A 137-year-old rifle found five years ago leaning against a juniper tree in Great Basin National Park in Nevada is now part of an exhibit dedicated to the “Forgotten Winchester†at the park visitor center near the Utah border.
The weathered Winchester Model 1873 is in a case designed to capture the way it looked when park archaeologist Eva Jensen stumbled across it on a rocky outcrop above Strawberry Creek during an archaeological survey.
Based on its condition, experts believe the weapon might have been abandoned in the forest more than a century ago.
But nearly five years after its discovery, park officials still don’t know who it belonged to nor why it was left against the tree. No sales or ownership records have been found.
The serial number was visible, allowing experts at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo., to determine it was made in 1882.
The exhibit also highlights the role the Model 1873 — one of the most popular guns on the Western frontier — played in the history of the West.
“The exhibit is a showcase for visitors to discover the rifle’s mysterious story and become inspired to imagine, investigate and care about a piece of their American history,†said Nichole Andler, the park’s chief of interpretation.
Herbert Houze, former curator of a firearms museum at the Buffalo Bill center, has said Model 1873 rifles were so valuable that whoever owned the one on display might have rested it against the tree and been unable to find it later.
“You just don’t leave a gun like that there,†he said.
The rifles sold for $35 to $50 in the 1880s and can now fetch up to $15,000 depending on their condition.
The rifle on display has been exhibited at gun shows and at the Buffalo Bill center for a summer. There, officials did an X-ray, found a bullet in the stock and removed it.
If there were such a word as “pistolver†[пиÑтольвер], then it would completely fit the gun of one Belgian manufacturer presented here. What at first glance resembles a self-loading pistol with an internal trigger actually turns out to be a five-shot revolver.
From the 5/2019 issue of КÐЛÐШÐИКОВ [Kalashnikov], the Russian gun magazine, translated from Der Zwitterwaffe von Louis Pierre Joseph Wertz [The Hermaphrodite Gun of Louis Pierre Wertz] by Dr. Dirk Ziesing in the 4/2018 issue of Deutsches Waffen Journal. Translated by Mikhail Dragunov into Russian, then by Google and me to English.
In the era that came after muzzle-loading weapons, the word “pistol†was used as a general term for all hand weapons — pistols and revolvers. So it is not surprising that a weapon with a rotating block of chambers was first called a “revolving pistol.†Only later did the shorter term “revolver” appear.
The Browning Pistol was the pattern for external form of the Pistolver.
With the advent of multiply-charged and automatic weapons at the end of the 19th century, the differences of terms became more significant. Especially when the designs of John Moses Browning, starting with the FN (Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre — weapons factory in Liege) Model of 1900, swept the market, it became tough for the renowned manufacturers of revolvers. They either included self-loading weapons in their product line, or made improvements in the revolver niche in order to keep their traditional clientele.
Evidence of their decline was the appearance of revolvers at that time, which more or less skillfully deceived the consumer with an external form imitating a pocket semi-automatic pistol. The first step in this direction was the internal trigger, which eliminated the preliminary cocking of the hammer in a revolver. By the elongation of the frame, this approached the contours of a semi-automatic pistol.
In the above model, this attempt reached its apogee. Seen from the side, the contour of the model is almost identical to the FN Model 1900 pistol. The cylinder, of course, is not eliminated, but the opportunity for creativity still remained from the cylinder to the muzzle. His first model Browning is equipped with a return spring placed under the barrel, giving the impression that two barrels are placed one below the other. The Belgian designer used this arrangement in order to place successfully line up the cylinder and the case ejector in his “pistolverâ€.
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The 7mm Belgian pinfire revolver that might have shot van Gogh.
Hyperallergic reports on an intriguing opportunity to buy a junk gun that just
might
have an important historical connection. On the other hand, some drunken clochard might simply have lost it sleeping in the field.
Any shmoe with a spare $25-$100 million dollars can land themselves an original Vincent Van Gogh painting, but this June, only one lucky bidder can go home with a singular piece of art history: the gun that was allegedly used by the eccentric painter to kill himself. As reported by the Associated Press, a 7mm pocket revolver found in a field in the northern French village of Auvers-sur-Oise — where Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest on July 27, 1890 — will go up for auction in Paris at the Drouot auction center, on June 19.
“The gun offered in this sale was found in this field by a farmer around 1960 and was handed to the current owner’s mother,†said the auction website. “Writer Alain Rohan investigated this case and wrote the book Did we find the suicide weapon? in 2012. Several pieces of evidence show it must be Van Gogh’s suicide gun: it was discovered where Van Gogh shot it; its caliber (7 mm) is the same as the bullet retrieved from the artist’s body as described by the doctor at the time; scientific studies demonstrate that the gun had stayed in the ground since the 1890s and finally, it is a low power gun so it could explain why Van Gogh didn’t instantly die after shooting it.â€
The painter died two days later of his apparently self-inflicted injuries — although another recent theory is that Van Gogh did not inflict this wound himself.
“Another theory about Van Gogh’s death appeared in 2011,†says the Drouot website, referencing a controversial biography, Van Gogh: The Life, by authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, which makes several dramatic revisionist claims, based on 10 years of study with more than 20 translators and researchers. “According to [two] American researchers, the artist didn’t kill himself. He would have been the victim of an accident. [Two] young boys were playing with a gun next to him when one of them pressed the trigger by mistake and wounded him. However, even if this assumption is right, the weapon could still be the one that killed Van Gogh. The gun would have been left in the field.â€
Either way, the gun was included in a 2016 exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, On the Verge of Insanity: Van Gogh and his Illness, which deals with multiple aspects of the painter’s notoriously troubled mental health, and is expected to fetch €40,000–60,000 (~$45,000–67,000) at auction. It certainly represents a unique offering for obsessive Van Gogh fans, gun collectors, and historical true crime enthusiasts.
