Semmerling LM-4 Review
Pocket Powerhouse Pistol
The LM-4 was — and is — a hand-operated handful
of a .45 ACP delivery system.
It isn’t often someone gets to shoot a newly introduced pistol and then lives long enough to see it become an ultra-rare, high-dollar collectible.
The shooter — somewhat clumsily referenced above — was me, a newly minted “associate editor” for a well-known Southern California-based gun magazine. The time? Late 1978 if memory serves.
At 50 feet, the LM-4 shot considerably leftward in a vertical pattern,
although that’s probably well in excess of the distance the pistol
would likely be employed at.
Short-Run Shooter
The gun? A .45 ACP Semmerling LM-4 — a unique curiosity with a production life spanning 1979 to the early 1990s. It was then produced on a limited basis until 2003 by American Derringer.
A little over 45 years later, I got to shoot one again. But setting my more recent experience aside for a bit, let’s try to shed a little light on the LM-4.
First, the obvious: The LM-4 is a magazine-fed, locked-breech, manually operated big-bore pistol bearing a superficial resemblance to an autoloader, which it is most certainly not. It was conceived by its designer Philip R. Lichtman as a powerful backup/concealed carry piece for anyone not altogether satisfied with the power level of a snub-nosed .38.
In its day, the LM-4 was easily the most eye-catching item I can recall. Dimensionally, it has a 5.2″ overall length, a 3.45″ barrel, a width of just under an inch and a 3.7″ height. When carrying its full complement of 4+1 rounds of 230-grain hardball, the weight is right at 24 oz. — obviously a dramatic weight-to-power ratio.
The LM-4 (“LM” standing for Lichtman Model) is very solid and well-made, built from S-7 tool steel and comprising only 33 parts with screws included. Simply put, it feels bigger than it is.
Cycling the LM-4 is accomplished by flicking the slide forward,
which can be done with the thumb of the support hand.
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.
The magazine is removed by pinching both sides at the base and pulling down. Speed reloads are pretty much out of the question! Magazine capacity is four rounds of .45 ACP hardball.
The magazine is removed by pinching both sides at the base and pulling down. Speed reloads are pretty much out of the question! Magazine capacity is four rounds of .45 ACP hardball.
Go Hard
The LM-4 is stamped “Std. Mil. Spec. Ctg. Only” to indicate 230-grain hardball is the only recommended load for the pistol — no JHPs, wadcutters or semi-wadcutters need apply. Ours was “white box” Winchester USA, as always an excellent choice.
I must admit those hard-chromed fixed sights, although adequate for the gun’s emergency defensive purpose, weren’t as easy or as quick to acquire as the matte black ones I remember from long ago.
Shooting at 50 feet gave us 3-shot groups in the 2.25″ range though the gun shot several inches to the left. The main impediments to shootability were a heavy, horrendously long and spongy trigger and, as you might imagine, the recoil.
Besides limited production and cost, what may have also curtailed the success of the LM-4 was the fact that by the late 1970s there were a couple of seriously abbreviated .45 autos by way of competition — notably the Star PD and the Detonics. However, strictly in terms of sheer reliability, the hand-cycled Semmerling was a somewhat better bet than many micro-compact .45 autos of the era.
Although Phillip Lichtman passed away in 2017, his LM-4 stands as a sought-after, one-of-a-kind artifact that defined — literally — the concept of “power in a small package.”
