>>93936Examining the .41 Rocketball's paltry ballistics in further detail, we'll consider these details;
>blackpowder is inherently very dependent on a good volume of powder as well as a decent length of barrel to give a projectile any speed>now imagine a blackpowder cartridge with a tiny charge, that from a rifle can at best match the velocity of .22LR from a pistol, fired out of a much shorter pistol barrel>consider the sectional density difference of the almost twice as large projectileThe notion that someone shooting themselves in the temple with a Volcanic pistol and only managing to injure themselves after a magazine, it actually seems fairly plausible to me.
Fun fact too, Horace Smith and Dan Wesson got their start in firearms founding the Volcanic Repeating Arms company, getting together with a few other guys setting out to develop a magazine fed repeater based around the Rocketball patent (which they actually improved on), but as the Volcanic Repeater was an absolute failure, they gave up on this, then went on to start a new company, Smith & Wesson, which made a massive name on their revolvers (particularly for licensing the exclusive rights to the Rollin White patent), and remain in business to this day.
One of the investors of the Volcanic Repeating Arms company was a man named Oliver Winchester, who had built considerable wealth on the industrial production of clothes. In spite of the Volcanic failing, he still thought there was value in the concept, and started a new business, hiring a man named Benjamin Tyler Henry, who redesigned the Volcanic to make a rifle using a new type of metallic cased ammunition, rimfire.
In a few years, the company changed again, and Henry's rifle was improved even further with a better magazine and loading system, creating Winchester Repeating Arms, which to this day are still in business and are inextricably linked to the lever-action repeater.
