It’s tough to appreciate how much the world has changed in my lifetime. Nowadays, twenty-nine of our fifty states allow some sort of permitless Constitutional Carry. That would have been literally unimaginable when I was a kid. However, tear gas pen guns were readily available over the counter and offered a viable self-defense option.

Why the Tear Gas Pen Gun?

Permitless carry is as it should be. The founders did not intend to limit a law-abiding American’s ability to defend himself. The reams of gun laws that have arisen since 1934 have simply been pushing back against that reality.

Back in the 1970s, nobody I knew carried a gun. Nowadays, every crowd, at least down here in the Deep South where I live, includes at least a smattering of armed civilians.

That doesn’t mean the world was any safer back then. In fact, murder rates were roughly twice as high, per capita, in the 1970s and 80s than they are today. However, back then, folks usually looked to other tools to secure themselves when out where the Wild Things roamed.

One of the stranger options was the tear gas pen gun.

Morphology

It takes literally no mechanical talent to make an actual pen gun. In its most basic form, the pen gun is little more than a metal tube with a slug of steel acting as a firing mechanism sliding atop a spring.

Most feature a knob of some sort that rides in a slot cut in the body and activates the bolt. Much like a Sten submachine gun, most pen guns include a safety notch that will hold the bolt to the rear. Loading is facilitated via a removable threaded barrel on the end.

To operate the weapon, remove the barrel, drop in a round, and thread it back in place. Cock the bolt, point it at something you dislike, and thumb the bolt knob loose. Recoil in any serious caliber was ferocious, and accuracy was a bad joke.

The pen gun’s tactical utility was limited to intimate combat undertaken within a phone booth. The real strength of a pen gun was its concealability. Uncle Sam really hates stuff like that.

Legal Stuff

The National Firearms Act of 1934 addressed pen guns alongside firearms that looked like umbrellas, canes, or similar innocuous household items. Congress created a sparkly new category of firearms called an AOW or Any Other Weapon to accommodate. AOWs weren’t illegal per se. They were just heavily regulated.

You have to go through the same nut roll to own an AOW as you do to purchase a sound suppressor, machinegun, or artillery piece. However, where the transfer tax for those other things is $200 (back in 1934, that was the equivalent of $4,679 today). The transfer tax for an AOW is only $5. The requirements for fingerprints and such are otherwise the same.

Pen guns that shoot bullets are honestly pretty stupid. As a result, that bit of legislative subterfuge essentially extinguished commerce in them. There is literally no practical reason why any normal person would ever want one. I naturally own two myself.

It Gets Way Weirder

While pen guns that fired fixed conventional ammunition fell underneath the restrictive purview of the NFA, enterprising American entrepreneurs proposed a similar contrivance engineered to fire not a bullet but a suffocating cloud of tear gas.

The good folks at BATF looked these things over and agreed that they were essentially harmless so long as they wouldn’t readily accommodate conventional ammunition. And so the world rocked along for decades.

Starting as far back as the 1930’s, tear gas pen guns were unregulated and readily available over the counter. I bought my first for a quarter at a yard sale back in the early 1970’s with money I made cutting grass. While you could find them in stores, most were sold via advertisements in the male-centric magazines of the day.

These tear gas-specific pen guns looked and acted just like the AOW sort. However, the barrels were typically necked down to exclude live ammo. They were also usually made from aluminum rather than steel.

One could theoretically bore the barrel out with a drill press. However, the aluminum would likely fail with catastrophic results. Not to mention, if you’re going to ignore the law anyway, why not just build yourself an illicit submachine gun and be done with it? Laws only affect those who choose to obey them.

Technical Details of the Tear Gas Pen Gun

I did a little homework to ascertain exactly what these things fired. One example produced by Penguin Associates of Parkersburg, Pennsylvania, advertised its active ingredients as 50% Alpha-chloroacetophenone and 50% Silicic anhydride. Each consumable cartridge weighs 6.5 grams and projects 3 grams’ worth of payload.

Silicic anhydride is simply silica gel. This is the same active ingredient that comes in those annoying little moisture-control packets you find in vitamin bottles. That’s obviously just to keep everything else fresh, particularly while your tear gas pen gun rides around in your dank, sweaty pocket. The packaging says the cartridges should be rotated every two years.

Alpha-chloroacetophenone is the chemical description for CN riot control agent. It is also the active ingredient in Mace, an irritant/tear agent used by the military and Law Enforcement to manage hostile crowds.

I can tell you from personal experience that this stuff sucks something fierce in large quantities. However, I’m not so sure 1.5 grams of it fired out of a pen gun in an open space is going to be terribly intimidating.

Apparently, They Had Lawyers Back Then, Too

The back of the package of the Penguin gun says this under Important Notes:

“When using your Pen for defense, aim at center of mass of a human attacker and fire. Cloud of gas will engulf head. Effective range of your Tear Gas Pen is 6 to 12 feet, depending upon wind velocity and direction. The cartridge fires with a LOUD report equal to that of a pistol, and projects the gas instantly away from the user. There is no recoil.”

It goes on to say, somewhat paraphrased, that if you fire it in an enclosed space, you are just screwed.

In researching this article, I came across the results of a lawsuit filed in 1937 by some dude who apparently nearly blew himself up with a tear gas pen made by Lake Erie Chemical Corporation. The case went to trial, and the jury found for the Defendant. The Plaintiff (the blown-up guy) even had to pay court costs.

There were several references to folks being burned or blinded by these little devices. In one case, a gentleman was firing a .45-caliber version when the gun purportedly jumped out of his hand, punched through his eye, and killed him. Though the report was slim on details, I can only assume he had somehow wedged a live round into it.

Many of these weapons were offered with either tear gas or blank cartridges. Most of the blank cartridges included a wadding that was dangerous out to a fairly significant range.

Where to Get a Tear Gas Pen Gun

As previously mentioned, tear gas pen guns were exempted from the dicta of the 1934 NFA. Then, in 1975, the BATF changed its mind. All tear gas pen guns made after June 1 of that year were considered AOW’s. Those already in circulation were grandfathered. As a result, there are no tear gas pen guns in circulation that were made after June 1, 1970.

In addition to the one I bought when I was a kid, I found another example at a local antique store still sealed in its original container. Curiously, the container‘s bottom is foam, like the stuff from which your ground beef arrives at the grocery store.

Then I found three more at a small regional gun auction. None of them were expensive. No sensible person would ever want one. That’s why I currently own five.

One is marked “Lake Erie Chemical Company,” while another just says “Made in the USA.” The example produced by Penguin has the word “PENGUN” inscribed on the pocket clip alongside an engraving of a bird. The gun from the yard sale reads simply, “EIG—Japan.” The Lake Erie gun is chambered for .410 and includes a nifty rotating safety. The rest are in .38.

Live Fire Report

Just kidding. I wouldn’t touch one of these things off in my hand for love or money. You can find examples of crazy people doing just that on YouTube, however. The results all seem pretty underwhelming.

One example had this cautionary instruction printed in the packaging:

“When entering a dangerous area, keep Protector readily available and retract trigger screw to FIRING position. After leaving danger area (without firing) lower trigger screw to SAFETY position. Do not grip so hand is over open end of cartridge.”

Much has changed in America in the past half-century. Not the least of which is the art of personal protection. Nowadays, were I “Entering a dangerous area,” I’d just as soon be packing a decent 9mm handgun.