Historical Guns

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West houses five museums, but I was there to check out the Cody Firearms Museum.

During World War 2 the German Tiger tank earned an outsized reputation among those who faced it.

In the winter of 2004 a joint US, Iraqi, and British operation kicked off in Iraq. Local forces called it Operation Al-Fajr. Allied troops titled it Operation Phantom Fury. The world came to know this simply epic scrap as the Second Battle of Fallujah.

There is something visceral about the last stand. A small forlorn band bereft of support arrayed against insurmountable odds fighting to the last simply strikes a primal chord. Examples are well-documented. The Hot Gates at Thermopylae, Custer’s slaughter, and the Alamo stand out. These many tales of selfless bravery are profound and powerful. One lesser-known example is the siege of Bukit Kepong.

Why the heck couldn’t they have just left this poor guy alone? He lived in a cabin about the size of a large dinner table some sixty miles from civilization. He clearly just wanted to be by himself. Yet the Canadian government just couldn’t stand it.

The similarities between Roy Chapman Andrews and the fictional Indiana Jones were uncanny.

I don’t carry a gun every day because I am paranoid or insecure. I carry a gun because my family and I share the planet with homicidal lunatics like Marc Lépine. If you feel differently then good for you. Do whatever you want, just leave me alone to make my own choices. There was exactly one thing that could have stopped Marc Lépine on that horrible day in 1989, and it wasn’t some ill-conceived piece of feel-good legislation. It was a good guy with a gun. 

Have you ever made an impulse purchase that was way out of your wheelhouse, but it looked like such a good deal you had to go for it? Me neither. Okay, that isn’t actually true. But just because I make a serious, serious mistake doesn’t mean I don’t write about it on the internet. So that others may learn. Or have a good laugh. Or maybe both this time.

Dan White was a trained soldier, a combat veteran, and an experienced police officer. He knew how to run a gun. White drew his revolver and shot Moscone twice, once in the shoulder and again in the chest, perforating the man’s lung. White then shot Moscone twice at close range through the ear, killing him. Bystanders later reported that they took the sound for a car backfiring.