Welcome to in the present day’s Photo of the Day! Within the late Nineteen Sixties, Smith & Wesson briefly partnered with an organization referred to as Mercox to supply a extremely specialised and intensely restricted handgun – the Mannequin 17-2 Mercox Dart Gun. This uncommon firearm was designed to not fireplace bullets, however to launch quite a lot of specialty ammunition like darts, tear gasoline, dye projectiles, and even explosives utilizing .22 caliber ramset clean cartridges as propellant. Primarily based on the enduring S&W Okay-frame revolver, this dart launcher featured a radically redesigned 12.5-inch barrel designed to just accept the totally different projectile payloads. Solely about 25 of those distinctive weapons have been manufactured earlier than the partnership dissolved, making them one of many scarcest S&W variants in the present day. The Mannequin 17-2 retained the acquainted Okay-22 sq. butt body, walnut grips with S&W medallions, hammer, and set off. However the prolonged barrel with its particular adapter hinted at its unconventional function – serving as an early less-lethal weapon for purposes like animal management or civilian crowd dispersal. Whereas by no means adopted on a big scale, the Mercox Dart Gun represented firearms producers’ experimentation with new ideas within the turbulent Nineteen Sixties. A uncommon few of those intriguing revolvers averted the scrapyard, preserved in the present day as tantalizing artifacts of the highway not taken in direction of trendy less-lethal applied sciences.
“Manufactured by Smith & Wesson for Mercox circa 1967. Based on Supica and Nahas within the STANDARD CATALOG OF SMITH & WESSON, that is one in every of 25 dart projectile weapons manufactured by Smith & Wesson with 17 to 18 reportedly shipped. With only a few made, the authors concluded that it’s doable that this gun was experimental solely. This handgun kind system relies on a Okay-22 body and was designed to ship hypodermic dart syringes or different varieties of supplies reminiscent of teargas, dye, or explosive or crowd management projectiles. It has an ordinary Mannequin 17 Okay-22 sq. butt body, walnut grips that includes S&W medallions, hammer and set off. A 12 1/2 inch barrel with an adapter is connected to the body and makes use of a particular .22 caliber cartridge as a propellant. The best aspect of the body is stamped with the S&W emblem and the S&W Springfield tackle. The checkered hammer and serrated set off have a casehardened end with the remaining metallic surfaces blue. The properly figured prolonged grips are checkered and have S&W medallions. Included is the S&W blue field and 11 promotional kind pamphlets.”
Lot 1877: Smith & Wesson 17 Revolver 22 Dart – Extraordinarily Uncommon Smith & Wesson Mercox Dart Projectile Gun with Field. (n.d.-q). Rock Island Public sale Firm. {photograph}. Retrieved Could 10, 2024, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/element/55/1877/smith-wesson-17-revolver-22-dart.
