Vietnam has a hidden history of weapon development not known to many. Throughout the conflict, the United States military invested heavily in a wide variety of projects that aimed to better equip conventional forces for an unconventional war. This effort led to a great many projects being developed, but few that proved effective enough to move forward. One of the few is the subject of today’s article: the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver, aka the Tunnel Weapon.

The war in Vietnam was a brutal example of asymmetric warfare. One of the biggest challenges for American troops was the broad and effective use of tunnels by Vietnamese communist forces. These holes allowed enemy forces to hide themselves, their weapons, and more from American forces on the ground and in the air, creating a strategic advantage for the North Vietnamese. From a tactical perspective, the use of tunnels was genius. American forces weren’t ready for it, and it was a simple, inexpensive solution to a massive problem that was America’s superior military might.

American forces didn’t have any other option but to take to the tunnels, where the defenders had the advantage and the fighting became ultra-close and generally quite brutal. To become more efficient at storming these tunnels, American troops lneeded specialized weapons, and one such weapon was the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver.

Related: S&W Model 15: America’s last revolver is finally leaving service

The terrifying challenges facing Tunnel Rats

The sidearm of choice for American troops at the time was the M1911A1, and by all accounts, the general issue 1911 served well but wasn’t great for the tunnels. Tunnels did require a handgun, there was no doubt about that. Most of the time, the soldier storming the tunnel crawled on their hands and knees, which made the use of a long gun impossible. Accuracy was also an issue. Get on your hands and knees in a dark, tight tunnel and see how accurate you can be with a handgun in a firefight… it was probably even harder for the incredible men who climbed into these tunnels than we can even really appreciate now.

To make matters worse, handguns are tough to shoot well in general, and in a tunnel, any gunfire is extremely loud. In a dark tunnel, the flash is also quite bright. In these types of situations, a shotgun might be best… but good luck handling a shotgun in such tight quarters. So the Pentagon set about built a handgun-sized weapon that fired multiple projectiles at a time, with additional requirements to reduce both its sound and muzzle flash.

These special requests led to the development of the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver.

Related: The men with the green faces: The birth of the Navy SEALs in Vietnam

The basis for the Tunnel Weapon

AAI, or Advanced Armament Industries, worked with the Army to develop the QSPR in 1969. The requirements were simple. The weapon would fire multiple projectiles at a reduced sound level and be effective out to 50 feet. The weapon needed to be a repeater, be reloadable, and weigh less than 40 ounces.

When we say repeater, we don’t necessarily mean semi-automatic. We mean a weapon capable of firing more than a round before it needs to be reloaded. A revolver qualifies as a repeater, so it seems logical that a very big and (later on) very famous revolver became the basis for the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver.

With these requirements in mind, the engineers took an S&W Model 29 revolver and went to work. If you’re familiar with Dirty Harry, the movie detective with a bad attitude who famously wielded the big 44 Magnum pistol, then you’re already familiar with what would become the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver. The S&W Model 29 was a modern design for the time and featured a swing-out cylinder for quick reloading and a double-action design for easy follow-up shots. The S&W 29 held six rounds, and so would the QSPR.

Related: The 5 worst service weapons the US ever issued its troops

Building the QSPR

First, they cut the barrel down to nearly nothing and eliminated its unnecessary rifling entirely. In fact, the pistol was purposefully turned into a smoothbore weapon.

The nature of the ammunition ensured that a standard automatic cartridge could not be used. But no one could get away with calling the 44 Magnum round small. You can actually credit the case length of a 44 Magnum for ensuring the length of the cylinder was enough to handle a multi-projectile round.

The new round, called 10mm QSRP, dramatically reduced both flash and noise. Each shell contained ten pellets contained within a sabot. AAI hermetically sealed each round, and each case acted as its own disposable suppressor. A primer ignited gun powder which pushed a piston which then propelled the sabot full of shot through the outer seal.

The piston then resealed the cartridge, which contained most of the noise and reduced sound and almost entirely eliminated flash. The Quiet Special Purpose Revolver ended up weighing 38 ounces while being fairly short in overall length.

