Puckle Gun the gun that fires Square bullets?

[Tessen]

Just stumbled on this , thought you shooters might like a gander...

Puckle gun

The Puckle Gun, or Defense Gun as it was also known, was invented and patented in 1718 by the London lawyer James Puckle. This early automatic weapon was rather bizarrely designed to fire round bullets at Christians and square bullets at the Muslim Turks. Square bullets were believed to cause more severe wounding than round ones, and according to the 1718 patent, ‘would convince the Turks of the benefits of Christian civilisation’.

http://uniqueweaponshaider.blogspot....uckle-gun.html


"Square bullets" really didn't exist. No molds for such bullets exist for the Pucket gun. Instead, soldiers were commonly issued rectangular lengths of lead which they would cut up, melt and poor into round molds. But, if they ran out of round balls in a hot battles, they would just cut off a squarish chunk of lead and use that for a bullet. It only had an effective range of 20-30 yrds/meters but because it tumbled, it had devestating effect on tissue with the tradeoff of backfires, barrel wear and even bursting.

[whswhs]

You'll find stats for it in GURPS Low-Tech, and it was formerly in the 3/e version of GURPS High-Tech, I believe.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Tessen

Just stumbled on this , thought you shooters might like a gander...

Puckle gun

Th
http://uniqueweaponshaider.blogspot....uckle-gun.html


"Square bullets" really didn't exist. No molds for such bullets exist for the Pucket gun. .

I have seen photos of an extra cylinder for the Puckle Gun that had chambers with a square cross-section.