Pistola PRESSIN: Llama's Sneaky Self-Defense Weapon

All right, so which one were we doing next Get my glasses. Oh! Right, these aren't glasses at all. It's a gun Thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com I'm Ian McCollum and today we're taking a look at the Llama PRESSIN. This is a really interesting little covert firearm. That is just this perfect blend of Subtle and covert and yet sort of public So these originated in nineteen seventy eight and they were designed by a spanish military officer by the name of Juan Bautista del Rio and It was in response to an ongoing problem in spain of terrorist groups like the ETA kidnapping military and political officials and maybe industrial people who could, uh, be ransomed for large amounts of money and there was this desire in these social circles to have some sort of weapon. uhm They wanted something that they could defend themselves with in case of an attempted kidnapping and the idea was it had to be something Hidden and covert because if he just walked around carrying a pistol Well, first of all, I think a lot of these people weren't really comfortable with that public image And of course if they were doing that anyone attempting to kidnap them would simply notice the pistol and plan accordingly. So Bautista came up with this idea for a little two shot .32 caliber pistol, that would be disguised in what is basically what looks like a sunglasses case. So that's a PRESSIN That's a pressin case that sunglasses, pistol sunglasses Pistol, they made them in all sorts of fancy designer colors so you could take your pick as to which one you wanted. And then this gave you two shots of a .32 caliber Cartridge to deter or end a kidnapping. Now I'm not sure exactly how effective this would have been but they're really interesting little guns. So let's take a closer look at this So mechanically what we have here are two shots two barrels. There is a breech block back here with this locking block so in order to load it you pull this down and then it's a little tricky to do you've got See, those are your two firing pins and springs So I pull this block down and then I pull that backwards and now I can put two cartridges in it And then press this breech-block forward and push that locking block up that has Compressed both of the recoil springs or both of the firing pin spring so it's now cocked This lever is your trigger. We have a safety button right there. So when I push the safety and it simply hits on the edge of the frame there and prevents you from squeezing the trigger now the way this was intended to be used was in this little faux Sunglasses case there are two little holes at the front and you put the pistol Facing that direction so you put it in there like that The safety lines up right under this snap stud so we can go ahead and close that and now it just looks like a pair of sunglasses and If you need to use it you can push the safety and then squeeze it one shot, two shots. When we pull it back out you can see the lever is now all the way depressed and in order to bring it back we have to recock So the lever has popped out it is now ready when you pull this out it will extract, I'm sorry It will not extract the two cartridges. You have to punch them out This isn't made to be fired more than once in an incident. Now So there are some markings on this It the name is marked on the side, Pistola Pressin. Caliber there on the side is 7.65 E, we'll touch on that in a moment. And then it is serialized on the bottom., this is number 600 768 and it has actual Spanish official proof marks. So this is a professionally manufactured firearm. These were in fact made by the llama company However, they were never actually listed in llamas catalogue and The reason for that is while this was a publicly available gun, this was sold on the commercial market. It wasn't intended to be for just anybody This was originally approved by the government for manufacture Specifically because they wanted, they, they agreed that Llama could make a gun specifically for VIPs for executive protection basically. In fact, you'll notice here inside the case They kind of had this, this is here so that like if you are You know if you're searched by the police while carrying this they don't want you to freak out They don't want the police to freak out and think you're a terrorist so it says it's a pistol with the patent number and then this says "CAUTION Pocket firearm authorized by the co- the Permanent Commission of arms and Explosives by the president of the government." so this thing Lama did get explicit permission from the government to manufacture these and Then down here. It's basically says keep your hands off it if you don't know what you're doing. Don't manipulate it Unless you know how to so If you're a police officer and you find this on someone hopefully you'll read this when you open it up and and that'll prevent you from just like immediately shooting the guy carrying it Anyway Lama made these from 1978 until 1995 they made a total of about nine hundred of them But they were never listed in any print Lama catalog and they're not actually marked Lama anywhere on the gun So the while these were approved for manufacturer, they really kind of did give the heebie-jeebies to the Spanish state security service Who was really quite concerned about... unauthorized Sorts of people getting them They certainly didn't want ETA terrorists running around with a bunch of these and that actually went into part of the design decision So that caliber 765 E, these use a special cartridge it is 32 acp but cut down from a 7.65 by seventeen millimeter case down