Carbines Kickstarter (and in hopes you will go check it out!) Sam Knight (that’s me!) has gathered a few eclectic things that might interest you…
Let’s start with what a carbine is. In general terms, it is a gun. More specifically, it is from the French name for a weapon that was shorter, and lighter, than a musket and was designed for calvary use. Today, the term is much more generalized and applied to many different types of fire arms. We all generally know what guns are ( I am assuming), so in that spirit, lets see what strange kinds of carbines we can find, shall we?
First, there is the once-famous race horse, Carbine. He would better fit in if we were talking about cars, I think, so let’s move on. Besides, why’d they name him Carbine, but call him “Old Jack?” Some people’s great-great grandfathers, *tsk tsk*.
This incredible futuristic-looking gun is actually a rubber band shooter. After watching the video, I wouldn’t want to be shot with it.
This one isn’t really a gun. It’s a grill. But man it’s cool!
This is called a “duck-footed” pistol. You can see a video of how it is loaded and shot, and how effective it may or may not be, here. In case you’re not sure why it’s called “duck-footed”, here is another one and a link to a pretty interesting site:
“Duck-footed” pistols are a type of volley gun, or a weapon intended to fire many rounds at once, or in rapid succession. The early form of an automatic weapon, if you will. Here are a couple examples of volley guns:
This is a pepperbox pistol.
This is a pepperbox pistol hidden inside a cane-with a stabby-pointy thing on it just in case…
This one is a one-of-a-kind made for the Prince of Egypt in the 1930’s, according to the website. (Click on the image to go check it out.)
Going the other way, in that smaller is better, here is a palm pistol:
This did not have a ‘trigger’ as we are used to, instead, it was fired by clenching the fist and pressing the ‘butt’ into the palm, while the barrel was extended out between the fingers.
Even smaller, is the ring gun.
And recently, this “Key Chain” gun was in the news.
Then there is the famous “Apache” knuckle duster:
This was intended for close-quarters combat. With no barrel, aiming was short-range only, allowing only a slightly farther reach than the knife or the brass knuckles.
And the strangest one, in my opinion, the key gun:
As you can see, humans have done just about anything they could with ‘carbines’. And I just barely scratched the surface. I wonder what will turn up in the stories that come out of the Cars, Cards, and Carbines Kickstarter? If you are wondering too, you might think about contributing to the Kickstarter…
*Update: The Cars, Cards, and Carbines Kickstarter may be on hold for the time being (yes, it was but on hold, no, the Kickstarter didn’t fail — reasons I was not clear on, but didn’t sound like anything bad. Sounded like there was a legitimate reason for the postponement) but Carbines are still cool! Some of the links above have vanished with time, but her is a really cool one to make up for it! http://imgur.com/gallery/jKFCR