ALTOR Corporation of Cave Creek, Arizona, has designed a rather unusual single shot pistol that almost looks like the descendant of the CIA’s Deer Gun. The pistol will be available in .380 Auto and 9x19mm caliber options. Why do you need a single shot pistol in the age of cheap subcompact semi-autos, snubby wheelguns and derringers? Well, let’s take a closer look at this pistol and see if we can find the answer.

The ALTOR Corp. Single Shot Pistol has an extremely simple design. It consists of six parts/assemblies: polymer grip with the cross-bolt safety, receiver which looks more like a bolt, a pin that fixes the receiver in place inside the grip, barrel, striker assembly and striker spring. The grip is made of reinforced Nylon 6 polymer and metal components are made of stainless steel. The gun weighs 10.5 oz and has the following dimensions: Length – 6.5″, Height – 3.5″, Thickness – 1.0″.

The reloading of this pistol is accomplished by rotating the barrel, pulling it out, manually ejecting the spent case which is held in the bolt face, inserting a new cartridge into the bolt face, putting the barrel back and rotating it to lock over the bolt/receiver lugs. Here is a screenshot from the user manual of ALTOR Corp Single Shot Pistol followed by a video from the company’s YouTube channel showing the loading procedure.

The firing of this gun is a bit unusual process – you start pulling the trigger back and at some point, it slips from underneath your finger, jumps forward and fires the gun. The reason it works like that is that the trigger is apparently the extension of the striker and there is no sear and separate trigger per se. So when you pull the trigger, you are pulling the striker back and then it escapes and fires the gun. Here are a couple of videos showing how the trigger works and how to fire the gun.

According to GunsAmerica, the MSRP of this pistol is $119 and $129 for .380 and 9mm versions respectively.

If you want to learn more about the mechanism of this gun, you can read the US patent 9328985B2 which is presumably issued to protect the design of this firearm.

Have you found the answer to the question raised in the first paragraph? Honestly, I haven’t. It may be fun for plinking but using it as a self-defense firearm (which it is marketed as one), even as a backup one, is something I would definitely not consider, because one round is the lowest possible capacity and having a defensive handgun that takes forever to reload is probably not the best idea. Now, if you don’t have other choices then yes, any gun is better than no gun, however, as I mentioned earlier, the market is full of reasonably priced subcompact firearms that hold more than one round. Maybe I am missing something and there is a situation or application where this firearm will shine in. If so, please tell me in the comments section.

Images from www.altorcorp.com