Selected Handgun Detail

Manufacturer
	American Derringer Corporation More Info

About the Gun

Compact magazine-fed pistol that looks like a pocket automatic but is a locked-breech manual repeater. After each double-action trigger pull the shooter racks the slide forward to extract and back to chamber the next cartridge. American Derringer built it in blued steel with plastic grips and in chrome-finished steel with wood grips. It is a deep-concealment backup gun, not a two-barrel derringer.

Production

Production ran from about 1995 through 2003.

Market value

MSRP at production was around $4,250. Current used market value for examples in good to very good condition ranges $2,000–$3,500.

Cartridge Specifications
Cartridge:	.45 Automatic
Alias:	.45 Automatic Colt Pistol (ACP)
More Info

Analysis

Philip R. Lichtman designed the LM-4 in the late 1970s as a vest-pocket .45 Auto backup pistol. Semmerling Corporation of Boston hand-built the original run in S7 tool steel through the early 1980s, about 600 pistols in all, then the design and tooling passed to American Derringer. Waco resumed the model in the mid-1990s, chiefly in stainless or chrome on special order, and kept it in the catalog as a price-on-request piece while the rest of the line was still active. The action stayed the same: a four-round magazine plus a chambered cartridge, no slide recoil cycle, and no manual safety. It is not the later LM5 pocket automatic. Original Boston guns now sell as high-end collector pieces; American Derringer examples appear less often and trade below that original-run market. Regular manufacture ended with the firm’s contraction, though a few later order guns exist.