Walsh was issued a 4-inch-barreled Colt Official Police revolver in .38 Spl. upon his graduation but immediately began carrying a personal Colt M1911A1 in .45 ACP. It was the handgun he carried when he arrested Doc Barker in Chicago in 1935, and it was one of two handguns he had in Bangor, Maine, in the shootout with the Brady Gang on Columbus Day 1937. He was certainly more familiar with the .45 than the revolver as he was an award-winning marksman in competition, using an M1911 in both civilian and military matches.
The Bureau’s regulations on carrying a personal handgun were lenient then, certainly more so than at present. Walsh recalls that no paperwork was required for him to carry the .45 and that when he purchased a pair of registered .357 Magnums in 1937, he could carry either, or both.
While 1934 was the first year of official handgun issue for the FBI, the older Bureau of Investigation issued a number of guns, including the .35-cal. Smith & Wesson semi-automatic (Model of 1913), the .45 Colt Government Model, and the S&W .38 Spl. Military & Police. Roy McHenry, who was in the Bureau from 1917 to 1920, wrote of using a .35 Smith while shooting at bootleggers trying to steal whiskey from a federal warehouse. He said this was well before the agents were specifically given arrest powers. There were no formal qualifications, but agents would pay for their own ammunition and shoot paper targets and even at empty beer kegs rolled down an incline as moving targets.
View the Handguns of the FBI Photo Gallery.
After initial authorization in 1934, a number of models were acquired and issued to agents. These included the Colt Government Model in .38 Super, registered N-frame .357 Mag. revolvers and S&W .38 Spls. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was known to have owned or been issued several different revolvers. One, a Colt Pocket Positive in .32 caliber with a bobbed hammer, is in the FBI Academy Gun Vault. He was also given a Smith & Wesson .357 Mag., Registration No. 1—but its present whereabouts are unknown (at least to the FBI). Both the .38 Supers and the .357 Magnums were acquired to better penetrate car bodies as well as the steel-plate vests often used by the gangsters of the period.
As an interesting aside, the FBI later acquired some rather rare revolvers to aid in training. The Model 45 was an S&W K-frame, 4-inch-barreled revolver, but chambered in .22 Long Rifle. The thought at the time was that the lighter recoiling gun might be a help those agents having problems with the recoil of the .38 Spl. The project was soon scrapped.
Concealability (or convenience) must also have been a factor as a number of small-frame revolvers were purchased and issued through the years. They included the Colt Pocket Positive, S&W’s Model 49 “Bodyguard,” Colt’s Detective Special (with hammer shroud) and later the Smith Model 60 “Chief’s Special.” Agents who had Bureau-approved, small-frame revolvers were known to carry the smaller guns on the street but qualify with their issue 4-inch models. Because of this practice, new FBI regulations required qualification with all models agents were authorized to carry.
Only one popular revolver was adopted that was old. The FBI acquired a number of unique Smith & Wessons from the U.S. Navy, Office of Naval Investigations. These were specially made Model 19 “Combat Magnums” with 4-inch barrels and round butts. These revolvers were earmarked for the FBI’s field SWAT teams, although many were diverted to use by other field agents. Of all the handguns the FBI had, this model, known in the Bureau as the “O.N.I.,”’ had to be the one most agents hated to give up. In fact, there was quite a number of personally owned and Bureau-approved regular square-butt Model 19s converted to round butt by the talented gunsmiths at Quantico.
