The scenario is entirely too familiar to law-abiding gun owners.  Licensed to carry concealed weapons (CCW) in their state or municipalities, they discover that they cannot carry guns in the one place where they spend a third to a half of every day.  That place is on the job, where many private and public companies have a host of policies in place to which employees must adhere.  Among the Internet abuse rules, mandated hostile-work-environment training, hazard communications, and on-site psychological and financial assistance can be found no shortage of rules prohibiting firearms on the premises.  At times, these rules extend even to the parking lot of the workplace, which means no rifles locked in trucks during deer season – and no handguns locked in cars for self-defense.  Sure, each and every one of these working people could choose to carry a licensed handgun – but all it would take for each of them to end up unemployed would be a single slip of a concealing outer garment, a moment’s inattention to concealed carry in an environment hostile to CCW.

The situation could be less dramatic.  Perhaps you live or work in an environment requiring a very specific wardrobe – one that leaves no means of concealing even a “compact” handgun.  Yes, even very large handguns can be concealed inside your waistband under an outer shirt – but what if you’re jogging in shorts and a t-shirt, working as a lifeguard in a pair of swim trunks, or on the job at a hospital in scrubs or a nurse’s uniform?  You can easily construct hypothetical situations in which you can conceal a small handgun (and even a hand cannon), but the fact remains that there are many people for whom carrying and concealing daily even a small revolver or automatic is problematic.  For some of them, it is almost impossible, at least without some risk of exposure.  Yes, you can carry a hidden pocket automatic in even the least permissive of environments – but how long will it be before you bump a desk, or drop your pants too quickly in a restroom stall, or otherwise give someone nearby some hint that you’re toting a sizeable chunk of metal on your person?

Fortunately, there exists an option between carrying a small gun, which is still too large to be comfortable or completely discreet, and carrying no gun at all, which is no choice for concerned citizens.  That option is the smallest, most discreet repeating firearm in production today.  No larger than even the smallest single-shot or multi-barrel pocket gun, smaller than any other factory revolver or automatic for sale in this or any country (as far as I know), it is the last choice for those who choose to be armed.  It is the North American Arms (NAA) Mini-Revolver.

It was my father who introduced me to the diminutive revolver.  When I was a teenager he owned one that he sometimes carried in a belt-buckle “holster.”  While I would not advocate such an audacious method of carry, the point is that I’ve been familiar with the little gun for many years now.  I’ve come to appreciate it, despite its limitations.  Unfortunately, many otherwise informed firearms owners dismiss the Mini-Revolver as impractical.  Most of the criticisms made of this weapon are simply not valid if one takes the time to train and practice with the gun.

Carrying and Shooting the Mini-Revolver

The NAA Mini-Revolver, which can be had in multiple calibers (including .22 Short, .22 LR, .22 Magnum, .17 HMR, and even a percussion black powder version), is a single-action weapon with no trigger guard.  The cylinder on the .22 LR model holds five rounds and must be removed from the gun completely to facilitate loading.  The pin around which the cylinder rotates must be removed before the cylinder will come out.  The pin is used, in turn, to poke empty cartridges out of the cylinder.  As you might imagine, loading and unloading is neither quick nor easy.  If you are carrying this pocket gun, you get only five shots before your revolver becomes a very small paperweight.

Fortunately, cautious citizens need not keep one chamber empty for safe carry.  The NAA Mini-Revolver incorporates notches between the cylinders into which the hammer can be placed.  This means there is no way dropping the gun will accidentally fire it.  You may load your NAA Mini-Revolver with five rounds, carefully set the hammer down in one of the notches, and carry it in your pocket without fear of accidental discharge.

The best way I’ve found to carry the little gun is in a pocket holster.  The holster protects the gun from lint (though it will pick up some nonetheless), keeps it oriented handle-up in the pocket, and breaks up the outline of the weapon so it won’t print as badly against the fabric of your pants.  I know of some people who carry the gun loose. It goes without saying that nothing else should be in your “gun pocket” when you do this, to prevent scratching the finish and to make sure nothing hinders your pocket draw.  That draw is not a quick-draw, of course; you won’t be beating anyone to the drop in digging for the weapon.  This is a discreetly carried and hopefully never used emergency firearm, not the latest tactical gunfight accessory.

Firing the Mini-Revolver for the first time is a surprise to most shooters.  Even in .22 LR, the gun wants to jump out of the hand when it goes off.  It literally leaps up in your grip with every shot.  The only way to compensate for this – and I’ve learned to do it without difficulty – is to clamp down on the gun’s tiny bird’s head grip as if you’re trying to choke the life out of it.  (Larger, more hand-filling grips are available as accessories from NAA, but adding these compromises the small size that makes this gun worth considering.)

