His great grandson, Dan Wesson II, worked at that company from 1938 to 1963. Then his family sold their interest in the firm to Bangor Punta in 1965, but his love for firearm design didn’t retire.

I walked into a gun store and saw a pistol that I knew was right for me: a clean, sharp-looking Dan Wesson Model 15 in .357 Mag., with beautiful wood stocks and a 12" barrel that stuck out of a ...

Among modern gunmakers, Dan Wesson is a particularly revered figure. In the late 1960s, he broke off from the family business—that business being Smith & Wesson—to start his own gun company. The ...