We recently watched a sci-fi series on amazon called "fallout", where a bad guy uses a version of one of these things that was evidently chambered in some sort of high explosive round, judging from the effects every time he used it. It got me thinking about the ones that exist in reality, and I even took the time to look at one over the weekend at my LGS when I was shopping for things that are actually useful to me. Besides being very pricey (to me) I noticed that they tend to be chambered in either rimfire or centerfire pistol calibers (which makes sense I guess, for what they are). The question that is bothering me is, what exactly is the intended purpose of them, other than a "range toy"? They seem too long, awkward, and heavy to be used in any manner that a handgun is normally fired, and holding the thing with 1 hand at the rear where all the fire control magic is happening and the other on the front at the handguard would be more steady, but would not loan itself to things like sight allinement, which would badly effect accuracy IMO. I suppose a child or "little person" may be able to shoulder the thing and use it as a rfile, but that is a limited niche, and probably illegal, given some of the foolishness I have seen dictated by the authorities in similar matters. That said, I have never actually fired one. That leaves the question- what exactly are these things designed for?