Related: The strangest Spec-Ops firearms in SOCOM’s armory

In-Service

According to numerous Army reports, a few weapons were built and sent to Vietnam for testing. Apparently, one ended up with MACVSOG, according to heavily redacted documents. It’s tough to find much in the way of field reports, but the Army Progress reported that it worked seemingly more or less just the way it was designed—good up close, but not great from a distance.

Digging through archives, I found a report from when Ranger team Oregon engaged seven to ten Vietnamese fighters. A Ranger armed with the QSRP engaged one enemy at 15 feet and immediately dropped him to the ground. That same Ranger fired twice at another enemy at 40 feet, but the enemy escaped.

The report called the weapon the .44 Mag tunnel weapon, and outlined a number of pressing issues that still needed to be worked out, including malfunctions and misfires caused by the new ammunition.

Another July 1972 report suggests that these issues were resolved by adding a “helper spring” and making changes to the ammunition’s design.

“A secondary or helper spring was added to the weapons mainspring that provided a 50 increase in firing pin energy and eliminated mainspring degradation. The ammunition was redesigned with fewer parts and the primer was repositioned and exposed at the base of the round for direct contact by the firing pin as in conventional ammunition. These design improvements resulted in not a single misfire throughout the development, assurance, and acceptance tests associated with this program.”

The result was so successful that this report seemingly granted the new gun its Quiet, Special-Purpose Revolver (QSPR) title along the way:

“The results of this evaluation indicated that the weapon system was well received primarily because the low firing noise permitted use of the weapon without giving away the users position,” the report reads.

“In addition to its tunnel exploration role, the weapon was used in ambush situations and in search and destroy operations. Because of this, the weapon is now designated the Quiet, Special-Purpose Revolver QSPR. “

Around this time, the war was ending, and as such, the QSPR project got sent to the back burner. When the war finally ended, so did any interest in a special-purpose revolver designed for the sort of fighting no one ever hoped to have to do again. Three samples exist to this day, two in Army Museums and one in the ATF reference collection. Despite how valuable such a weapon could be to the few who would need to wield it, the Tunnel WEapons was one of the many projects that started and stopped within the confines of the Vietnam war.

While the Tunnel Weapons might not have been successful, several more of those Vietnam efforts ultimately were. The list includes the beginnings of the M203, the Mk 19, and suppressors for special operations use. The QSPR revolver and its what-if history fascinates me.

DETROIT – About 2 in 10 U.S. adults say they or someone close to them has had a personal experience with gun violence, according to a recent poll that shows Black and Hispanic adults are especially likely to have had their lives touched by it.

The poll by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 54% of Black Americans and 27% of Hispanic Americans reported that they or a close friend or family member experienced gun violence in the last five years, compared with of 13% of white Americans. Overall, 21% of U.S. adults reported a personal tie to gun violence, such as being threatened by a gun or being a victim of a shooting.

“He was at the right place at the wrong time,” said Brown, who is Black.

An acquaintance of a friend pulled a gun during an attempted robbery at a home and shot several people, including Brown’s brother, who she said died instantly. Another person also was slain.

Brown said she doesn’t consider herself a gun lover, but she’s worried enough about becoming a victim of gun violence herself that she’s considering getting a handgun.

“I’m really getting ready to get one. I’ve been to the range,” Brown said. “My dad is a police officer and he wants me to have it.”

The survey was conducted after a stretch of mass shootings across the U.S., from a grocery store in New York, an elementary school in Texas, and a Fourth of July parade in Illinois — along with a smattering of incidents of gun violence in cities across the U.S. that don’t always make national news but leave local communities on edge.

Professor Jens Ludwig, who is director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, said that 1 in 5 people with a friend or family member who was a victim of violence was a “strikingly high number.”

It shows that those who experience gun violence “aren’t the only victims,” he said.

Ludwig compared the way gun violence affects entire communities to the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that the people who died or became very ill from COVID-19 weren’t the only ones affected; kids were kept home from school, businesses closed, and people couldn’t see loved ones.

