Nice parody of 1900-era Remington/Western/Winchester ads.

2010 Annie Leibovitz photograph depicts Annie Oakley 1920 Heart target with bullet hole.

Gun Broker 608595665:

WWII JAPANESE TYPE 99 ARISAKA RIFLE W/ MUM-MATCHING DUSTCOVER-MONOPOD-AA-CLEANING ROD

38 bids — Sold for $1,985.00

Described:

Good condition WWII Japanese Type 99 Arisaka rifle in 7.7mm caliber that has a full untouched mum on the receiver and was manufactured as part of the 31st Series by Toyo Kogyo. Rifle is NOT import marked and has all matching serial numbers including receiver, bolt body, extractor, safety, and firing pin. Gun is complete with original cleaning rod, anti-aircraft rear sight wings, monopod, and matching numbered dustcover. Metal finish is original blue showing some normal wear. Bore is bright and excellent with strong rifling. Stock has been sanded and refinished and has nice mellow finish. A classic T-99, hard to find with all matching numbers including dustcover.

Did some identify the ownership marks of Musashi Miyamoto on this thing somewhere? There used to be barrel-fulls of these for sale in Antique Stores for $15 a piece. Why would anybody pay that price for an Arisaka (especially one with a sanded stock?)

Major collector Peter McManus, in his One Man’s Gun Quest — 50 Years of Gun Collecting, describes the economics of his first gun.

When I was about 13 I was given my first firearm: an 1860 .577 Enfield military muzzleloading rifle, though I never use that as a rifle with a solid bullet.

So this was a new dimension!

I made my own gunpowder, using potassium chloride, not potassium nitrate (don’t do it!). A quarter pound cocoa tin served as a powder flask.

The bowl of a clay pipe was an excellent powder and shot measure and another quarter pound cocoa tin was used as a shot flask.

Shot, however, was a problem! Lead shot was used when pocket money would run to it but many other alternatives were tried: I experimented with D. I. Y. lead shot but it was pear-shaped and irregular in size: Not satisfactory at all. How to make it? You don’t want to know as it could be dangerous!

Tin tacks were good, but expensive! Gravel was tried, but without success: don’t bother with it! Used ball bearings: okay, but difficult to obtain. For wadding I used a wodge of rolled up newspaper: a thick one over the powder charge and a thin one over the shot charge to hold it in position.

Percussion caps? Couldn’t afford them! The alternative was a pair of paper caps, as used in toy guns, wedged into the hammer. This was surprisingly effective, most of the time, though you could occasionally get a hang fire.
Hang fires were not good! You would pull the trigger, hear the caps fire, but fail to ignite the charge. As you took the gun from your shoulder it would belatedly go off! Potentially dangerous, of course, but no harm was ever done.

My parents ran a guesthouse: Stella Maris, 34/35 West Parade opposite Rhyl Pavilion. On one occasion I decided to fire a clay marble at the back gate of Stella Maris. It would, I reasoned, be bound to shatter on impact as the marble was far too small for the board. Only a light charge of powder was used but, to my horror, the marble went straight through the gate. Virtually no one was walking by at the time but was the kind of experiment I never repeated.

My understanding is that we cannot even buy caps in America anymore.

From Litanie Du Misanthrope via Ratak Monodosico.

How many rounds does it take to cut a telephone pole in half?

Remember that Winchester Model 1873 Rifle found abandoned for most of a century, left leaning up against a tree in Great Basin National Park back in November of 2014?

It’s been examined, dated, and conserved and is now on display at Lehman Caves Visitor Center, part of Great Basin National Park, in Baker, Nevada.

The late Dahir A. Adan

Bearing Arms tells us a lot more about the chap who stopped the St. Cloud, MN knife attacks than the MSM has.

Boy, did that Muslim ever pick the wrong guy to try to attack with a knife!

USPSA Shooter, 3-Gunner, and NRA-certified firearms instructor Jason Falconer has been identified as the man who shot and killed a 22-year-old Somali immigrant who went on a stabbing rampage inside a St. Cloud, (MN) Mall on Saturday.

The apparent terrorist—who apparently asked victims if they were Muslims before stabbing them—was engaged by Falconer inside the mall.

Falconer is the president and owner of Tactical Advantage LLC, a shooting range and tactical training facility with a strong focus on arming concealed carriers. He’s also a former chief of the Albany (MN) police department, and he remains a part-time officer.

But Falconer has consistently been identified in the mainstream media only as as a “former police chief” and “off-duty police officer.” …

A knife-wielding suspect who was dressed in a private security uniform and made references to Allah while attacking at least nine people during a mass stabbing incident at the Crossroads Center shopping mall was shot dead by an off-duty police officer from Avon, authorities said.

Jason Falconer, former police chief of Albany, Minn., was shopping when he confronted the suspect.

At a press conference at the police department just after noon on Sunday, St. Cloud Mayor David Kleis said he believes Falconer prevented additional injuries and loss of life.

“Clearly he is a hero. Officer Falconer was there at the right time and the right place.”

Kleis said the end of the attack and the final confrontation could be seen on video from the Macy’s store. Describing the video, which did not have audio, Kleis said the suspect clearly had a knife in hand, and lunged at Falconer, who fired at him. The suspect fell, then got back up three times before the fatal shot.

Jason Falconer

From the November/December American Handgunner (paywall) Reader Speakout Column, p.18, titled “Military 1911 Shooting,” Robert Johnson discusses the 1911A1’s loose tolerances:

After I received my [Marine Corps] commission as an officer, this gave me the right to carry a sidearm. An old Gunny told me: “Get one that rattles, it’ll never jam on ‘ya.” Well, the Gunny was right. I wasn’t a great pistol shot, but the old 1911A1 never missed a beat. In my two tours in exotic Southeast Asia (’68 and ’69) I used the pistol on a couple of occasions, and true to form, it never missed a beat. When I got back to the land of the Big PX I went out to the firing range and got the same results Roy did: 3-3 1/2″ at 25 yards. I still have that old warhorse, and from time to time I touch it off on my backyard range.

The emotions keep flooding back overtime, then.

You are thinking “the Colt Patterson of 1836,” aren’t you?

This video and stories all over the Internet attribute this 8-shot very early flintlock revolver on the basis of the maker’s mark to Hans Stopler of Nuremburg, who apparently began working in 1597. They then date the weapon to 1597, despite the plaque listing its owner as Georg von Reichwein dated 1636.

1636 is early enough for me, making the date of the production of the first revolver an even 200 years before Samuel Colt’s Patterson model.

Hat tip to Guns America.

From Ian McCollum, a very odd, downright steampunk, one-of-a-kind European prototype revolver.

Rock Island Auction September 9 – 11, 2016, Lot 1359, estimated price $2500-4000.