Historical Guns

The Guinness Book lists the carnage in Ramree Island’s mangrove swamps as the worst example of crocodile predation on humans in history. There were 500 or so troops who remained unaccounted for that night. Theirs was an undeniably ghastly end.

The Smadge kept me in shape, taught me discipline, showed me how to run a rifle, and started me down the path toward becoming a real soldier myself. A deeply flawed man, he was nonetheless undeniably hardcore.

One small tragic drama played out on the front porch of a plantation house during a hot summer afternoon outside Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Famous from battlefields around the world, the Russian designed RPK (Ruchnoy Pulemyot Kalashnikova, is literally named “Kalashnikov’s hand-held machine gun”.

It’s a timeless question. Nature versus nurture. Does greatness stem from some simple combination of nucleotides embedded within your DNA, or is it something that can be coaxed, taught, or trained?

The scale of destruction wrought during the Second World War was unprecedented. Such carnage is literally unimaginable today.

US military handguns have not been sold to citizens as surplus weapons in quite a long time. Given the current political climate, it’s really hard to tell how long the CMP will keep getting 1911s to sell. I am really happy with the pistol I received, and I believe you will be as well if you get one. If you’re a diehard 1911 fan, these are a must and they’re definitely worth the wait. It’s not every day that you can buy a real piece of history.

The war in Vietnam was winding down, and Michael Thornton was one of only a dozen Navy SEALs remaining in the country. On October 31, 1972, Thornton formed a team along with a SEAL officer named Thomas Norris and three South Vietnamese Special Forces operators.

Ernest Hemingway was an extraordinarily gifted writer. Sadly, his personal demons eventually got the better of him. Regardless, whether it was fighting alongside the French Resistance, hunting dangerous game in Africa, or battling hungry sharks with a Tommy gun, Papa Hemingway lived life to the full. He was indeed the archetypal Renaissance Man.