Full Conceal was a company that designed a folding Glock. The intent was to create a pistol that could be easily, discreetly, and safely carried in a pocket but still offer the handing and capability of a full size service pistol. They did this by cutting off the grip of a Glock 19 (M3D) or Glock 43 (M3S) and rebuilding it with a hinged trigger guard. An extended magazine could be then carried parallel to the barrel, folded up to render the trigger safe and giving it the profile of a big cell phone instead of pistol.
The M3D and M3S were shown as prototypes at SHOT 2017 and began shipping in early 2018. In October 2020 the company filed for bankruptcy and in June 2021 its assets were sold at auction. The problem was that the guns were simply too expensive for their target market. The company tried to reduce costs by developing their own slides and frame instead of using commercial Glocks, but this was too little too late to save them financially.
If you can’t deploy it one-handed while drawing, it sounds like a tacticool way to get yourself killed. Besides which the folded up pistol prints like a small brick in the pocket. The sort of thing that draws a thug’s attention. One might be better off with the much maligned Taurus Curve. (Assuming you could find one that did not suffer the light prime strikes problem)
I agree. The early prototypes (minus the mag holder) would make a lot more sense. A chopped-G48 would give similar or better capacity to a revolver, with zero tricks to learn, and the ability to get a better grip with your spare mag if you have time.
It looks that they managed to make of version of https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/KB-ST_GNOM and likewise made very few examples.
This was simultaneously one of the coolest, yet stupidest pistol designs I’ve ever seen come across the board.
It’s like the designers never saw pocket lint, before. Honestly, I have no idea how you’d keep something like this working, long-term, and they never really addressed that. I’d have been one of their primary markets, but having seen and handled one, the only way I could see to make the whole idea work was if I carried it in some hermetically-sealed pouch or something, and if you’re going to do that, then you may as well go to something like a Glock 26 and then carry that in a good pocket holster… It’s going to be about the same, in terms of speed, and I’ll give points to the Model 26.
This is one of those ideas where you’re going “Yeah, you can do that, but…”
Yeah, I forgot the ever prevalent pocket gunk problem. Regular old lint, summertime sweat, plus the thin coating of lubricant on the pistol’s folding joints will create a paste asking to molasses. One’s snap ‘n shoot drill turns into tug, jerk, cajole and curse
Looks bigger than usual, maybe if one did something similar with the slide/barrel; fold that bit in half… Maybe with a holster, that unfolded it for you – Upon drawing it out.
Suppose if had one of those 33rnd big mags might, be slightly, more of a point to it… Glue planes together, well I was thinking… Hee… I wasn’t. Tell you what I did accidentally stumble on, wiki dive reading about Rammstein the band; ended up with German radio transmitters – Hamburg light miracle, which struck me as that Tesla thing I once heard about.
Long slide job, matching length of mag type lark; I mean otherwise this seems sort of – Pointless.
“(…) did something similar with the slide/barrel(…)”
You probably can divide it into smaller components in https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/The_Man_with_the_Golden_Gun#Golden_Gun style, but how that would affect deployment time?
Well, lets look at this; take a Glock 26 3.42″ sooo… What we want to do is sit that above the rest of the slide which is about 4″ and so we get a holstered pistol which is 4″‘ish, as oppose 8″ which is to long, you might be wearing trunks for example. Thus we need to keep the barrel/chamber as one thing; probably, right – You know to contain the bangy thing, but? Could we seperate the rest, dovetails is there a way? Probably. Target market folks who wear trunks alot.
Perhaps they live near the sea, or are somewhat to keen on revealing the size of their “Package” in public spaces; none of our business, if they want to be armed while doing – so, this is our business.
So you whip it out your trunks! And bingo, your glock is fully errect, due to the design of the holster. I never started this thread Ian the publisher of this website did.
While talking to a concealed carry instructor about what were good guns to carry concealed, he panned the idea of a 1911-ish style pistol due to the thumb safety. He felt it would take 1,000 rounds of practice to be able to pull out the gun and work the safety to be able to do such quickly and smoothly. I am assuming he would rate this gun as a 10,000 round learning curve.
The 1911 style has a thumb safety that has to be pushed down to disengage. But there are pistols where the thumb safety is disengaged by pushing it up. I wonder if this type of thumb safety would be more efficient in a fast draw.
