The Rossi Brawler Counter-Snake Gun: How Far Will It Actually Reach?
By Will Dabbs MD
The Rossi Brawler is a basic break-open, single-shot, full-figured handgun chambered for .45 Colt. The Brawler sports a nine-inch barrel and generous soft rubber pistol grip. There is a transfer bar built into the hammer for safety, and the manual of arms is just stupid simple. If you can feed yourself without getting Fruity Pebbles in your hair, you are massively overqualified to run the Brawler both safely and well.
Thanks to a quirky loophole in American firearms law, it is both safe and legal to fire .410 shotgun shells through this man-sized pistol. The 1934 National Firearms Act stipulates that smoothbore shotguns must feature a barrel length of at least 18 inches. That of the Brawler is exactly half the legal minimum. However, the fact that the Brawler’s tube is rifled to accommodate the .45 Colt pistol round means that the BATF does not consider it a shotgun. That simple fact opens up all sorts of neat opportunities.
A list of .410 options for the Brawler include slugs, high-tech defensive rounds and standard pedestrian shotshells. Most companies offer .410 shotshells in either 2.5- or 3-inch versions. The Brawler will eat either variant with comparable verve. However, this takes us to an inevitable question. Given that stubby little pistol barrel, just how effective are .410 shotgun shells really going to be against threats all sinister and slithery?
War Story
We were some of those homeschool freaks, and we live way out in the sticks. One day while out toiling in my modest workshop, I noticed the stigmata of recent rodent activity. In point of fact, the little monsters had eaten a water moccasin hide I had stretched out on a board as well as an entire bar of Dial soap. Normally I’d lay out a few traps and call it good. However, my son was between pets, so we made it a homeschool project.
We designed and built a trap that would capture the beast alive and intact along with a modular enclosure connected with lengths of PVC pipe to keep the little guy incarcerated and out of mischief. My young son was thrilled to have a wild creature for a pet, and my wife was OK with it so long as we kept everything in the shop and away from the house. All was well until one day we walked into the shop to find an enormous rat snake wrapped around the enclosure vigorously trying to gain entrance.
I despise venomous snakes on principle. There are no doubt those in the audience who feel that water moccasins are really our pals. If only we would give them a chance, they would be as snuggly and affectionate as recently-weaned beagle puppies. Screw that. As a physician, I have seen my share of venomous snake bites. That’s at the top of my ever-growing list of medical stuff I don’t want. In the 17 years we have lived out at my rural farm, I have killed 64 moccasins thus far.
Non-venomous snakes, by contrast, do indeed get a pass in the Dabbs’ world. I’m cool with them … except when they live in my workshop and are trying to eat our pet rodent. The shock of that experience, no kidding, flat-out killed our little mouse. Being so close to a live snake was more than he could manage.
The poor little guy jumped about in his cage like a cockroach on a stovetop and then just up and died. I guess his heart exploded or something. Considering this three-foot monster could also theoretically slither across my feet while I was running my table saw, he had to go. I fetched my favorite .22 revolver and charged it with rat shot.
At maybe five meters, the first round did not faze him, like at all. He just sat there and glared at me menacingly. I had to get shockingly close to actually do the deed. That got me thinking about how well the Brawler might perform against the truly nasty sort.
The Experiment
The objective was to see how far out the Rossi Brawler charged with 2.5-inch number eights might be effective against venomous serpents. My testing apparatus lacked even a modicum of scientific rigor. I just set up some homemade snake-sized targets at a variety of reasonable counter-serpent ranges, drew a careful bead center of mass and let her rip. I then sat down over some Netflix and counted the resulting holes.
Yes, in case you were wondering, that was pretty darn tedious. I have no idea how many individual number 8 pellets are stuffed into a standard Winchester 2.5-inch .410 round. I’d conservatively estimate about a trillion. It took forever to assess the targets. However, the end result was indeed illuminating.
I used a side-by-side .410 coach gun as a control. This adorable little smoke pole sports 20-inch barrels and looks like it stepped out of Western cowboy movie if that movie was entirely populated with toddlers. I figured that would be a good example of these rounds’ true capabilities.
The Results
At three meters, these standard number eight shotshells out of the Brawler would be quite effective against most anything that walks. The shot bolus is a bit smaller than a paper plate and would ruin the day of anything up to and including an adolescent black bear or a rabid jaguar. There were too many holes to readily count.
Stepping back to six meters told a different story. At this range, the water moccasin that is showing an undue interest in your fishing stringer (unsettlingly, something that has actually happened to me before while out drowning crickets for bream) is unambiguously freaking dead. However, unlike our three-meter test, what you fish out of the water later is still going to look like a snake.
At nine meters, he’ll likely sport an eyepatch and may expire in horrible agony at some nebulous point down the road. However, that standard .410 load might not put him down expeditiously. Expect about a dozen or so pellets to connect with a typical snake-sized target at that range.
Ruminations
These same observations would have bearing on using the Brawler to hunt tree rats or bunnies. .45 Colt solids and hollowpoints will keep you prickly against bipedal malefactors out as far as you might reasonably engage. Switching to shotshells for threats of the slithery sort, the Brawler remains an effective CQB (Close Quarters Battle) tool. Keep your engagement ranges within the length of your typical john boat, and you’ll remain reliably snake-free.
There are lots of cool gun options for light hunting, recreational shooting, and defensive applications these days. With an MSRP of only $257, the new Rossi Brawler is the pistol you can secure safely underneath the seat of your pickup truck or tuck into your tacklebox. Stoke the piece with Winchester PDX-1 antipersonnel rounds, and it is lights out for carjackers. Make that 2.5-inch number eights and keep your engagement ranges to nine meters or less, and you are immune to water moccasins as well. The Brawler is one of the most versatile guns in the safe.
| Gun | 3 Meters | 6 Meters | 9 Meters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rossi Brawler | TMTC | 36 | 14 |
| Side-by-Side Coach Gun | TMTC | 97 | 63 |
About the Author
A native of the Mississippi Delta, Will Dabbs is a mechanical engineer who flew UH1H, OH58A/C, CH47D and AH1S aircraft as an Army Aviator. He has parachuted out of perfectly good airplanes at 3 o’clock in the morning and summited Mount McKinley, Alaska, six times … always at the controls of an Army helicopter, which is the only way sensible folk climb mountains.
After eight years in the Regular Army, Major Dabbs left the military in favor of medical school. He has delivered 60 babies and occasionally wrung human blood out of his socks. Will currently works in his own urgent care clinic, shares a business building precision rifles and sound suppressors, and has written for the gun press since 1989. He is married to his high school sweetheart, has three awesome adult children and teaches Sunday School. Turn-ons include vintage German machineguns, flying his sexy-cool RV6A airplane, Count Chocula cereal and the movie “Aliens.”
