{"id":134342,"date":"2021-04-25T12:39:24","date_gmt":"2021-04-25T16:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gunsamerica.com\/digest\/?p=134342"},"modified":"2021-04-25T12:39:24","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T01:27:09","slug":"hamers-hammer-the-remington-model-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/hamers-hammer-the-remington-model-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamer\u2019s Hammer: The Remington Model 8"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Hamer\u2019s
Dinosaurs were presumed to have died out due to some sudden cataclysmic event many years ago.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Scientists would have us believe that the dinosaurs died out some 65 million years ago. The Cretaceous-Tertiary (Abbreviated K-T\u2014the German word for Cretaceous is \u201cKreidzeit\u201d) Extinction Event is postulated to have been responsible for the mass die-off of countless dinosaurs, mammals, amphibians, and plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
There are a great many theories concerning what ultimately led to the demise of the dinosaurs. However, it seems one example actually lived well into the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Paleontologists theorize that the cause might have been some planetary plague, climate change, or a catastrophic meteor strike. However, I would assert that all that is wrong. Disputes regarding the relative age of the earth notwithstanding, the last surviving dinosaur actually passed away in 1955. His name was Frank Hamer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Origin Story<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Hamer\u2019s
The young Frank Hamer was the product of some rugged frontier upbringing. He was shot for the first time with a load of buckshot at age 16. The timely intervention by an African-American friend saved his life.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Francis Augustus Hamer was born in 1884 the son of a blacksmith in Fairview, Texas. Young Frank was one of five sons, four of whom ultimately grew up to become Texas Rangers. He was devoutly Presbyterian and spent many of his formative years in the Texas town of Oxford in Llano County. Oxford eventually dried up into a ghost town. Frank in his later years described himself as the only \u201cOxford-educated Ranger\u201d in Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
At age 21 Hamer undertook a citizen\u2019s arrest of a man who stole a horse and found that he was pretty good at it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Frank never made it past sixth grade. However, he was a naturally intelligent man with an analytical mind and a near-photographic memory. He worked in his father\u2019s blacksmith shop as a youngster as well as on a local ranch. In 1905 at age 21 he apprehended a horse thief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Frank Hamer\u2019s successful Law Enforcement career spanned decades.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The local sheriff was so impressed with Frank\u2019s abilities that he recommended he apply for the Texas Rangers. The following year Hamer did just that, launching himself on what would become a legendary 40-year career in Law Enforcement. He has been subsequently described as \u201cThe Greatest American Lawman of the 20th<\/sup> Century.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Professional Peace Officer<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Hamer\u2019s
Hamer is the fresh-faced kid on the left, and he was stone cold in a fight. The first criminal he killed was a bloodthirsty murderer named Ed Putnam holed up in a brothel. Hamer killed the man with a single round to the face from this Winchester Model 94 rifle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hamer served as a Ranger for decades, leaving the service to take other jobs in Law Enforcement before coming back for varying reasons. In 1908 he served as City Marshal in Navasota, Texas, a riotous boom town veritably awash in violence. During the course of two years, more than a hundred men were killed in brawls and shootouts. Hamer waded right in and started cracking heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Frank Hamer\u2019s Law Enforcement career began on horseback and extended into the modern era.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hamer worked the Texas border battling arms smugglers and bootleggers grown rich off of Prohibition. Sundry gunfights cemented his reputation as a frontier lawman with whom one should not trifle. In 1917 Hamer married Gladys Sims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Frank Hamer (left) was legendarily courteous, respectful, and polite around women. However, he was a holy terror in a gunfight.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, Gladys was the widow of one Ed Sims. Gladys and her brother had been charged with Ed\u2019s murder the year before. On October 1st<\/sup>, 1917, Frank and Gladys were filling up their car in Sweetwater when they bumped into Gus McMeans, Ed Sims\u2019 brother-in-law and himself a former Texas Ranger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Hamer is shown here standing on the left after he killed Ed Putnam. Putnam, an inveterate career killer, had been packing the newfangled Luger pistol the Ranger Captain in the foreground is now brandishing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Words were exchanged, and the two men slapped leather. When the smoke cleared Gus was dead–shot through the heart. Hamer was wounded, but the shoot was deemed righteous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Texas in the early 20th<\/sup> century was awash in guns. In the aftermath of a lethal gunfight with his wife\u2019s ex-brother-in-law the cops confiscated a full dozen firearms from the men\u2019s vehicles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A total of ten rounds had been fired. Police later confiscated seven revolvers, two semiautomatic pistols, and three rifles from Hamer and McMeans\u2019 two vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding His Stride<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Hamer\u2019s
