Ninety years ago today, a group of police officers entered a Chicago garage to confront a group of gangster-bootleggers as they unloaded a shipment of illegal hooch. Except the officers weren’t real…they were from a rival gang. A couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to get some “hands-on history” time with the guns […]
Back in 2017, I wrote an “Obscure Object of Desire” piece for TTAG about the AA-12 shotgun. Check it out here. Fast forward to the 2019 SHOT Show Industry Day at the Range, and I had one of my dreams come true: I got to shoot one of these full-auto bad boys! The entire AA-12 […]
Harvard and Yale have long been rivals in many ways. One that doesn’t often come to mind is the rivalry between their shooting teams. While little known, it has a long history: both schools founded shooting clubs within a few years of each other in the early 1880s. Within a decade, headlines regarding match results […]
On March 29, 1911, Lt. Col. John T. Thompson of the U.S. Ordnance Department sent a letter to Colt’s in Hartford, Connecticut. The purpose was to inform them that the military testing held at Springfield Armory just two weeks prior had concluded and John Moses Browning’s 1911 design produced by Colt had come out on […]
The AR-15 market has never given buyers more choices than it does now. The number of companies making them is virtually countless. Price points are equally plentiful, which means that anyone and everyone can afford to own one. With so many options out there, how does one get started without spending a fortune? There are […]
Smith & Wesson introduced their J-frame revolvers to the world in 1950. The Chief’s Special – later, the Model 36 – became a popular gun for concealed carry because of its small size and lightweight design. Over the decades, other models have evolved from the original Chief’s Special design, including the lightweight Model 360 in […]
By the middle of the 19th century, arms production in the United States was changing. The concept of interchangeable parts had become the primary goal at the Federal armories. If this was to be achieved, then a set of agreed upon design parameters had to be established. Unfortunately, production standards varied widely in previous decades. […]
When Smith & Wesson introduced the now-legendary Registered Magnum in 1935, the United States was in the middle of the Great Depression. Even so, that didn’t stop them from offering what was their most expensive revolver to date. The entire gun was a custom order. You chose the barrel length (anything between 3 1/2″ and […]
“Dr. Coult of New York, London and Calcutta.” That’s how the up-and-coming firearm inventor billed himself while exhibiting the effects of nitrous oxide in the 1830s. Traveling the country as a “practiced chemist,” Colt used the nitrous demonstrations as a way to raise money for the development of his firearms. In October 1833, an ad […]
In the waning days of 1928, John C. Garand filed a patent application for a “High Speed Firing Mechanism.” At the same time, he was working diligently at Springfield Armory in Massachusetts, developing the rifle that would soon bear his name. The patent, which was granted in November 1930 and assigned to the Lyman Gun […]
Easy-to-conceal palm pistols were all the rage during the last quarter of the 19th century. Numerous companies produced countless variations of very similar designs. One design was, however, quite different from the rest. Enter the “Little All Right” by the Wright Arms Co. of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Patented in 1876 by Edward Boardman and Andrew Peavey, […]
Horace Smith and Daniel Baird Wesson officially began Smith & Wesson on November 18, 1856. Company records in possession of Smith & Wesson historian Roy Jinks reveal what it cost to get the company up and running. Mr. Smith contributed $1,663 and Mr. Wesson contributed $2,003.68. Why the amounts are odd numbers is anyone’s […]
