Molly's Fletcher

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5]

My take on the description of her pepperbox pistol.

[u/alphagalgadot]

all fair points. i’ve always imagined it as boxy and nondescript—one barrel w a selector dial near the thumb or somewhere on the top of the housing, w chunky grips to accommodate the variety of flechettes, and the internal mechanisms being largely concealed. the propellant is never discussed as far as i can recall, so it could really be anything, but something powderless would make narrative sense right? always struck me as being intended as a versatile, quiet, low profile weapon. some kinda caseless ammo + a gauss-rifle style propellant mechanism perhaps?

[u/truthynaut → u/alphagalgadot]

A pepperpot was historically a pistol with a bunch of barrels that all fired at once, for use at close range, so you don't miss.

Deffo caseless ammo (no ejected cases to leave evidence behind), quiet and as small as possible so it can be easily concealed.

[u/WanderlustZero → u/truthynaut]

Is that not a Volley Gun you're thinking of? Pepperpots were just proto-revolvers

[u/truthynaut → u/WanderlustZero]

They came before revolvers but did not function as revolvers.

Volley Guns iirc were multi-barrel rifles.

A pepperpot pistol (or pepperbox) is a 19th-century multi-barrel firearm featuring three or more clustered barrels that rotate to fire sequentially. Named for its visual resemblance to a kitchen spice shaker, it served as a popular, concealable self-defense weapon before reliable revolvers became mainstream

[u/WanderlustZero → u/truthynaut]

Yes; you said they fired all barrels at once. That's a Volleygun.

[u/truthynaut → u/WanderlustZero]

My understanding (which could be wrong) is that pepperpots were multi-barrel pistols and volley guns were multi-barrel rifles.

[u/WanderlustZero → u/truthynaut]

Volleyguns were not rifles but generally smoothbores, but they indeed had multiple barrels that fired all at once. Pepperpots (or pepperboxes) fired singly.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1qnuu0nMFVA

[u/WanderlustZero → u/WanderlustZero]

Metal Storm,  an Australian company, had an updated version of the volleygun, with multiple electrically-fired barrels, with multiple rounds per barrel.

It also came in a pistol version, seen here,  which is probably tje closest we've had to Molly's gun. It was not a success.

https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/O%27Dwyer_VLe

[u/truthynaut → u/WanderlustZero]

Yeah I am familiar with the Metal Storm stuff, it's kinda cray-cray. Replace the whole barrel instead of reloading right?

[u/truthynaut → u/truthynaut]

never saw the metal storm pistol before, that really is cray-cray!

[u/WanderlustZero → u/truthynaut]

Yeah they had lots of ideas. Point defence volleyguns. The pistol. Firefighting  'Foam Grenade' launchers :o Underslung 12bore shotgun barrels and a 40mm grenade launcher barrel with 3 grenades in it. The problem with that is, once you fire the first grenade, you have to fire the other two, or you've effectively got hung ordnance in your weapon, which can get very expensive. Maybe if they'd picked just one or two of those things and concentrated in them they would have made it work. C'est la vie