A recent X post from @interesting_aIl has pulled an old police photo back into circulation: a hulking, roughly finished five-shot revolver sitting next to bright red 12-gauge shells. The caption claims Brazilian officers recovered the homemade weapon during a 2011 drug arrest in São José, Santa Catarina. The image looks more like a movie prop than anything carried on a duty belt, which is exactly why it is spreading.
São José is a municipality in Santa Catarina, a southern Brazilian state near the coastal city of Florianópolis. In late August 2011, Civil Police from the 2nd Precinct searched the home of 20-year-old Douglas Amilton Portes. Officers said they found roughly 20 portions of cocaine, marijuana, and a large stainless-steel revolver that had been scraped and finished by hand.
Contemporary Brazilian reports described the firearm as a “super revólver” weighing about 5 kilograms, capable of holding five cartridges at once, and loaded with standard 12-gauge shotgun ammunition commonly used in shotguns. Police compared its oversized silhouette to the revolver carried by the character Hellboy. The weapon was sent to the state forensic institute for examination. Officers publicly stated they did not know its origin or how it entered the state.
English-language coverage followed quickly. The Firearm Blog published photos matching those now circulating and called it a “gigantic homemade” revolver that chambered five 2.75-inch 12-gauge cartridges. The post and the original reporting align on location, year, five-shot capacity, shotgun shells, and the drug-arrest context.
One inconsistency stands out. Brazilian accounts give the weight as approximately 5 kilograms. The Firearm Blog listed 11 pounds the same mass yet some later discussions have floated a 2-kilogram figure. Because the contemporaneous local reporting and the specialist article both support the heavier number, the lower figure should be treated cautiously. No public forensic test results or maker identification ever appeared.
A separate homemade revolving shotgun nicknamed “Trinta e Doze” was seized in Mossoró, Rio Grande do Norte, in 2018. That weapon held four 12-gauge rounds and is not the same firearm. Viral posts sometimes blur the two, but the 2011 São José seizure is documented independently.
In 2011, Brazilian police recovered a large, homemade five-shot revolver chambered for 12-gauge shotgun cartridges during a drug-related arrest in São José, Santa Catarina. Photographs published at the time match the images now going around. The weapon’s exact performance, final forensic findings, and the identity of its maker were never publicly detailed. The X post is recycling a 15-year-old local crime story, not breaking news.
