Lefaucheux Pinfire Double-Barrel Shotgun

The Lefaucheux Pinfire Double-Barrel Shotgun was developed by Casimir Lefaucheux, a gun maker from Paris, France. He had developed the break-action gun that is so well known today but was pretty radical at that time. His Pinfire shotgun was not loaded through the muzzle but from the breach with a paper tube/shell that contained gun powder and the shot. At the rear of the shell was a Pinfire primer that was struck by a hammer in the rear of the breech. To unload and load the shotgun, the shooter would break open the shotgun at the breach, remove the leftover paper from the shell and insert a new one. Lefaucheux was making these shotguns until 1877. Later brass shells would be used more often and they could be reloaded with black powder and shot almost an unlimited number of times. The Lefaucheux Pinfire system became obsolete by centerfire shells.