to a 15 millimeter case so you have to have a short cartridge that means you can't take regular 32 acp and chamber it in the gun and it means that should you Kidnap someone who's carrying one of these and acquire the gun that way you can't really use it You'll have the two cartridges that are in it, but you won't be able to get any addition ammunition So that was that was their attempt to prevent these things from from getting out into the wild, I guess It's a really interesting little gun and of course because these were going to be carried by You know fancy sort of businessman, politician, sort of people They made these cases in a whole variety of different colors so you can get one that would match your wardrobe you They didn't make one in tactical black Because the people that this was intended for we're not going to be carrying one in you know, tactical black Nylon No, just really cool to see this array of fake glasses cases So the idea of course was to provide this sort of covert emergency weapon and as part of the Llama wanted to keep this quiet, the government wanted to keep it quiet for a number of reasons But among them they didn't want these terrorist groups Recognizing that their potential victims might be running around with little Derringer concealed in a glasses case. So So there were always kept very very quiet sold by suspect word-of-mouth and you know You know a guy who knows a guy and you can get a Pressin and if you might think you need one That said they ultimately did shut down manufacture of these for a couple reasons for one thing the guys who are buying them Didn't generally actually carry them because these things are a little bit heavy this weighs 280 grams That's about 10 ounces And if you drop this into you know, the the pocket of your sport coat It does kind of weigh more than you'd normally put in that pocket and kind of makes the coat sag and well that doesn't look good and it's uncomfortable and unpleasant and then The people who are carrying these we're people who let's be honest didn't really have a clue what they were doing with guns You know Which end the bullets come out of is probably about the extent of their firearms training and there was at least one incident of a negligent discharge of one of these things in public and that the combination of they're not actually really being used to do any good and maybe they weren't a great idea in the first place and now it looks Like some idiot is going to accidentally shoot a constituent in you know on the street Well, let's let's just make these go away. And so Llama ended up deactivating a large number of them when the company went under in the 90s Now the way the trigger works is you just press this lever in and it does have two discrete sears in it So there are two barrels and if you press just a little ways You get one click that's the first round firing and then a little farther and you get a second one So if you have some trigger discipline there you get two discrete shots. You'll notice if you have it outside of the case there is this little thumb rest here so you can kind of Meet you know rudimentarily point the thing If you don't have any good trigger discipline and you just grab the thing out of a panic click click and you fire two shots simultaneously Now the problem that comes to my mind is if you're being kidnapped by Literally a team a group of ETA terrorists and you only have two shots of underpowered 32 ACP I wonder how useful this would really be because it seems to me like What you're doing is guaranteeing that unless you miss if you manage to hit a guy You're gonna wound him and it's gonna be painful and you're gonna make the rest of his buddies Really quite angry when they're already planning to kidnap you and this might not actually help the situation. Now, certainly, there may be some Conceivable circumstances where something like this could actually get you out of trouble But I don't know that they were ever very effectively used a lot of them did end up on the Spanish market deactivated and There was some trouble at one point of these being reactivated this sort of thing always gave the security services nightmares Because of its concealable sort of design despite the fact that it had been government authorized in the first place And perhaps the most interesting thing to me the the Llama company gave a very fancy Damascene PRESSIN to King Juan Carlos the first and apparently after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, Juan Carlos gave Reagan one of these as well, which I'm sure the Secret Service immediately did not let him carry but Anyway, really interesting little piece of modern. You know that Normally when you have the really covert sort of guns, they're they're not being done by officialdom This is a really interesting case where it really was Oh anyway, hopefully you enjoyed the video Thank you very much for watching and tune back in to Forgotten Weapons for another cool firearm

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 2,517,326

Rating: 4.8891058 out of 5

Keywords: Pressin, pistola, llama's sneaky self-defense weapon, two-shot derringer, Spanish civilian market, military officers, kidnapping, ETA, deringer, derringer, 32acp, 7.65mm, pistola pressin, llama, star, astra, spain, spanish, terrorism, terrorist, kidnap, ccw, conceal, concealed, hidden pistol, ccp, Forgotten Weapons, disguised gun, glasses, history, development, inrange, inrangetv, mccollum, kasarda, pistol, hideout gun, 32 short, gun

Id: FHmFUT9tEdg

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 13 2018

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