Peter von Frantzius

Who was Peter von Frantzius?

Peter von Frantzius was a Chicago businessman and arms dealer to the Chicago underworld during Prohibition, later dubbed by the press as "The Armorer of Gangland". An almost exclusive supplier of the Chicago Outfit, he was one of the first to supply "Tommy" submachine guns and other specialized weaponry connected to countless gangland slayings during the bootleg wars of the 1920s, including the murder of Brooklyn mobster Frankie Yale in 1928, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929 and the 1930 gangland murder of Chicago journalist Jake Lingle.

On one occasion, when asked by authorities to explain the sale of six machine guns to known organized crime figures, Frantzius answered before a coroner's jury that he had assumed the weapons were for the use of the Mexican government to use against revolutionaries.

Despite his connections to organized crime, Frantzius was never prosecuted against and continued to operate his sporting goods business Sports, Inc. until his death on April 6, 1968. Sports, Inc. produced and sold many firearms related items, including his namesake FRANZITE pistol grips, until going out of business in 1969.