Phillips & Rodgers M47 Medusa: Multicaliber Revolver for a Nonexistent Apocalypse

The Phillips & Rodgers M47 Medusa is a mechanically very interesting firearm; a revolver that can chamber basically any cartridge with a 9mm bullet diameter and an overall length no longer than a .357 Magnum. This is made possible because a revolver does not have the headspace requirements of a semiautomatic handgun, and the barrel doesn’t know one type of bullet form another, so long as they are not larger than the bore diameter. What makes it difficult, is finding a way to hold a variety of different cartridges properly in position for reliable firing and extraction. Jonathan Phillips solved this problem with his 1995 patent for the extractor mechanism that is the fundamental heart of the Medusa revolver. It uses long flexible fingers which snap into the extractor grooves on rimless cartridges or can be depressed down away from the cases of rimmed cartridges. These fingers allow proper indexing of virtually any cartridge that will physically fit.