The Taurus Judge gets a lot of credit for starting the .45 Colt/.410 craze. It’s seen as an NFA hack that allows you to have a handgun-sized weapon that fires a shotgun caliber. A .45 Colt chamber can accommodate a .410 cartridge, and if you rifle the barrel, it’s not considered an AOW or short-barreled shotgun and is not subject to the National Firearms Act and all of its regulations and laws. The Judge popularized the idea, but there were plenty of predecessors. Cobray was one of the earliest entries into the world of these .45Colt/.410 firearms.
Cobray produced a pepperbox and a single-shot derringer. Additionally, they produced a number of double-barrel derringers with various barrel lengths. These guns aren’t necessarily popular, but most people involved in the world of weird guns have seen them rattling around gun shows. A gun that comes from the same lineage that’s almost entirely forgotten is the Cobray DS 410. Unlike all of these derringers, the Cobray DS 410 is not a derringer but a true shotgun.
The DS 410 – Not a Very Good Shotgun
It does not chamber .45 Colt, just .410 rounds, which might explain its lack of popularity. The gun featured a stock and 18.5-inch barrels, but other than that, the DS 410 was designed around the Cobray family of derringers. They literally just slapped a stock on, extended the barrels, and added a handguard to the design.
Looking at the barrels, you can easily see that Cobray did weld a barrel extension to a derringer frame. There is a noticeable difference in diameter once you get beyond the original derringer design. The gun can still chamber rounds up to 3-inches.
Like its derringer counterparts, the Cobray DS 410 has unique quirks and features. These include an incredibly small grip that offers minimal support, a characteristic that sets it apart from most double barrels. In a departure from the norm, the DS 410 doesn’t feature any standard double-barrel shotgun controls.
Everything about the gun could be more intuitive and easier. Cobray didn’t do anything to make the gun ergonomic or easy to use. The DS 410 is also built as cheaply as possible. One of the big reasons you won’t find any of these guns on the market is that they likely broke at a very low round count.
Google Cobray .410 problems and you’ll find page after page of people talking about broken derringers and a few broken DS 410 shotguns. Some of these guns broke in less than 20 rounds. Cobray made some crazy stuff that was arguably interesting, but it was never made very well.
Breaking Down the Cobray DS 410
Unlike the derringers, the Cobray DS 410 features a front bead sight, but we still get an open rear sight. Cobray was a big fan of Zytel, a polymer material popular for firearms and magazines in the 1980s and 90s, specifically very cheap firearms.
The DS 410 features a Zytel forend, Zytel grips, and a Zytel stock. The gun’s forend provides enough grip to keep your hands off the barrel, but not much more. The grips are micro-sized and identical to those of the derringer series. At the butt end, we get a rather interesting stock. It’s attached to the rear of the grip and is an under-folding design.
A tab at the bottom of the grip releases the stock, allowing it to fold under the barrels, making the gun very compact. The stock is one of the high points of the DS 410. It’s even capable of holding three spare 3-inch .410 rounds on tap. The stock lockup is better than the barrel lockup. It doesn’t move and is surprisingly nice.
The DS 410 isn’t a great gun, but it has great ideas. For one, it weighs one pound and 14 ounces—hardly anything! The overall length measures 30.75 inches with the stock deployed and 21.24 inches with the stock folded. This little gun would be a great option as a light survival weapon. If I were designing the gun, I’d have one .45 Colt barrel and one .410 barrel. This would give me a weapon perfect for taking squirrels and deer, and a good .45 Colt load could stop a bear in a pinch.
Operating the DS 410
Let’s talk about how much of a pain this thing is to use as a firearm. Let’s say I want to load the gun. To load the gun, I have to place the weapon on the safe, which requires pulling the hammer back slightly without pulling it back too far. I have to hold the hammer back and press the safety from right to left.
Once the safety is off, I can open the weapon, load the chamber, and close the gun. Next, all I have to do is reverse the steps to turn the safety off to fire the weapon, which means I have to pull the hammer slightly rearward and slide the safety off. Now, I can finally fire the weapon. This doesn’t sound that bad, but the safety is micro-sized and super picky about how far back the hammer is before it will move.
The user can switch barrels by a simple tab on the hammer. This is the simplest thing about the DS 410. Just press it to one side or the other, and you will swap barrels. The hammer has to be manually cocked, and the trigger is derringer-style without a trace of a trigger guard. After firing the gun, you’re in for a potential adventure.
Firing the Little .410
Those pesky .410 shells can be all sorts of fun because the gun lacks any form of extractor. Instead, you get a relief cut on each barrel to pry the round out by its rim.
When I fired two Fiocchi rounds, there was nothing I had that would make it possible for me to pry those rounds out of the barrels. I had to find a rod that was over 18 inches long and small enough to fit in a .410 barrel to pop those suckers out.
Luckily, not all rounds do that, and you can fingernail extract most of them. With buckshot, the gun recoils with a bit of snap. It’s still just a .410, but it also weighs less than two pounds. The hard Zytel stock has some snap to it, but it’s not painful and won’t leave you bruised. The accuracy and patterns are fine. Typical of a cylinder bore choke .410.
I could take a deer, squirrel, rabbit, or whatever needs shooting with it. However, I won’t shoot it much. If I tried to do any serious shooting, it’d become a paperweight. The DS 410 is a fun little gun and a great idea, but like a lot of Cobray’s guns, it’s poorly made.
Let me know if anyone wants to revive the DS 410 and make it a usable design that can handle lots of shooting. I have plenty of ideas for creating a modern version that could be a handy survival firearm or even a very handy gun for nearly any situation. The DS 410 is a good idea, but the bones just don’t hold up.
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