A revolver; I’d use a snap cap personally also mind, safety first – You hear some shocking stories of accidents in the U.S with this carry lark, Doc holiday or what? What are they like, theres nobody there – No Injuns attacking, or owt, yet you’ve just shot yourself or a significant other, or some other innocent party for no reason.
44. Special revolver, don’t point it at anything you don’t want to kill. Snap cap, it’ll do all jobs, practice – Higher firepower vs accuracy, practice more; not you, just saying in general… Shocking level of accidents, in the U.S with this carry lark. And who has actually saved there own, or someone elses ass from this quickdraw need. Anyone ever? Cops different story, get it.
Well I say I get it, I do in princple; but in practice, well… On many occasions, for their/others lives, a wee pause might have been handy really. A competent, pause; something, if you was a good shot, you were confident of your ability. Had the right weapon, training. Instead of whipping it out, just a wee pause… Maybe, what you’d get from a revolver. Just saying – Maybe better; do the job, less “Mess” no. Full combat lark, like you was in a war blasting Germans.
“(…)Full combat lark(…)”
So far I know https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/lark.htm was never used in combat, please cite reliable source supporting your claim.
English word, U.S or otherwise; means sort of a thing, game, something you would do. “Johnathan shall we smash Mrs Jones greenhouse?” Yes, it would be a lark, I am bored shitless. For example.
“(…)owt(…)”
Explain clearly how one-way travel is relevant for described situation.
Means; anything, a dialect.
In Russian you might say sbrosvmika or something and cut it to mika; in order ti save your voice, but it means the same thing.
“(…)1911 style has a thumb safety that has to be pushed down to disengage(…)”
If you already want to alter controls, then consider Para-Ordnance P10-45 https://modernfirearms.net/en/handguns/handguns-en/canada-semi-automatic-pistols/para-ordnance-p14-45-eng/ which is offspring of 1911 but is available with LDA modification, which was designed to allow the gun to be safely carried with a round in the chamber and the hammer down, and to avoid a heavy double-action trigger pull when bringing the gun into action in fast-pacing defensive scenarios.
When I was a kid in the U.K I wanted one of those, before they banned them; you would, wouldn’t you. I wouldn’t now incidentally, be a revolver with a snap cap and a slap to anyone who suggested otherwise. And a number of Flintlocks, and a Gatling gun. Home defense…
I get it, as a proponent of Gatling guns for home defense “Hey you never know, and it will do the job.” laws, but lets avoid needless accidents with carrying handguns.
My divorced Dad “Who died bless him; lovely fella – My Mom has varying opinions (But she was fit, so was possibly a bitch, know what I mean.” would have bought me that, ha. And
looking back – I am glad they banned them. Which is not to say I would have shot anyone, but I bet not having that in the house then, with them… Well….
No what I mean – impressive, Dad argument; look what I bought him 3k of .45 “I’d have have known clearly, licence job” but, meh; glad they banned them frankly.
The instructor I am talking about is a 30 year veteran of the Nebraska State Patrol. Maybe in his job, micro-seconds count. So the extra effort/time to disengage the thumb safety is a real life-or-death issue. This may not be the case for civilians in their self-protection situations.
Quite right Bart, he’ll know best.
The instructor favors striker fired Glocks with a trigger safety. This way the pistol can be safely carried with a round in the chamber. If you need to shoot the bad guy, just pull out the pistol and pull the trigger. No extra fuss and bother.
Well Bart he’s a cop “As oppose a housewife” in Nebraska; we’ll go for that, undoubtedly he knows, his own needs best.
Either that or I have a badly skewed notion of ‘fskewedIf someone trained for speed using a DA revolver or semiauto, I can see where the 1911 safety could cause a glitch. You would be concentrating on getting the thumb right and that could throw everything off
‘A badly skewed notion of fast’
Operator actions using flexor muscles are inherently more intuitive and ergonomic than using extensor muscles. It’s easy to feel this by just trying the 1911 safety (or, better yet, a smaller, rounder, stiffer lever like on some pocket Smiths and Rugers) both ways.
