Flare gun

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For the album by Merzbow, see Flare Gun (album).

An Orion-brand single shot, breech loaded, 12 gauge flare gun. Its design is highly typical of commercially available flare guns.

A flare gun is a gun that shoots flares. They are typically used as a distress signal as well as other signaling purposes at sea and between aircraft and people on the ground.

The most common type of flare gun is a Very pistol (often misspelled as Verey pistol), which was named after Edward Wilson Very (1847–1910), an American naval officer who developed and popularized a single-shot breech-loading snub-nosed pistol that fired flares. Modern varieties are frequently made out of brightly-colored, durable plastic.

The older type of Very pistol, typical of the type used in the Second World War, are of one inch bore. Newer models fire smaller 12-gauge flares. In countries where possession of firearms is strictly controlled, such as the United Kingdom, the use of Very pistols as emergency equipment on boats is less common than, for example, the United States.

Flare guns may be used whenever someone needs to send a distress signal. The flares must be shot directly above, making the signal visible for a longer period of time and revealing the position of whoever is in need of help.

While not intended as a weapon, they can and have been used as one in some situations. In 1942, at Pembrey Airfield in Wales, a German pilot mistakenly landed at the field. The duty pilot, Sgt. Jeffreys, did not have a conventional weapon; he grabbed a Very pistol and used that to capture the German pilot, Oberleutnant Arnim Faber.^{[citation needed]}.

In World War II, Germany manufactured grenades designed to be fired from some models of signal pistol.

In his autobiographical Think Like a Bird, U.S. Army pilot Alex Kimcrap describes shooting at an armed attacker with a Very pistol, following a forced landing during in Aden during the Radfan conflict. The man's clothes caught fire, causing his death.