Favorite Firearms: Grandpa’s Well-Traveled Iver Johnson

by
posted on August 23, 2022
** When you buy products through the links on our site, we may earn a commission that supports NRA's mission to protect, preserve and defend the Second Amendment. **
Iver Johnson Safety Automatic .32-cal. blackpowder revolver

My grandfather, a civil engineer for the Russian Tsarist government, obtained this Iver Johnson Safety Automatic .32-cal. blackpowder revolver sometime in the early 1900s on one of his trips to Finland or Britain. After the Bolshevik Revolution, he, as manager of a workers’ manufactory in St. Petersburg, found that he could not raise wages fast enough to keep up with the price of bread. This and other risks led him to send his family, including my father, on vacation via the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok. 

He followed three weeks later on a “bridge-inspection tour,” with this pistol sewn into the crotch of his trousers for personal protection. Because of its single latch on the left of the top bar, it should be a first model, but it has the trigger safety of the second model.  

The patent date on the pistol is April 1886. The shrouded hammer with transfer bar, along with the automatic ejection of its five rounds, make its use as a concealed firearm obvious. My father made the larger grip sometime in the 1940s or 1950s, but I do not know if he ever fired it, since blackpowder cartridges may have been less available then, and the pistol is not considered safe with smokeless powders. 

Grandpa’s gun traveled with the family from Siberia, through China, then to Indonesia for a few years before coming by tramp steamer to San Francisco and ending up, decades later, in his closet in Texas. I learned the bare bones of its history from my mother, as neither my father nor grandpa would talk about their escape in my youth. Well-traveled and worn, this Iver Johnson Safety Automatic is proudly displayed in my study.

Latest

Hearing Healthy
Hearing Healthy

Summer Suppressor Deals On Now

Whether it is a BOGO deal from SIG or free tax stamps from Guns.com and Silencer Central, there's plenty of hearing-safe savings to be had this summer.

Rifleman Report: Defending Freedom For 250 Years

"Anyone who claims not to understand the plain and simple intent of the Second Amendment—especially if that person happens to be a constitutional law professor, Supreme Court justice, congressman, senator or president—is likely hiding nefarious intent: to strip individual liberty from American citizens for the express purpose of making them susceptible to a tyrannical government."

Book Review: 2025 Traveler’s Guide To The Firearms Laws Of The Fifty States

Newly updated for 2025, the 29th edition of the Traveler’s Guide To The Firearm Laws Of The Fifty States is packed with all the need-to-know information for cross-country trekkers seeking to bring their arms along with them and remain legal in all localities.

Springfield Kuna: A PDW For The Masses

Small, yet fierce, the namesake of Springfield Armory’s latest large-format pistol is a revered forest dweller in the land of its Croatian manufacturing partner, HS Produkt. The new Kuna is poised to be just as welcome in America.

The Armed Citizen® June 30, 2025

Read today's "The Armed Citizen" entry for real stories of law-abiding citizens, past and present, who used their firearms to save lives.

Book Review: Clockwork Basilisk: The Early Revolvers Of Elisha Collier & Artemas Wheeler

The result of a decade of research, Clockwork Basilisk is a comprehensive, two-volume history of the rare revolvers that preceded the development of the well-known Colt guns of the 1830s.

Interests



Get the best of American Rifleman delivered to your inbox.