shanneba
Professional
The world’s largest organic deposit of Semmerling pistols can be found at NRA’s National Firearms Museum. There are 22 of them on display, including just about every finish and variation, in a case entitled, rightly, “Weird and Wonderful.”
They got it half right.
The late 1970s was an interesting era when it came to compact pistols. In the United States, the .45 ACP was king; 9 mm was something best left to Europeans. This was well before NRA helped pass the first Right-To-Carry law in Florida in 1987, and there was limited demand for concealable pistols—but there was some. To combine .45 ACP punch with a very compact pistol, inventor and manufacturer Philip R. Lichtman set up the Semmerling Corporation in Massachusetts.
The Semmerling LM-4 was the smallest .45 ACP handgun available to date. It was not a semi-automatic, but rather a manually operated pistol. This obviated the need for a slide to be cycled as well as a recoil spring—meaning less real estate was required.
At the top-right corner of the right-side stock is a small lever that needs to be engaged to carry the LM-4 with a round in the chamber • A beefy extractor makes sure empty cases are cleared during the manual ejection process • Holding four rounds of .45 ACP, the magazine gave the LM-4 the same total capacity as most small-frame revolvers • Unique in its manual operation, the barrel is slid forward by hand to remove the spent case, then pulled rearward to chamber the next round.
www.shootingillustrated.com
They got it half right.
The late 1970s was an interesting era when it came to compact pistols. In the United States, the .45 ACP was king; 9 mm was something best left to Europeans. This was well before NRA helped pass the first Right-To-Carry law in Florida in 1987, and there was limited demand for concealable pistols—but there was some. To combine .45 ACP punch with a very compact pistol, inventor and manufacturer Philip R. Lichtman set up the Semmerling Corporation in Massachusetts.
The Semmerling LM-4 was the smallest .45 ACP handgun available to date. It was not a semi-automatic, but rather a manually operated pistol. This obviated the need for a slide to be cycled as well as a recoil spring—meaning less real estate was required.
At the top-right corner of the right-side stock is a small lever that needs to be engaged to carry the LM-4 with a round in the chamber • A beefy extractor makes sure empty cases are cleared during the manual ejection process • Holding four rounds of .45 ACP, the magazine gave the LM-4 the same total capacity as most small-frame revolvers • Unique in its manual operation, the barrel is slid forward by hand to remove the spent case, then pulled rearward to chamber the next round.
An Official Journal Of The NRA | Classics: Semmerling LM-4 Pistol
This manually operated oddity sure seemed like a good idea at the time.