Historical Guns

Howard Unruh was technically the third prolific spree killer in American history. However, his utter cold-blooded ruthlessness set a template for countless psychopathic losers to come.

It is tough to imagine the sorts of men who would go to war in such conditions as these. The airplanes were canvas, and they had no parachutes. With balls that big how did they ever get off the ground?

In 1968, American troops in Vietnam reported scattered incidents where dead NVA soldiers were found with parts of their exploded rifles protruding from their skulls. Technical Intelligence attributed this to poor metallurgy and bad ammunition. The situation was a little more complicated than it appeared.

In 1966 Kim Il-sung directed the formation of an elite assassination squad titled Unit 124. Comprised solely of commissioned officers from the Korean People’s Army, Unit 124 trained relentlessly for two years for a single mission.

The Land Pattern Musket and its derivatives were in use for 116 years of official service and close to 160 years of actual use with many incremental changes in its design. It remained in production for 140 years, making the Brown Bess’ production one of the longest production runs for a firearm in history.

Marriage, divorce, graduation, and retirement can all be challenging for their own unique reasons as well. Periods of transition in military history, however, are invariably bloody.

Novel, unique, and oddly effective within its admittedly narrow applications, the American 180 is an artifact of the golden age of gun design.

Though hardly what might be considered air combat in the Space Age, in January of 1968 the crew chief on an Air America Huey helicopter did indeed bring down an enemy biplane with an AK47.

The archetypal Old West gunfight was largely the product of pulp fiction writers’ vivid imaginations. However, there were a few frontier shootings and a few frontier shootists that were legitimately larger than life.