The halved trigger guard facilitates quick trigger acquisition, even for shooters with large fingers or gloves.Īlthough historians disagree, it's believed that somewhere between 40 and 200 Fitz Specials left the Colt factory, made from various Colt revolvers, by Fitzgerald himself. Reshaping the hammer and the butt allows the gun to be drawn quickly with little risk of the weapon snagging on clothing. 38 Special Colt Police Positive Special revolver, by shortening the barrel to two inches (5.1 cm), shortening the ejector rod, bobbing the hammer spur, rounding the butt, and removing the front half of the trigger guard. John Henry Fitzgerald, an employee of Colt Firearms from 1918 to 1944, first came up with the Fitz Special snubnosed revolver concept around the mid 1920s, when he modified a. Īlthough the Detective Special proved to be an instant success when first introduced, lackluster sales saw the elimination of the Detective Special from the product line in 1996. The Detective Special uses a slightly smaller frame than the Colt Official Police or Smith & Wesson Model 10 (K-Frame) revolvers, but is larger than the five-shot Smith & Wesson Model 36/ Model 38/ Model 42 (J-frame) revolvers. 38 Special, considered to be a powerful caliber for a concealable pocket revolver of the day.

It was designed from the outset to be chambered for higher-powered cartridges such as the. Introduced in 1927, the Detective Special was the first short-barreled revolver produced with a modern swing-out frame. Made by Colt's Manufacturing Company, this model revolver, as the name 'Detective Special' suggests, was intended to be a concealed weapon used by plainclothes police detectives. The Colt Detective Special is a six-shot, carbon steel framed, 2-inch (5.1 cm) or 3-inch (7.6 cm) barreled, double-action revolver, and the first example of a class of firearms known as 'snubnose revolvers'.

A Colt Detective Special, Fourth Series (1992–1996), with rubber grips and a shrouded ejector rodĦ + 3⁄ 4 in (17 cm) (2-inch barrel), 7 + 3⁄ 4 in (20 cm) (3-inch barrel)

Colt revolver frame sizes