I never found any great difficulty in disengaging the 1911-type safety smoothie and quickly. Certainly nothing demanding 1000 rounds practice. I’m the kind of guy who has trouble plugging in USB without cursing. But then the 1911 was the first semiauto I learned.
Even rewatching Ian at his match won’t make the headache go away…
It’s one thing to put this pistol into a (theoretically…) freshly-washed pair of combat pants, and then pull it out for use at a range, but… Daily carry like that? WTF?
I can’t see it working out, too many nooks and crannies exposed with the pistol folded, and if you’re going to wrap it in something anyway…? Why the hell not go to a real pistol instead of this folding abomination?
Again, super-cool and stuff, but as a practical matter? I’m just not seeing it. At. All.
Bare minimum, Ian should have had that pistol in a single-use Ziploc or something that had to be torn open and which would protect against the funk getting in. I can only shudder to think what a realistic situation would have been, which would be “Carry around in cargo pocket for a week, then try and shoot it…”
I think the number of malfs and misfires would have been epic, with it carried loose.
What this idea overlooks is that even folded, the butt with the double-stack magazine is what makes concealment of a service auto a PITA. (Sometimes literally, depending on exactly where you’re hiding it.)
There’s concealment, and then there’s deep concealment. I see this as an attempt to achieve the latter with the service pistol, and I’m sorry to state that unless you’re living in the Ultraviolet movie universe, that just isn’t going to work.
Leroy Thompson covered this a few decades back when he talked about the basic handgun battery. The first thing on his list wasn’t the service sidearm, it was the deep concealment pistol or as he called the “church gun”- the gun you can carry when you can’t really carry a gun for social reasons. His preference was the Seecamp .32 auto. Today, I consider the Ruger LCP in .380 or LCP 2 in 9 x 19mm to be the more sensible choices. Either one is a “point and click” proposition, like a double-action revolver.
And on that subject, my next level up to what he considered the basic “concealment gun” would be any of the good-quality S&W M36 or M340 type five-shot snubnose revolvers in .357 Magnum. Yes, that includes Taurus and Rossi.
In fact, for the bulk of one of these, you could probably carry an LCP 2 and a 340 at the same time and it would be considerably less likely that anybody would notice.
And neither one requires the legerdemanic expertise of Bill Bixby to get it out and go to work when needed.
clear ether
eon
Let us at least consider a paradigm shift…
What is the actual point/purpose of things like this folding Glock?
You are trying to find a way around the various problems presented by the very format of a traditional pistol, sooooo… Why are you limiting your solution set to “pistol”, in the first place?
Why not, for example, at least consider the idea of completely abandoning the traditional form-factor and conduct a total reformulation of the format? Create something like a diver’s “bang-stick”, but in a sealed, one-time use package?
How else might one go about performing the task of self-defense at close range? Is a traditional firearm even necessary?
There is that hoary old joke about “pocket sand”, as an example: How about modernizing the idea via some sort of drone deployment of the requisite blinding agent? You attack me, I deploy the drone by removing it from storage, and it then sprays whatever it uses as an agent into the faces of your assailant(s) while you run for it?
Alternatively, a personal can of that foam stuff they use to glue rioters in place?
You get down to it, sometimes a pistol isn’t even appropriate. Why limit your thinking to that conceptual frame? Instead, maybe what you need is something like a personal version of the old WWII Gammon bomb, where you slap a remotely-detonated thistle-like affair onto their clothing, which can be used to deploy any number of options, ranging from lethal directed-charge to that sticky-foam stuff or just Mace laced with indelible dye…?
This is the 21st Century; the very stuff of science fiction is becoming attainable, so why not act like it?
I look at things like this folding Glock, consider all the man-hours and effort that went into it, and wonder what could have been created by going outside of the “pistol” box, is all. Things that might even work better than a handgun…
There’s an old RPG supplement from BTRC called 3G3, all about designing weapons for all sorts of roleplaying games. The second book in the series, More Guns, is basically a catalog of their brainstormed ideas.
One of theirs was the “Screamer”. Basically a full-autofire gadget that used a preloaded one-time-use “strip” of metal with “chambers” inside it, with a BB at one end, an electric primer at the other, and propellant in-between. The idea being as it was run through the action like a “harmonica pistol” setup, it gave the user about five seconds of hellacious autofire suitable for extremely close range.