Frank Hamer had a reputation for honesty and integrity. However, he did not suffer foolishness lightly.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1918 Texas State Representative Jose Tomas Canales was chairing an investigation into allegations of the abuse of citizens by the Rangers. Hamer stalked Canales around the Capital building and threatened to kill him. Canales reported this to the Governor, but Hamer was never disciplined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Hamer had little use for the KKK and saved some fifteen African-American men from lynch mobs during the course of his storied career.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1922 Hamer launched a crusade against the Ku Klux Klan. Along the way, he personally saved fifteen men from lynch mobs. In 1928 Hamer also put the collar on a murder-for-hire racket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Frank Hamer (right) had a reputation for doing the right thing no matter the consequences. He suffered multiple attempts on his life as a result.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Texas Bankers\u2019 Association had grown weary of bank robberies. They posted a bounty of $5,000 for \u201cdead bank robbers\u2014not one cent for live ones.\u201d Lawmen with flexible morals began whacking sundry ne\u2019er-do-wells and cashing in their cooling corpses at five grand per. Hamer exposed the undertaking as \u201cthe bankers\u2019 murder machine,\u201d and heads rolled. This earned Hamer few friends among the banking clans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Governor Ma Ferguson was a genuine piece of work. She ascended to the Texas Governorship after her crooked husband was impeached.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Texas politics was a sordid thing in the early 1930s. The Governor, \u201cPa\u201d Ferguson, was impeached and removed from office for sundry maleficence. His wife, Miriam \u201cMa\u201d Ferguson, was later elected. Frank Hamer then quit the Rangers stating, \u201cWhen they elected a woman Governor, I quit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frank Hamer\u2019s Masterwork<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Hamer\u2019s
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow ultimately killed nine law officers during their reign of terror.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the early 1930s, the lurid exploits of the Motorized Bandit captivated the country. In a nation torn apart by the Great Depression, impoverished Americans lived vicariously through the likes of John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and Al Capone. Among the Tier 1 gangsters were Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Bonnie and Clyde killed wantonly and had to be stopped.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bonnie and Clyde\u2019s exploits have been explored here previously. Here\u2019s the link: Bonnie and Clyde article<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Don\u2019t let the care-free visages fool you. There is some debate as to whether or not Bonnie ever actually shot anybody, but Clyde was an undeniably cold-blooded killer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Suffice to say that these two love-struck outlaws tore across the country stealing money and shooting their way out of trouble. The American public was actually fairly taken with the two right up until they undertook the execution-style slayings of a pair of Highway Patrol motorcycle officers on a rural Texas highway on Easter Sunday 1934.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Though Frank Hamer looks like a sensitive introspective soul here, he likely set out to kill Bonnie and Clyde.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Eliminating Bonnie and Clyde became a crusade for American Law Enforcement. Multiple LE organizations established task forces to neutralize the pair. Meanwhile, Hamer was brought out of retirement, commissioned as an officer in the Texas Highway Patrol, and given the mandate to stop Bonnie and Clyde by any means necessary. His specific directive was \u201cput \u2018em on the spot, know you\u2019re right\u2014and shoot everybody in sight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Maney Gault was Frank Hamer\u2019s friend and fellow Ranger. He was later described as being \u201cAs taciturn as a turtle in a drought.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Alongside his old Ranger friend Maney Gault, Hamer hunted the couple for some 102 days. Accompanied by five other heavily-armed lawmen, Hamer set up an ambush for the pair near Gibsland, Louisiana. Hamer arranged a ruse to get the outlaws to stop their car thinking a friend needed help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
  The Remington Model 8 was the first successful autoloading rifle sold for public consumption. It was a popular Law Enforcement weapon as well.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A local Deputy Sheriff named Prentiss Oakley initiated the ambush by shooting Barrow through the head with a Remington Model 8 rifle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
Here are a few of the weapons used in the Bonnie and Clyde ambush. The Monitor BAR at the top was wielded by Ted Hinton. Maney Gault fired the Remington Model 8 below it. The cut-down Remington Model 11 shotgun at the bottom was rumored to have been Bonnie Parker\u2019s Whippit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The posse fired about 160 rounds total through a variety of weapons to include a Colt Monitor BAR. When the dust settled the two criminals were cut to pieces. Locals could hear the gunfire for miles and presumed that loggers were clearing trees with dynamite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frank Hamer\u2019s Rifle<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Hamer\u2019s
This ornate engraved Model 8 was a gift to Captain Hamer from the Remington Company after a shooting exhibition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Hamer\u2019s
Captain Hamer\u2019s Model 8 included an extended magazine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For the Bonnie and Clyde ambush, Hamer was packing a customized Model 8 chambered in .35 Remington. His rifle was serial number 10045 purchased through Petmeckey\u2019s Sporting Goods Store in Austin. Hamer had replaced the standard fixed magazine with an extended twenty-round version he had obtained through Peace Officers Equipment Company in St. Joseph, Missouri.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
The Remington Model 8 was a sleek and effective rifle that was popular with both cops and civilians alike.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Model 8 was the product of the inimitable mind of John Moses Browning. Browning patented the design in 1900 and sold the US production rights to Remington. Essentially the same gun was produced by FN in Belgium for international customers marketed as the Model 1900.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
As the Model 8 operates via the long recoil system the barrel slides rearward inside a drawn steel tube.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Model 8 was the first successful semiautomatic rifle sold to American civilians. More than 80,000 copies were produced. The Model 8 operated via the long recoil system philosophically similar to that of the Browning Auto-5 shotgun. In the case of the Model 8, the recoil spring wraps around the barrel within a steel shroud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamer\u2019s
The action of the Remington Model 8 rifle was mechanically elegant. Note the cutout in the top of the receiver cover for stripper clip loading from the top.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The bolt locked to the barrel via a rotating bolt head. Upon firing, the bolt and barrel recoiled back as a single unit. At the rearmost point of travel, the bolt was held to the rear, while a separate spring system returned the barrel forward into firing position. This separation extracted the empty case. Once the barrel settled into place the bolt was released to pick up another round and lock it in position for firing. Here\u2019s a cool video of the gun in action\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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