The same is true with gun violence, Ludwig said. “People are changing the way they live,” he said.

For example, he said, when people who can afford to leave cities where gun violence is a big problem move out in droves, it hurts everyone still there.

He cited Detroit as one example. Gun-related homicides increased from 2016 to 2020, from a rate of 37.6 per 100,000 people to 45.4 per 100,000 people, according to FBI data collected by the pro-gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Black people were 2.1 times more likely to die by gun homicides than white people, according to the data.

Following a particularly violent summer weekend in Detroit that saw two dozen nonfatal shootings and seven homicides, Police Chief James White denounced the rising gun violence in the city and across the nation.

“We understand these numbers make media headlines, but to us they represent people,” White told reporters. “These represent families. This represents children. This represents husbands, wives, brothers and sisters. Our Detroit families are in pain. Neighbors near the gunfire are shaken and lives have been forever changed.”

While most Americans say they feel gun violence has increased nationwide and in their states, 59% of Black Americans and 45% of Hispanics said that gun violence is on the rise in their communities, compared with 34% of white Americans. Similarly, people living in urban areas are more likely to say gun violence is rising in their communities than those in suburban or rural areas, 51% to 39% to 27%.

That is in line with recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data has shown a spike in gun violence since the pandemic, with gun-related homicides increasing across the country in large and small metro areas and in rural areas. The data found Black people are disproportionately impacted by gun violence and are more likely to be the victims of gun crimes or homicides.

Brittany Samuels, a 31-year-old in Detroit, says she still carries physical scars from being shot at age 14 by her uncle, who she said was bipolar and schizophrenic, and fatally shot her grandmother, one of his coworkers and himself.

She said it has also shaped the way she thinks about gun violence and gun ownership, and she feels it is too easy for guns to get into the wrong hands.

Samuels, who is Black, said gun violence in her community has made her rethink where and when to go places, like skipping Detroit’s downtown entertainment district or certain gas stations as certain times.

“You don’t know if someone is going to rob you at gunpoint or if they are going to have a shootout in the middle of the gas station,” she said. “I don’t go when it’s dark — even if it’s in the morning. And you really won’t catch me at a gas station that’s not lit up.”

Diego Saldana, 30, of Baldwin Park, California, in the Los Angeles metro area, said he found himself facing a 9mm handgun during an attempted robbery six months ago. He feels gun violence is on the rise and believes it’s likely he will be a victim of gun violence again in the next five years.

“I think it’s due to the (poor) economy — people are desperate for easy money,” said Saldana, who is Mexican. “People … are stressing about stuff and expressing it with violence. Everybody is on edge.”

Price reported from New York. AP Polling Reporter Hannah Fingerhut in Washington and AP writer Sara Burnett in Chicago contributed to this report.

This gold-mounted, engraved Henry rifle was presented to Abraham Lincoln in an effort to obtain his influence in their purchase for the war effort. This rifle was awarded the National Rifle Association Collectors Society Gold Medal as an outstanding historical firearm.General HistoryThe Henry, the first practical, lever action, repeating rifle, is the immediate forerunner of the famous Winchester rifles. About 14,000 were made between 1860 and 1866 by the New Haven Arms Company. Only about 1,731 Henry rifles were purchased by the Ordnance Department between 1862 and 1865. A number of units in the West purchased them at their own expense. It was especially popular in Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Indiana. The 1st Maine and 1st District of Columbia cavalry regiments are known to have been issued Henry rifles. Said one confederate soldier, “It’s a rifle you could load on Sunday and shoot all week long.”

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- A new Rasmussen survey revealed how 62 percent of likely voters “think the problem of bias in the news media is getting worse,” and also noted 52 percent of voters “don’t trust the political news they’re getting, compared to 32% who do.”

According to the Rasmussen survey, “More Republicans (76%) than Democrats (54%) or unaffiliated voters (54%) consider ‘fake news’ a Very Serious problem in the media.” Those “unaffiliated” voters often identify as “Independents.”