Such an aggressive grip on a firearm would play hell with your marksmanship if the gun was designed to be fired at anything but extremely close distances.  Within its intended ranges, however, your white-knuckle strangulation of the revolver won’t hinder your ability to hit a human-sized target.

Foolishly Dismissing the Mini-Revolver

Surfing firearms sites on the Internet, I’ve read a lot of what I consider ignorant and misguided criticism of this gun.  It seems many shooters are too quick to dismiss the weapon, offering a variety of reasons that simply don’t hold up when one trains and practices with the Mini-Revolver.  I certainly would never begrudge anyone their preferences, but I despise the tendency among some armed citizens to dismiss as unworkable, impractical, or otherwise inferior those options that they do not themselves prefer, or in which they cannot personally see value.  Different solutions work for different people and must be tailored to individual requirements.  Most of the criticism of this little gun revolves around undervaluing the benefits of its incredibly small size, overstating its liabilities, dismissing the improvements in performance gained through proper training and practice, and projecting onto others one’s own biases and tastes.

“If it’s that hard to index and control,” one fellow told me, “that might tell you it isn’t viable for use under stress.”  This is probably the most common theme among those who at least recognize that a .22 Long Rifle bullet, while not Dirty Harry’s man-stopping .44 Magnum, is still not something with which you want to be shot in the face.

There is this myth among some shooters that anything smaller than a .45 just won’t kill you – as if you’re going to look down at the seeping wound and demand indignantly of your assailant, “What was that?  A .22?  That’s it, now I’m annoyed.”  There’s no denying that a very, very small gun is harder to manipulate than is a much larger weapon – just as most long guns are easier to handle and manipulate under stress than are most handguns.  After all, it’s very easy to shoot yourself in a limb with a handgun and much harder to do this with a rifle.  What does that tell you about how hard it must be to “index and control” a handgun under stress?

With proper practice, the shooter can learn not only to draw the NAA Mini-Revolver, but also to clamp down on it and fire it, controlling it for follow-up shots.  Those who then shout that a single-action weapon is too difficult to use under stress seem to have forgotten all that making equal of men that Sam Colt managed with more or less the same mechanism.  “My problem is not the caliber,” said one critic, “it’s the horrible ergonomics. That ridiculously tiny grip and the need to cock it before each shot makes it very hard to use under physical assault, to say the least.”  If all you’ve ever known is a single-action trigger, you’re going to learn to cock and fire your gun every time.  If you practice diligently, you will learn the same lesson.  Additionally, the NAA design fits the hand well despite its size.  My big mitt simply wants to grab it by the trigger and the hammer, in exactly the position necessary to fire and fire again.  This was not easy to do when I started – but after I tried it several times, I got better.  This is the lesson of training and the point of practice.

“Why carry this piece of crap,” demanded one irate individual, “when you can carry something else that is going to be more effective and still fit in the same size envelope?”  The problem with this thinking is that there is no revolver on the market smaller than the NAA.  Claiming that a pocket automatic that is even an inch longer and certainly thicker – not to mention heavier – is “just as good” simply isn’t so.  When you’re forced to carry the smallest gun you can, it’s because you have very little with which to work.  Either you have a problem toting the weight or, more likely, you cannot afford for anyone to even suspect that you might be carrying more than a heavy set of keys.  This is the niche into which the NAA Mini-Revolver fits:  totally discreet carry, carry that is more discreet than anything else available.  Claiming there are alternatives that are “just as good” undervalues the weapon’s size while ignoring the liabilities of its substitutes.  The next smallest firearms are significantly larger than the Mini-Revolver by comparison.

To those intent on projecting their own prejudices onto others, the Mini-Revolver “seems to fill one purpose, and one purpose only – [that of] a very small gun that can be carried absolutely anywhere for gun fetishists, those who believe that, as long as they have a gun, no matter how marginal its performance, they’ll be okay.”  One fellow called the Mini-Revolver “the perfect example of ‘gun as talisman.’”  Fortunately, for most serious shooters, guns are not magic wands and are not seen as such.  Most of us know the limitations of our weapons – and we know that the gun we’d prefer to have isn’t always the one we can choose.  (To recognize this means acknowledging that everyone’s situation is different, too, which is difficult for some biased shooters to do.)

