Army & Navy And Civilian Defense: Squirt Bullets

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Carbon dioxide is an innocuous gas; water charged with it squirts from soda-fountain nozzles to make the fizz in sodas.

As "dry ice" it is used to keep things cold.

Last week carbon dioxide, liquefied, solidified and then crushed, was used in Denver to propel bullets from guns.

Inventor Ray J. Monner thought he had something. Colorado's Home Guard thought so, too; it ordered a hundred of Monner's cartridge-less dry-ice guns to replace the regulation rifles taken over by the Army.

Monner confines crushed dry ice in a special chamber of the gun. There it becomes part liquid, part gas, maintains a constant pressure. The trigger unlooses the gas by a valve, to shoot lead pellets through a regulation barrel. By regulating the length of time the valve is open, the penetration power of bullets can be controlled, Monner says, to a finer degree than with powder. One 5¢ loading is good for 2,000 shots.

Added advantages: no fouling (carbon dioxide evaporates completely), cool operation—the barrel, instead of heating up, sometimes gathers frost.

Monner said he had offered the design to the Government. In Washington no one admitted having heard about it.