Religious Conservatives Argue Adam And Eve Would Never Have Been Banished From Eden If They’d Had Guns
HOUSTON—In what they described as scriptural evidence of the right to bear arms, leading figures among the religious right gathered Wednesday to issue a statement arguing that Adam and Eve would never have been banished from the Garden of Eden if they had owned guns. “Just imagine: If Adam and Eve had carried firearms and stood their ground against God, they would have been able to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in peace, and He could never have forced them to leave paradise,†said Pastor Hugh Peters of Houston’s Second Baptist Church, explaining how the entire course of human history would have been altered for the better if the first man and woman had taken the simple precaution of keeping a semiautomatic weapon at the ready for use during emergencies. “God was trespassing on their property, pure and simple. He had absolutely no right to force them from their home. Had Eve been able to open-carry a handgun, maybe tying it to her hip with a vine or something, God would have known to back off. This is one of the Bible’s most important lessons.â€
God didn’t make men equal, after all. That was Samuel Colt.
A Crescent Shotgun, manufactured 100+ years ago by the Crescent Fire Arms Company of Norwich, Connecticut. H.D. Folsom Arms, 314 Broadway, New York, N.Y. owned Crescent from 1893 to 1930, when they sold Crescent to Savage.
Any gun nut has undoubtedly seen some rusty, dusty old Crescent shotguns being sold as wall-hangers in Antique shops.
I was looking at the Double Gun Discussion Boards this morning and came upon the following (edited and abbreviated) thread:
Alan writes:
A few years back #1 son was given an old shotgun that had been laying on the floor of a barn. The stock was completely rotten. He stuck it in his own shed and gave it to me a year or so ago. I finally got around to nickeling the rust off of it, squared off the barrels that had been hacked back to 27″ and I’m working on getting a new stock. The fore end is still in good shape. All internals except the left trigger are in good shape. I need to find a trigger guard and a left side hammer.Oh, and yes, I know I am going to have the most expensive tomato stake on the block.
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Keith replies:
Alan, if you had asked before you started, my advice would have been to not waste any time on a Crescent… unless you just wanted to practice some gunsmithing techniques before working on something more valuable. They made a ton of Crescents and Crescent Gun Co. variants, and when you see them at gun shows, most have shown they did not stand the test of time very well. Even complete guns that are still in decent condition don’t sell for very much because they have no collector value.But since you are into it, and it beats just watching TV, you could start by doing searches on Ebay every few days. It’s only a matter of time before another one gets parted out and listed there. Unfortunately, there are a few purveyors of cheap worn out gun parts on Ebay lately that are selling a lot of junk with crazy-high starting bid prices. You have to sort through all that to find someone who isn’t smoking crack when they list their junk. I also see a LOT of Crescent parts in boxes of gun parts at gun shows. Most aren’t labeled, so you need to know exactly what you’re looking for.
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Alan replies:
I know it’s not going to be a collectors item and is certainly not worth the effort monetarily, but, as you pointed out, it is good practice and one of these days …..
and if not, it’ll be like that old fellow down the street who was cutting down a tree. He was having a devil of a time and I stopped and offered to help him, he declined. I insisted, … he stopped and looked me dead in the eye and said, “Alan, I’ve got the rest of my life to cut this tree down…”
I also like working on things that I really can’t screw up. This Crescent fits nicely into that category.
…
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And along comes RWTF:
Send me a picture or tracing of the right hand hammer, and include all pertinent dims. I may have a LH hammer in my “cigar boxed inventory” that might work– I have two trigger guard bows at present, both from field grade L.C. Smiths- pre-1913 with the two set screw holes– if that might give you something to work with. I have never worked on a Crescent shotgun, so this is just a “shot in the dark” but if I can assist with this restoration project, OK.
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And then, along comes Mark:
Alan, I have a box of Cresent parts. I am just back from a road trip. Give me a few days to get back in the swing. I don’t think I have any stocks but I may have a forend wood. If you don’t hear from me feel free to rattle my cage.
Think about it. All you have to do is find the right place on the Internet to ask, and you can actually reach people who have parts for (nobody-collects, essentially-valueless) Crescent Shotguns in cigar-boxes in their garage.
And some people think that all you have to do is pass a law and you could ban guns in this country!
The Sentinels of the Tomb of the Unkown Soldier hold among the most revered posts in the U.S. armed forces, so it makes sense that they should have a sidearm to match.
Sig Sauer will present a cache of four specially-designed 9mm M17 pistols to Tomb Guard Platoon of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), the company announced on Oct. 3.
Created to the same specs as the M17’s adopted as part of the Army’s Modular Handgun System and fielded to soldiers earlier this year, the ceremonial M17 Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Pistols are distinguished by a stainless steel slide and a custom wood and aluminum grip.
More importantly, each of the four pistols will have a unique name: Silence, Respect, Dignity, or Perseverance.
The names are tributes to the special mission of the Old Guard.
What is it like to fire an AR-15? It’s horrifying, menacing and very very loud.
It feels like a bazooka — and sounds like a cannon.
One day after 49 people were killed in the Orlando shooting, I traveled to Philadelphia to better understand the firepower of military-style assault weapons and, hopefully, explain their appeal to gun lovers.
But mostly, I was just terrified. …
I’ve shot pistols before, but never something like an AR-15. Squeeze lightly on the trigger and the resulting explosion of firepower is humbling and deafening (even with ear protection).
The recoil bruised my shoulder. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary case of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.