“Who cares if it’s the smallest gun you can carry?” one man asked me.  “It’s not a very effective weapon.  There are plenty of more effective weapons you can carry just as discreetly. ...By saying that is the niche that this gun fits into, you’re saying that it’s a better idea to carry this gun than it is to carry any of these other weapons, and that is simply flat wrong.”  Well, no, I’m not saying that and, no, I’m not wrong.  When I say the NAA Mini-Revolver is a niche gun, which it is, I’m saying it’s designed to fit a very specific set of extremely discreet carry requirements.  There isn’t another .22 caliber revolver of which I’m aware that is as small and thus there is no other revolver about which I know that you can carry with the same degree of discretion. 

If you know you’ll lose your job if a coworker spots your gun, what would you choose?  I don’t advocate carrying in violation of workplace rules, of course, and certainly never illegally – but some of us must make hard choices when faced with very real threats.  What if you’re a woman who works in an office where carry is not allowed, but you’re also being stalked by a violent ex-boyfriend?  That’s just one of several possible scenarios in which you would want to carry a gun – and you would want to carry a gun that is the smallest you can get.

There is an entire class of automatic pocket pistols that are small but, compared to the NAA Mini-Revolver, they are larger and significantly heavier.  They also depend on magazines, springs, moving slides – all things that I can’t stand in a pocket pistol.  I worry about the magazine springs.  I worry about lint interfering with the pistol’s operation.  I worry about what will happen if I get a misfeed or a stovepipe in my little pocket auto.  I worry – and a single-action revolver eliminates many of those worries while still being the smallest possible option to boot.  The gun is so small, in fact, that – enclosed in its leather pocket sheath – it has been mistaken for a knife by some of my fellow shooters.

That brings us to those people who seem to think that a small knife is as effective as, if not more so than, the Mini-Revolver.  While at contact distances a knife certainly is a very effective weapon, it’s still not a projectile weapon.  The NAA Mini-Revolver, despite its small caliber and despite the short range at which you can expect to hit something with it, is still a gun.  It will still kill you and do so from a distance greater than that at which you can stab someone.  Unless you are a professional circus knife thrower, you’re out of luck when you snap open your Cold Steel Gunsite II only to be shot in the face by a man standing just outside the range of your lunge.

From the Owner’s Perspective

The Mini-Revolver has been around for thirty years and was originally designed by Dick Casull, according to company owner Sandy Chisholm.  (You can find out more information on NAA’s products by visiting their website, naaminis.com.)  Chisholm keeps an NAA Mini-Revolver in his car but downplays the dangers he might face personally.  “My self-defense strategy is largely, if there’s somewhere that would be dangerous to me, I don’t go there,” he told me.  Of the little gun itself, he is more forthcoming.  “We design it for those circumstances when it’s better than no weapon at all,” he explained.  “This is a product that’s meant to be carried when a person wouldn’t otherwise carry a gun.”

I discussed with Sandy some of the self-defense criticisms of the Mini-Revolver.  “If someone points a gun at me,” he said bluntly, “regardless of caliber or size, that’s going to change my behavior.”

“What would you say to those who claim there are other small guns, larger than the Mini-Revolver, that can do the same job and do it better?” I asked him.

“We manufacture those,” he said without hesitation.

The Mini-Revolver for Self-Defense

Whether your choice is a semi-automatic NAA Guardian in, say, .32 or .380, or you must opt for the more discrete NAA min-revolver, any small-caliber defensive weapon is best used as a “face gun” – fired at close range into the face or neck.  By close range I mean as close at is it possible to get without being in range of a lunge from the assailant, for if he can get close enough to touch you he can get close enough to stab, punch, or grapple with you.  Your strategy, generally, will be to use your pocket weapon to gain the advantage, disabling or distracting the aggressor (who has, if you have drawn a firearm, presented you with the credible threat of imminent and grave injury or death) in order to escape.

This is a modification of the old “stun and run” principle – in that you’re not stunning, but inflicting potentially lethal harm.  There will be those reading this thinking, “Getting shot with that tiny gun isn’t what I’d call ‘lethal harm.’”  I don’t know any of them who would volunteer to be shot in the face or even a limb with a .22 of any power, however.

No weapon is a guarantee and no gun is effective for everyone in all situations.  Options – solutions to the problems of self-defense – must be tested by the individual.  You must train, you must practice, and you must prepare.  Without this, no amount of theory and no vault full of hardware will help you.  For some of us, the discretion and the firepower offered by the NAA Mini-Revolver is the solution to a very specific problem.  Be mindful of this as you contemplate your own solutions.

Resist the urge to malign a gun, no matter how small, that is keeping a lot of people more safe than they otherwise would be..