In this video from last year, a young British authority explains that side-by-side shotguns are now considered passé and are declining in price (one ray of sunshine!) and he advises taking up the over-and-under (boo! hiss!)

—————————–

Personally, I not only prefer side-by-sides, I prefer side-by-side hammer guns. You know what Lord Ripon said about hammerless shotguns? He called them: “spaniels without ears.”

Frederick Oliver Robinson, 2nd Marquess of Ripon, GCVO, FRS (29 January 1852 – 23 September 1923), who once had six pheasants dead in the air at the same time. Lord Ripon shot so fast that he was able once to down 28 pheasants in sixty seconds as a shooting party guest on the Sandringham House estate. He also holds the record of the greatest recorded lifetime bag of birds shot: 556,000, including 241,000 pheasants.

On the Double Gun Discussion Board, there recently was a short discussion of the Nemrod Toggle Action Fusil Superposé (Over-and-Under Shotgun), a strange and interesting contrivance out of St. Etienne.

There’s one of these cool guns for sale right now on the French Outdoor Auction site Natura Buy for €1100, not a totally appalling price, but unfortunately we lost our Freedom long ago and Big Brother won’t allow you or me to import a firearm. No, no, no! We have to use a specialized importer who, poor chap! must fill out forms roughly the size of the Holy Bible and must grovel to the minimum wage security staff at Customs. Consequently, his service fee is large, typically about a grand a gun.

Last 20th of September a similar gun went for a mere £600 (plus buyer’s premium, I expect) at Holt’s.

This video is hamming it up a bit by using footage of ladies who have obviously not been properly familiarized with how to hold or use those shotguns, but it certainly delivers an effective rebuttal to the Vice President. Obviously, not every woman who one day finds herself needing to defend herself and her home is going to have previously acquired good shotgun handling skills.