Perhaps nowhere is the belief of media bias more acute than when it comes to reporting about firearms and crime, and there may be no better recent example than an Associated Press report about an actual survey on gun control in which the term “gun violence” was used 11 times over the course of 1,130 words, sometimes appearing twice in the same paragraph. There was also a reference to “gun killings”—as though firearms were actually pulling their own triggers—and a reference to Joe Biden’s gun control legislation passed earlier this summer, describing it as a “gun safety” measure.

Yet, when a homicide involves the use of a different tool, perhaps a knife or blunt instrument, the press does not report that as “knife violence” or “hammer violence,” instead more accurately reporting a victim was “fatally stabbed” or “bludgeoned.”

References to “gun violence” from Anti-Second Amendment activists purposely demonize firearms and shift blame away from the perpetrators of violent crimes. The term creates the impression such crimes are the gun’s fault, not the person pressing the trigger.

There was only a single use of the term “gun control” in the AP article, and a notation about the gun rights victory handed down by the Supreme Court in late June stating, “a conservative majority on the Supreme Court expanded gun rights, finding a constitutional right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.”

Gun rights advocates contend the high court didn’t “expand” anything but simply restored the right to bear arms without having to show “good cause” in order to exercise that right. The court also didn’t “find” any constitutional right but did find the “good cause” requirement to be unconstitutional.

Perhaps nothing more clearly underscored the problem than the reaction in mid-July to published reports, including one here at Ammoland News, about a revision in the newest Associated Press Style Book, considered the guide to journalists around the world, addressing how published reports should refer to semi-auto rifles.

“The preferred term for a rifle that fires one bullet each time the trigger is pulled, and automatically reloads for a subsequent shot, is a semi-automatic rifle. An automatic rifle continuously fires rounds if the trigger is depressed and until its ammunition is exhausted.

“Avoid assault rifle and assault weapon,” the AP explains, “which are highly politicized terms that generally refer to AR- or AK-style rifles designed for the civilian market, but convey little meaning about the actual functions of the weapon.”

At the time this revision was being debated, Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms observed, “It will be interesting to see if the media now challenges politicians and anti-gun lobbyists whenever they use such terms.”

So far, it doesn’t appear the press is making any such effort, instead just allowing politicians and anti-gun lobbyists to continue using such phrases and quoting them obediently.

However, there was one hint of progress in a story appearing in The Hill about the announcement from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that it is “going after so-called ‘ghost guns.’” The term “ghost guns” appears to be an invention from the gun prohibition lobby designed to demonize privately-built firearms, which is a tradition dating back centuries.

Additionally, Rasmussen notes “majorities of both Republicans (67%) and unaffiliated voters (59%) don’t trust the political news they’re getting.” On the other hand—and not surprisingly—55 percent of Democrats “trust the political news they’re getting.”

Breaking things down even farther along political lines, 76 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of Independents “believe the problem of bias in the news media is getting worse,” while only 44 percent of Democrats think so.

It isn’t just the appearance of bias in published reports, but in the reluctance to publish or do stories based on news releases from gun rights advocacy groups. Many newspapers also years ago stopped accepting classified advertising about firearms.

Coincidental to this report, the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Activity posted an article online noting, “Gun control advocates have renewed a longstanding plan to have the Federal Trade Commission (which regulates commercial speech) punish firearms manufacturers for how they advertise firearms. A petition filed with the FTC by several large firearm prohibition organizations claims that any suggestion firearms provide protection to their owners or make their homes safer is tantamount to false advertising. The petition also suggests that the use of patriotic, militaristic, or macho images and languages in firearm advertising – the same themes used to sell everything from beer to vehicles to sunglasses – is deliberately being used to appeal to insurrectionists and mass shooters.”

While the battle may have been about the Second Amendment, it is now shifting to the First Amendment, with the establishment media pushing a particular narrative rather than simply reporting the news and allowing the readers and listeners to decide and reach their own conclusions.

About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.