Improvised Pen Gun

     Notes: Commonly used by irregular forces as assassination weapons, the improvised pen gun can take a variety of forms.  They are generally made of thick steel (they tend to be overbuilt, as thicker steel is actually easier to work on these crude weapons), and are usually simple tubes with simple “slam-fire” firing mechanisms – if they have triggers, they are also quite simple in function, being little more than a spring-loaded firing pin with a catch on it.  Some can be found with equally-simple “silencers” which can be attached – not very effective, and usually little more than steel tubes with internal leather or rubber washers functioning as bullet wipes.  (They will not be effective for very long, in any case.)  Caliber will generally be rounds which have as little chamber pressure as possible, such as the various standard .22 rimfire rounds, .25 ACP, or .32 ACP.  Few, if any, will have any sort of rifling in them.  Barrels will generally be quite short, in the 1 to 2-inch range.

“Toy” Gun

     Notes: Perhaps one of the more unusual ad hoc weapons was pioneered by the IRA – a small derringer-type pistol made from a well-constructed toy gun.    The toy pistol is reinforced with a either a new barrel, a barrel thickened for a different round, or iron bands around the barrel and “chamber.”  As these toy pistols generally have only a rudimentary hammer (for popping caps) or no hammer, a hammer is generally added by sawing off the end of a nail and soldering it to the hammer.  A loading lever is also added to further reinforce the “chamber.”  These pistols are generally constructed for low-pressure commercial rounds, such as .22 Short, .22 Long, and .22 Long Rifle.  Rifled versions are so rare that they will not be covered here; if you (as GM) decide to have a rifled version, multiply ranges by 1.5.  Barrels are usually limited to 1 or 2 inches at the most, and often less than even an inch; for purposes of the tables below, a 1.5-inch barrel is used.

Improvised Pistol

     Notes: As with most such weapons, this piston is built quite crudely, but better than a zip gun.  They usually come in a variety of calibers, but normally low-pressure, low-power rounds.  A variety of designs are used, such as a tip-up chamber, a bolt that pulls to the rear to load the weapon, etc., but all are single-shot weapons generally built crudely of machined steel, with a fixed trigger pull that often barely works.  The barrel is a single tube, usually unrifled, though some rifled versions exist.  Barrel lengths range from 1-3 inches; I have used a 3-inch barrel for the stats below.