Early American Life, April, 2008
American gunsmiths, like their European counterparts, created handguns of stunning beauty in the years following the Revolution, so elegant that gentlemen carried them solely to impress their peers. The problem was that the guns were ineffective, accurate only for a few feet and incapable of firing when the weather is even slightly damp. In fact, the development and creating of early pistols is a story with plenty of surprising and amusing anecdotes of special interest to historians and re-enactors.