(Photo courtesy of Rock Island Auctions)
January 14, 2025
By Matthew Every
There are over 20 million concealed carry permit holders in the U.S. With numbers like that, it’s easy to see how small, easy-to-hide pocket pistols have become more popular and more capable. Before the 1970s, if you wanted a gun to hide on your person, you were limited to small calibers, like the 25 Auto and 32 ACP at best. But at the same time, a new kind of gun came onto the scene. It was a highly modified Smith & Wesson Model 39 chambered in 9mm designed to be concealed and drawn for quick action.
The pistol was the first subcompact semi-auto chambered for a serious cartridge to ever hit the market. But what’s strange is that it hardly ever did hit the market. What’s even stranger is that its designer and maker built the gun in a secret room, hidden behind a vault door on West 39th Street in New York City’s garment district. The designer was named Paris Theodore, and the gun was called the ASP.
Who Was Paris Theodore? (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia) There is very little information out there on Paris Theodore. He was born in New York City in 1943. His father was a sculpture professor, and his mother was a ballet dancer. When he was a boy, he was a child actor and even appeared in an NBC production of Peter Pan.
As Theodore got older, he followed in his family's footsteps and became an artist, making abstract paintings. During that time, he was allegedly recruited by the CIA, and from there, his life took a dramatic change.
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In Theodore’s autobiography “WARDOG: Confessions of a Lost (and Lethal Boy),” he details covert missions and violent encounters with Soviet agents in countries around the world. But even with this book as a record of Theodore’s life, there is little else out there about his mysterious life as a CIA operative.
What’s more well-known and documented is Theodore’s work as an entrepreneur and weapon designer. He operated a holster shop open to the public in New York City called Seventrees LTD. At the time, there were few ways covert operatives and undercover officers could hide a gun. Even fewer quality holsters existed for the job. Theodore took his knowledge of hiding firearms while on missions to design form-fitting leather holsters for various handguns. His clients included individuals at three-letter government agencies and New York City police officers.
Theodore’s knack for invention went beyond holsters, though. Eventually he developed a secret workshop in the back of his holster showroom, concealed behind a vault door. Inside, with special exemptions from the ATF, he designed secret weapons that sound like they’ve come out of a James Bond movie.
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There was a clipboard that could fire several rounds for a hostage negotiator to use to kill a terrorist. Theodore developed a Dupont lighter he called the “Zappo” that fired 22 bullets. He also worked on things like methods to restrain a captive with super glue and explosive ping pong balls. There was even a suitcase that concealed an Uzi that the shooter could fire without opening the case. Theodore’s most well-known and influential project, though, was the ASP.
How the ASP Came to Be ASP stands for Armament Systems and Procedures. It was a corporation Theodore set up to develop weapons and techniques for government operatives. Soon after his holster business began taking off, Theodore writes that, “We accepted a series of contracts from U.S. government special user agencies to design and fabricate what we euphemistically called Unique Defense Devices.”
One of the projects Theodore took on was the ASP 9mm pistol, and he set to work modifying a gun to fit his needs. “I was determined to design a better covert use device,” he said. “No jutting front sights. No sharp edges on the pistol or its rear sights. Just a smooth transition from pocket or holster to hand.”
Theodore started with a 9mm Smith & Wesson Model 39 and made around 200 modifications to the gun. He first cut down the barrel and grip. Then he smoothed and melted the edges for a quick draw, replaced the grip with clear Lexan grips, and modified the magazines so the shooter could see how many rounds he had left. He removed the pistol’s sights and replaced them with an invention called a “guttersnipe” sight (which allowed for quick target acquisition) and added a patented spur to the trigger guard for a better grip.
Theodore coated the pistol in Teflon inside and out to make it even more slick when drawn from a waistband or holster. He also cut a relief in the front of the trigger guard for either left or right-handed shooters. What he was left with was a pistol designed for close-quarters fighting. It was not designed to shoot bullseyes at distance, but it could be drawn and fired quickly into a man-sized target.
What Happened to the ASP (Photo courtesy of Rock Island Auctions) Demand for the pistols grew, but Theodore couldn’t keep up with production. At one point, he gave a pistol to Jim Land, the father of the Marine Corps Scout Sniper Program, who appreciated the gun and pitched to fulfill orders from a shop in Virginia. Mystique around the gun grew so much that James Bond’s Walther PPK was replaced with it in several novels. The ASP had set a trend for smaller, more concealable pistols in serious chamberings like 9mm. And Theodore found himself fighting patent infringement cases from copycats for modifications he made to the ASP.
ASPs were built from the early 1970s until about 1987. In the late 1970s, Theodore’s company hit financial setbacks, and he sold the ASP company to a group in Wisconsin. They continued to make ASP pistols, and there are more of those particular models on the market than the guns originally modified by Theodore. There was even a special edition ASP that came in a secret book with a dagger.
More important than what happened to the ASP itself is the influence it had on carry guns. It may not seem that groundbreaking now to have a 9mm that virtually melts away while being carried, but at the time, it was a big deal. Since then, dozens of companies have made small, compact 9mm pistols, and I imagine a few of them took influence from the ASP, or custom guns like it from the era.