If you read anything I write, you know I love weird guns. If I love weird guns, then I must love weird gun genres. Sometimes, weird guns become an entire genre, and you just have to deal with it. Let’s dig into five weird gun genres that tip the scales of normality and oddity.
Weird Gun Genres Worth Remembering
Kit Guns
Kit guns, called tackle box guns, are often small-caliber working guns designed for the great outdoors. The overall idea is to have a very cheap, small-caliber revolver that could be used to shoot snakes and similar pests. These revolvers were often .22LRs or .32 S&W. They were perfect for camping, hiking, and fishing, and offered a small frame, low recoil, and a little shooter.
Guns from Iver Johnson, H&R, and similar budget companies were favorites. Cheap guns meant that if they were lost when fishing in the murky lakes and streams, you weren’t out a ton of money. It was cheap to toss and replace when it eventually rusted into pieces. Small calibers were great for pests, didn’t make too much noise, and could be pleasant to shoot.
This is probably the least odd of these weird gun genres. It’s a handy little thing, but these days, the idea of a semi-disposable small caliber revolver has fallen to the wayside.
Boys Rifles
The idea of Boys’ rifles would absolutely terrify folks these days. A child shooting a rifle designed and built for them safely and responsibly! It would leave mouths aghast. Boys’ rifles were from an era when guns were more normalized and gun safety was common. Boys’ rifles were small-caliber, mostly rimfire .22LR guns that were cheaply made and often simple bolt-action single shots.
These rifles were made to be lightweight, with short stocks and simple actions. Some were even given away to boys for selling a particular amount of balm. Imagine getting a free gun for selling balm as a child! That would rule! These days, these rifles don’t have a lot of collector’s value but appear to be fairly cheap. I have a couple and plan to collect them as they cross my path.
As far as weird gun genres go, this one would seem bizarre to the average person today, but was once a very normal thing.
Camp Rifles
Camp rifles or camp carbines are lightweight, pistol-caliber, semi-auto rifles. Only one rifle ever called itself a camp rifle, and that’s the Marlin Camp Carbine. The Marlin Camp Carbines were 9mm or .45 ACP rifles that used either S&W 59 magazines or M1911 magazines. They were reliable rifles with simple wood stocks and iron sights.
These days, plenty of PCCs could fall into the camp rifle genre. The SUB 2000 and S&W FPC come to mind for their lightweight, compact design. The idea is to have a gun you could use defensively, to eliminate pests, and just plink while camping at a great price point.
Can weird gun genres include a genre that only has one named entry? I think so.
Arm Pistols
Arm pistols might be my favorite of the weird gun genres. There are only two of note, and both were intended to be extremely compact weapons. Arm pistols promised a rifle-caliber platform that wasn’t a whole lot bigger than a pistol. These pistols would be against your arm with your firing hand extended, and the gun used a bullpup format.
Colt designed the IMP, or Individual Multi-Purpose Weapon, as a semi-auto bullpup pistol firing the .221-17 IMP or the .221 Remington Fireball. The original Bushmaster also produced an Arm Pistol, but this one was a 5.56 caliber gun that used AR mags and a handful of AR parts. Both guns had a rear portion that rotated to allow the gun to rest on your arm.
These fireball-spitting bolsters are very rare. The IMP never left the prototype stage, but the Arm Pistol was available for a few years, and Hydra recently brought it back in a limited edition run.
Disposable Guns
The idea of Disposable Guns has never taken off, but that hasn’t stopped the United States from trying over and over to make it a thing. Disposable guns are the rarest of these weird gun genres. Very few ever made it into the collector’s hands. Disposable guns include the Liberator from World War II, the Deer Gun from Vietnam, and the never-produced Winchester Liberator.
The Deer Gun and OG Liberator were pistols designed to be as cheaply produced as possible and dropped on resistance fighters. The fighters could shoot an enemy and take their gun. The Winchester Liberator was a multi-barrel shotgun designed to do the same thing, but it would be a little more effective.
Disposable guns never took off. It was often cheaper to drop the guns you’ve made or made for the last war. It’s also much more effective to drop hundreds of pounds of bombs than hundreds of pounds of disposable guns.
The Weird Gun Genres
I love weird guns, so it makes sense that I love weird gun genres. These are the five most common, and all five tend to be quite rare. After writing about so many weird guns, I figured it was time to tackle entire genres of weird guns.
