1) For a machine shop owner, you can already build such a "multi-shot gun" yourself quite trivially. I have a setup in my barn where I can spot-weld seven rifles together along the length of the barrel. I then use a bunch of loops of baling wire that run from the triggers to the end of the stock so that I can fire the correct rifle without any awkwardness.
I haven't tried this with pistols but the general approach should be the same.
2) My system also has the benefit of me not being tied to one company's proprietary standard of "interchangeable" parts. If you buy a Colt, you're stuck buying Colt parts forever. With my system, I can weld together any guns I want.
- How are you going to scale production to meet demands? Does not look like you could reach the kind of growth YC wants.
- Who is this guy and why should I trust his guns? How do I tell how many bullets I have left?
- Seems like rearming would be a pain! Reloading just one chamber is already difficult.
Seems like the barrel is a single point of failure. How is this better than simply carrying more than one pistol? Allowing complete fail-over in case of a malfunction.
Pretty design, but the proprietary projectiles breaks compatibility with existing arms.
Pretty funny, but I've been working on this post about the same thing for the Wright Brothers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9291316. Great minds think alike. Maybe if we could put some guns on a plane...
Percussion caps were only invented in the early 1800s and weren't widespread until the 1830's, so this is not as wrong as it sounds. Flintlocks were still widespread when the Colt revolver was invented.
Fair enough, but the military (an similar orgs, e.g. texas rangers) were using percussion mostly by then right? The big customers they list are the military.
Colt (and Remington, and other early revolvers) had a muzzle-loaded, cap-lock design for guns up until after the US Civil War, IIRC. (Also, IIRC, I don't think paper cartridges were ever a big thing for revolvers. Colt's early guns removed the cylinder to reload, which meant you could theoretically carry spare loaded cylinders; Remington guns had a built-in loading lever.) In fact,
"In 1852 an employee of Colt's, Rollin White, came up with the idea of having the revolver cylinder bored through to accept metallic cartridges. He took this idea to Colt who flatly rejected it and ended up firing White within a few years.[18] Colt historian RL Wilson has described this as the major blunder of Sam Colt's professional life.[19] Rollin White left Colt's in December 1854 and registered a patent on April 3, 1855 in Hartford, Connecticut, as patent number 12,648: Improvement in Repeating Fire-arms.[20] On November 17, 1856 White signed an agreement with Smith & Wesson for the exclusive use of his patent. The contract stipulated that White would be paid 25 cents for every revolver, but that it was up to him to defend his patent against infringement as opposed to Smith & Wesson.[21]"
...(from Wikipedia) with the result that patent licensing meant that Colt couldn't make or convert metallic cartridge guns until well after the Civil War (IIRC).
I'm thinking that this is an "application" from prior to that contract, hence discussing the endorsement of the Texas Rangers. So a product that is pretty much done that could use a bit of help with marketing and polish, such as moving away from the squareback trigger guard the early models had.
I think they have done a great job doing things that don'f scale. Also they have a lot of paying customers and traction.
But I am worried that this might be a solo founder type team. We invest in teams, not just products. You'd be surprised how many times an idea changes midway through the project, and you will need each other to keep going.
If I were to guess, I'd say no based on one of YC's cofounders, Trevor. To my knowledge, his company Anybots has resisted that easier to get DOD money.
1) For a machine shop owner, you can already build such a "multi-shot gun" yourself quite trivially. I have a setup in my barn where I can spot-weld seven rifles together along the length of the barrel. I then use a bunch of loops of baling wire that run from the triggers to the end of the stock so that I can fire the correct rifle without any awkwardness.
I haven't tried this with pistols but the general approach should be the same.
2) My system also has the benefit of me not being tied to one company's proprietary standard of "interchangeable" parts. If you buy a Colt, you're stuck buying Colt parts forever. With my system, I can weld together any guns I want.
3) It does not seem very "viral".