The kicker was that it didn’t need to look like a pistol. The ammunition “strip” could be coiled up like a belt in the drum on an MG34, and run through the action with a device to cut the strip every five rounds and ejecting the “chips”. You could put that in something the size and shape of a phone, a pager, a pocket flashlight, or whatever.
The main “operational drawback” would be,as they admitted, firing at an effective rate of about 2,000 R/M it would be loud as Hell. Hence the name “Screamer”. Still, five seconds or so of low-damage value projectile bursts, the equivalent of a shotgun shell loaded with No.4 buckshot, would if nothing else scare a would-be mugger s#!tless.
Not all of the ideas the gamer types have are stupid. And they make a thing about thinking outside the box.
cheers
eon
I’ve often wondered what you could come up with, and remain within the boundaries of “non-lethal”, yet still “effective at stopping malefactor”.
I like the idea of the Gammon/Thistle device: Something that you can’t take off, but which will either shock the snot out of you or kill you if you so much as move a muscle. Guy tries mugging you, you deploy it, affix it to his person and then the on-board motion sensor takes over. If he moves, it fires the Taser darts through whatever clothes he’s wearing, and then shocks him into immobility for the authorities. If he persists, more shocks, culminating in a lethal self-destruction if he tries to remove the device.
Things like this are going to be possible, and in the near-term future. How are we going to handle them, legally? Who is going to be liable, when the idiot in question kills himself?
“Honest, your honor… I did not intend for him to die, I just wanted him to stop attacking me and wait quietly for the police; the device detected him not complying with that, and shocked him to death…”
In that scenario, was that an act of assisted suicide, or manslaughter? You affixed a lethal device, he chose to activate it. Whose fault?
Self-defense does not have to mean “firearm”, and that’s something which will become more and more true as time goes on.
If you need hand-held weapon, which can fire awful fast AND has action akin to T148E1 grenade launcher then use L5 Ribbon gun https://athlonoutdoors.com/article/fd-munitions-l5-ribbon-gun/
One online review of the pistol said that its underlying philosophy is that it is easier concerning a brick than a pistol.
The Gammon/Thistle is an intriguing concept. But one imagines a host of interesting accidents by the attention impaired, practical jokes gone awry among the Darwin Awards aspirants. Which is all fine save for the wearying lawsuits to follow
Frankly, even as I thought of it, the thought occurred to me that the most science-fictional part of the idea was that there would be people and their social matrix who could make the idea work…
Does strike me as a potential solution, though… Maybe you could, as a visitor to some hellscape city like New York, rent a drone at the airport, and it would follow you around. First hint of violence against your person, it sprays the malefactor down with sticky-foam and attaches a limpet-mine affair that can’t be removed except by the cops, and which will detonate if said criminal attacker moves. Or, do the TASER thing…
I’m imagining what things would be like in a world that implemented something like that, and about all I can think is “No, thankyouverymuch…”
You’d likely just find that giving everyone pistols and license to kill anyone who bothered them would be simpler and more humane. Imagine the response times for the cops coming to unlock the Gammon/Thistle thing: “Oh, sorry, we can’t get an officer out to you for about another six hours…”, and then you’d have issues with people gaming the system to make the damn things “fire” on innocents, and… It’d just be the same as today, but with extra steps.
I still like the idea of giving little girls a .38 revolver upon hitting menarche, giving them instruction in handgunnery, and then making it legal for them to kill molesters and rapists. Do the same for whatever is age-appropriate for little boys, as well… I mean, how much money could we save on incarceration?
Alternatively, we could explore incarcinisation as an alternative to imprisonment. I mean, how much harm could a criminal do as a deep-ocean crab…?
Yeah, didn’t sleep real well last night, so this is what you get.
I think nubile young things should wear Banesuits, as in the novel Eudeamon by Erika Moak.
The difference? No helmet, just an open-face hood.
Anybody tries to grab the young lady, the suit Tasers them.
The suit’s biomonitors instantly detect any attempt at giving her a “date r@63 drug”, and administer antidote in addition to calling for backup.
The thing is the young lady can wear it under her clothes and nobody the wiser. Plus, it’s pretty much all passive defense.
