Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! In the late 1960s, Smith & Wesson briefly partnered with a company called Mercox to produce a highly specialized and extremely limited handgun – the Model 17-2 Mercox Dart Gun. This unusual firearm was designed not to fire bullets, but to launch a variety of specialty ammunition like darts, tear gas, dye projectiles, and even explosives using .22 caliber ramset blank cartridges as propellant. Based on the iconic S&W K-frame revolver, this dart launcher featured a radically redesigned 12.5-inch barrel designed to accept the different projectile payloads. Only about 25 of these unique weapons were manufactured before the partnership dissolved, making them one of the scarcest S&W variants today. The Model 17-2 retained the familiar K-22 square butt frame, walnut grips with S&W medallions, hammer, and trigger. But the extended barrel with its special adapter hinted at its unconventional purpose – serving as an early less-lethal weapon for applications like animal control or civilian crowd dispersal. While never adopted on a large scale, the Mercox Dart Gun represented firearms manufacturers’ experimentation with new concepts in the turbulent 1960s. A rare few of these intriguing revolvers avoided the scrapyard, preserved today as tantalizing artifacts of the road not taken towards modern less-lethal technologies.
“Manufactured by Smith & Wesson for Mercox circa 1967. According to Supica and Nahas in the STANDARD CATALOG OF SMITH & WESSON, this is one of 25 dart projectile guns manufactured by Smith & Wesson with 17 to 18 reportedly shipped. With very few made, the authors concluded that it is possible that this gun was experimental only. This handgun type device is based on a K-22 frame and was designed to deliver hypodermic dart syringes or other types of materials such as teargas, dye, or explosive or crowd control projectiles. It has a standard Model 17 K-22 square butt frame, walnut grips featuring S&W medallions, hammer and trigger. A 12 1/2 inch barrel with an adapter is attached to the frame and uses a special .22 caliber cartridge as a propellant. The right side of the frame is stamped with the S&W logo and the S&W Springfield address. The checkered hammer and serrated trigger have a casehardened finish with the remaining metal surfaces blue. The nicely figured extended grips are checkered and feature S&W medallions. Included is the S&W blue box and 11 promotional type pamphlets.”
Lot 1877: Smith & Wesson 17 Revolver 22 Dart – Extremely Rare Smith & Wesson Mercox Dart Projectile Gun with Box. (n.d.-q). Rock Island Auction Company. photograph. Retrieved May 10, 2024, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/55/1877/smith-wesson-17-revolver-22-dart.
