Semmerling LM-4 Review

Run and Gun

You cycle it by pushing the slide forward a little over an inch or so to eject the empty, and then flick it back into battery and chamber a fresh round. This can be accomplished with the thumb of the support hand, although this method requires practice to perform efficiently. Because empties are ejected from the right side, cycling the gun via the support-hand thumb would be a problematic technique for left-handed shooters.

But for the right-handed thumb- cycling, combined with a considerable amount of felt recoil, pretty much makes a two-handed hold mandatory. On a personal note, I don’t recall the recoil from my long-ago range date with the LM-4 as being as, well … brisk as it seemed recently. Age does have its drawbacks!

Besides recoil, rarity is the operative word here. Around 600 LM-4s were built originally by the Semmerling Corporation of Boston, Mass. The fact the pistol was essentially handmade is reflected in the low monthly production numbers, something in the neighborhood of 10 per calendar, as well as the price — a relatively whopping $645 by the early 1980s. If this doesn’t sound all that exorbitant by today’s standards, consider the fact the price tag translates to around $3,011 in 2024 dollars.
But the real-world value of currently-available specimens dwarfs the figure by a considerable margin. It can range from $6,500 to well beyond $10K, while those made by American Derringer generally go for less. Obviously it’s a “they ain’t making no more of ’em” item for the truly committed. Which would leave me out, I’m afraid. I couldn’t have afforded one back in the day and certainly not now.

The LM-4 was produced with either a matte black, polished blued or satin hard chrome finish. Our particular shooting specimen — courtesy of shooter/collector David Arredondo — was chromed, featuring black checkered plastic grip panels.

Incidentally, the LM-4 was originally offered with an optional skeletonized “thin grip” kit for carry, which allowed for a visual round count, but I was by no means unhappy we didn’t have one for our gun. The recoil was impressive enough with what we had, and shooting it recently managed to jar loose some long-ago memories from my first experience with the gun.