For real fun, any attacker gets scanned and their face etc. gets uploaded to the police.
The idea is to take all the fun out of “fun”. Letting the intended victims have actual fun in peace.
Just thinking.
cheers
eon
I’m still in favor of letting the little girls kill their assailants and giving them cash rewards…
Same as the little boys. I have experience with dealing with the after-effects on both sexes, and I really have no problem with just killing the people that did it to them. Preferably in a humiliating and painful fashion…
I think it would be very interesting to observe what would happen in a situation/culture where sexual dimorphism just evaporated due to either extreme selection pressure or engineering. What would the effects be, on everything surrounding sex?
Hyenas are an interesting species to research, due to the way the dimorphism mostly runs the opposite direction from our own. What would the effects be, on a human society that reflected that sort of dimorphism?
For that matter, why the hell did it evolve in our species the way it did? I met a paleontologist once, who had this theory that Neanderthal didn’t have as much dimorphism as we do, the females being nearly as robust as the males, which then leads to the question of precisely what the hell happened when our gracile-ass ancestors met with Neanderthal? Were modern human males sexually assaulted and “taken advantage of” by much more muscular Neanderthal females who were taken by the “pretty-boy” look they had going…?
Human history, going back to the beginnings, has been influenced way too much by our attraction to “the shiny” of all sorts. Much to our detriment, I suspect. I remember the “robust” girls that couldn’t get dates in high school, one of whom came back to the 10- and 15-year reunions looking like an easy 9.5 on the 1-to-10 scale, also possessing a pretty hefty career/wealth thing. Where she’d gotten zero attention, all the “alpha-male” types were hanging off of her, and it was kinda fun to see her basking in the attention for once. Some guys made some really bad decisions in high school, I’m telling you what.
I’m starting to believe H.Beam Piper had it almost right. Maybe Cro-Magnon did come from Mars 100 millennia ago, as in his Terro-Human Future History stories.
The only thing different may have been that instead of wiping Neanderthal out, Cro-Magnon interbred with them.
Neanderthal has long gotten a bad rap. He’s been portrayed as a bent-over, hulking beast because the first skeleton found looked that way. We now know that particular chap was in his late sixties and suffered from arthritis; no wonder he was slowing up.
As for intellect, Neanderthal invented the atl-atl, the throwing stick plus short javelins weapon system. Anybody who’s ever tried t learn it will tell you that the much less powerful longbow is a lot easier to master.
And oh yes, about 40% of the present human race has residual Neanderthal genes. Me, for one.
Believe it or not, Piper’s hypothesis is now being taken seriously by anthropologists. Especially now that the best available data shows that Mars was pretty close to a mainline “Class M” about a quarter-million years ago. Low gravity let the atmosphere bleed off over time. And the point in atmospheric thinning at which a Cro-Magnon lot would have had no choice but to pull up stakes and colonize somewhere else was in fact about a hundred thousand years ago.
So maybe Neanderthal thought those newly arrived Martian cuties were hot, and the Martian cuties thought the Neanderthal guys looked like good protectors.
Dating at its most basic.
cheers
eon
The suit is bad for the wearer’s character. The wearer gets used to passivity as the default response to danger.Already there an awful lot of suburbanites suffering from that mindset. If things stay quiet they stay passive. If their artificial environment falters, they turn into food.
I was born and raised a “country boy”, carried a .45 on duty for most of my working life, and knew my rural neighbors were responsible people who I could trust not to shoot me with their guns by accident.
Twenty-three years ago, thanks to an Arthur Dent-like situation with a bypass, I moved in town. And discovered that while my neighbors are generally perfectly nice people, I question the wisdom of even giving them pointed sticks.
It’s about fifty years too late to worry about the “passivity” of the average suburbanite.
And not to be sexist, but most young ladies around here are apt to become physically ill at the sight of a pepper spray, let alone a firearm.
So an entirely “passive” defense is about their only hope. One they can tell themselves that Somebody Else is responsible for, not them.
clear ether
eon
@Kirk: I like the idea of an armed populace. Sadly this requires people with self-control. The West is now hell-bent on creating a populace with low impulse resistancepPartly Madison Ave. indoctrination 24/7; partly genes.