Charter Arms
American manufacturer of revolvers
Charter Arms Co. is an American manufacturer of revolvers. Since its founding in 1964, Charter Arms has produced revolvers chambered in the following calibers: .22 Long Rifle, .22 Winchester Magnum, .32 Long, .32 H&R Magnum, .327 Federal Magnum, .38 Special, .380 ACP, .357 Magnum, 9×19mm Parabellum, .40 Smith & Wesson, .41 Remington Magnum, .44 Special, .45 ACP, and .45 Colt.
The most famous revolvers manufactured by Charter Arms are the .44 Special Bulldog and .38 Special Bulldog Pug.
History
Douglas McClenahan, a young gun designer who had previously worked for Colt, High Standard, and Sturm, Ruger founded Charter Arms in 1964 to produce handguns. The factory was located in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and its first revolver was a five-shot model called the "Undercover", chambered for .38 Special. McClenahan's innovation was to avoid using the side plate designs manufactured by other revolver makers for a one-piece frame, giving the new revolver a strength that allowed it to safely shoot high loads. McClenahan also reduced the number of moving parts used in the gun and created a transfer bar safety device for the firing pin that would later be copied by manufacturers such as Ruger and Colt. In 1967, McClenahan's lifelong friend, David Ecker, became part-owner of Charter Arms.
Production was later moved to Stratford, Connecticut, and a few years later, in 1978, Doug McClennahan retired from Charter Arms.
“Charter Arms” enters the record as american manufacturer of revolvers. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Charter, Arms and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5086726. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1967 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charter Arms” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.