Ten Weird Guns You Can Buy Today

Tired of the same-old, same-old Glock/Remington 870/AR-15/Remington 700 formula? Want something different? We’ve got a list of weird guns for you to … diversify … the contents of your gun safe, but beware: Some of these designs are smart solutions to firearm design problems, but others are weird enough that you might want to steer clear!

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Pedersoli Howdah Alaskan

What’s the most reliable repeating gun action out there? Most people would say a break-action. So if you want a high-power pistol to keep bears at bay, why not make it a break-action double-barrel, along the lines of the old howdah pistols that tiger hunters used 150 years ago in India? With a bit of Ithaca Auto & Burglar DNA thrown in?

Pedersoli’s Howdah Alaskan might look weird, but it’s a powerful purpose-built pistol in .45 Long Colt, with the capability to take .410 shells as well. You can use it to save your life from a predator, or maybe take a partridge as well. Hard-chromed finish will keep rust from ruining the exterior, and at only 16.25 inches long, it’s easy to store away until needed. You’d better start saving, though; MSRP is $1,825.

Hydra Arms BMP-23

Take an AK-style gas system, and build it into a kinda-sorta bullpup pistol design, with a grip mounted forward of the magazine. Legendary firearms designer Mack Gwinn Jr. designed the original version of this pistol as a survival firearm for shot-down pilots, intended to take AR-pattern magazines and offer a lot more firepower than the .38 wheelguns they were issued in ‘Nam. This pistol gets even more weird when you realize the receiver cants at a 40-degree angle from the grip towards either the right or left, making it semi-ambidextrous (the controls don’t change sides). Originally known as the Bushmaster Arm Pistol, Maine-based Hydra Weaponry sells the pistol now, for $2,350 MSRP.

Johann Fanzoj Vierling

The Vierling is a four-barreled hunting weapon, with twin 12 gauge over-under shotgun barrels and a side-by-side set of rifle barrels (9.3x74mm). With the H&H-style sidelocks and everything else hand-made, this will be a gorgeous weapon for the game field, but if you’ve got enough money to buy this, you probably have enough money to buy two lighter guns instead, and pay someone else to walk around carrying the spare one for you. You can see more details here, but don’t expect a price tag—if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

Dark Mountain Arms Stowaway Pistol

Bolt-action pistols are rare. A large-format single-shot, chambered in 5.7x28mm? Even more unusual, as it’s not a big-bore hunting pistol (the usual application for bolt-action handguns). Dark Mountain Arms says it’s for survival-situation usage; the easily-removable barrel makes it very easy to stow away or change to a barrel in a different caliber. Given that usage case, a .22LR or .22 Magnum choice might make more sense to us, but 5.7x28mm is at least more reliable than a rimfire.

If you want, you can trick this pistol out with a suppressor (the muzzle has 1/2×28 threads) or an optic, with a Picatinny rail on top of the action. That will improve its practicality, but it’s not going to make this pistol any less unusual. MSRP is $379. More info at the Dark Mountain Arms website.

Kel-Tec CMR-30

The PMR-30 pistol was already a weirdo gun, solving the “quality or quantity” question by stuffing a 30-round magazine of .22 Magnum into the grip. Talk about suppressing fire potential. And then Kel-Tec added a longer barrel, a non-reciprocating charging handle and a collapsible stock and built the CMR-30 rifle.

Who is it for? What is it for? If you’re attacked by an onslaught of jackrabbits or raccoons or other small game, you might see the need for half-box of .22 Magnum, but in TFB’s experiences, such life-and-death scenarios are rare. However, we will say this: Even if you don’t have a practical reason to own a CMR-30, it’s super cool and fun to shoot, and the price tag ($600 MSRP for the base model) is affordable for most of us. Especially since finding a decent .22 Magnum semi-auto is pretty hard, as most of them don’t last long on the market.

Idahoan BR-15

OK, this isn’t a rifle you can buy—it’s a rifle you have to make, using standard AR-15 parts mixed with 3D-printed parts built from plans off The Idahoan Show’s website (find the 3D printer files here).

This is, frankly, a bizarro gun, making other DIY weapons like P.A. Luty’s infamous home-brewed SMG look like polished firearms with fine fit and finish. And yet, there’s a practical purpose to the BR-15: If you already have an AR-15, it lets you decide if a bullpup rifle is for you, without spending a lot of money on an expensive gun you might not like. Build the BR-15, test it for a while, and then decide if you want to chase this idea further with an actual purpose-built bullpup.

Kel-Tec KSG

Yeah, Kel-Tec makes the list again. But is that a bad thing? Just because something is weird doesn’t make it bad, and the innovative KSG pump-action shotgun has a lot of features that make it very desirable to tactical shooters. Downward ejection (just like the classic LAPD Ithaca 37 riot guns) means left-handed or right-handed shooters can both use it with ease. The standard KSG is only 26.1 inches long but carries two magazine tubes, with a capacity in each of up to seven shells, plus one in the chamber, meaning you can stuff this scattergun with as many as 15 rounds. And because you can switch between mags easily, you can keep one tube stuffed with breaching rounds, or bean bags, or buckshot, or slugs, or whatever, and keep the other tube stuffed with some other type of round.

The KSG is a weird but very smart design and fully exploits all the advantages of a pump-action shotgun. It might be different, but it’s surprising we don’t see more copycats on the market. MSRP for the Kel-Tec KSG is $845.

Bond Arms Cyclops 50AE Thumper

Derringers aren’t weird in and of themselves; they’ve been making them in the US for a couple of hundred years. What’s unusual about the Bond Arms Cyclops 50AE Thumper is the chambering, in 50 Action Express. Something you’d be more likely to use for grizzly bears than your standard back-alley self-defense scenario, especially considering this pistol only has one shot. But then again, it’s maybe not such a dumb design, considering you have two chances to hit your target, if they’re close enough: You might plug them with a half-inch-round bullet, or you could also set them on fire or blind them with the muzzle flash. Asking price for this hand cannon is $649; more info at the Bond Arms website.

Sipahi RV410 Tactical Marine Revolver Shotgun

If you think about it, revolving .410 shotguns are inherently weird, but they’re not uncommon these days. But this made-in-Turkey wheelgun/shotgun hybrid takes the concept to a whole new level of bizarro-land. Adding a bunch of accessory rails, AR-style flip-up sights, a collapsible tactical stock, a compensator and an angled foregrip did nothing to improve this gun’s appearance, and little to improve its usability. It looks like a reject from that Firefly space opera, with its weird obsession on sci-versions of Wild West firepower. Forget the choice between buckshot or slugs; point this at a burglar, and he’ll die laughing. Or maybe he’ll just vomit all over your carpet when he sees the inherent ugliness. MSRP is $849; more photos here, if you dare.

TrailBlazer LifeCard

Is it a credit card? No, but you can use this to get yourself out of a jam. This card folds out into a functional single-shot pistol, chambered in .22 Magnum or .22 Long Rifle. Straight out of a James Bond film. We’ve written quite a bit about this platform in the past, and while it’s an oddball design, its discrete form factor could make this a deep CCW option when nothing else can work. See the TrailBlazer website for more details on the different versions you can buy.