Conference foundr::firearms

      Last night A&E had a 4 hour segment on the "Story of the Gun". It was a 
fairly detailed history of firearms development.  The only critizism I would 
raise was the focus on firearms soley as implements of war and crime, with a
virtual vacuum regarding firearms for recreation/competition or self defense.
They never said guns are "bad" or that they are "dangerous", but they showed
lots of warfare footage with only a few clips of the Buffalo Bill's Wild West
Show trick shooting to suggest there might be some other non-criminal use for
them. 

    I was surpirsed the M1-carbine was included in their list of significant
development steps, but they made no mention of the M14 or the Lee-Enfield.
Perhaps the Enfield was too similar to the Mauser and Springfield to be worthy
of mention and they jumped from the BAR of WWII to the assault rifles (AK47 and
M16).  They did spend more than a few minutes on the 30-40 Krag though,
mentioning that it was the shortest lived rifle in the US arsenal (I wonder if
the M14 isn't right in there with it;-);-)) There was almost no mention of the
double-action revolver or DA autos, though they spent a lot of time on the
Peacemaker, a little on the M1911 and made no mention at all of the Browning
Hi-Power or the Beretta 92. 

    The only mention of any "gun-control" legislation was the NFA '34. All in
all I thought it was fairly well done, but I thought they could have been a
bit more balanced on the current day function of firearms in our society.

You could/can order the 4 tape set for $80 if you wanted...

Al

    
     Hi,
    
     Unfortunately,most of the history of the firearm,which received the
    most press,and therefore living memory documentation,has been the dark
    side of the tool. It was not worthy of note to document all the
    meat,which has been supplied by the family 30-30,which in it's self
    was a noteworthy developement,of the 19th century. As a tool,no family
    could be without it for many generations. Only recently,in the later
    half of this century,do we find more households without guns,than
    households with guns. When I say without guns I mean,the ones where a
    firearm has no use to them,there may be grandpas rifle in the
    corner,but it could not be used,without a training session,by someone 
    outside the household. 
    
     Joe
    
    

<    side of the tool. It was not worthy of note to document all the
<    meat,which has been supplied by the family 30-30,which in it's self
<    was a noteworthy developement,of the 19th century. As a tool,no family

  I fouond it interesting that the show did comment that during the settling
of the west, the sod-busters, the farmers etc mostly had shotguns as they were
simple to repair, compared to the rifle, they were inexpensive compared to the
rifle and were deadly efficient at taking small game and detering raiders. 

Al    

Didn't see any better place to but this...

   Those who follow this conference know I'm not a big Wayne LaPierre fan but..

Anyone see his "Standing Guard" column in the latest American Rifleman?  He was
poking fun at Charles Schumer (always great sport) by detailing the possible
penalties for a "typical" gun-runner.  Schumer & company are sponsering
tougher penalties for out-of-state purchases of firearms and mockingly have
referred to the existing federal laws as "minimum".  LaPierre goes into great
detail using a hypothetical 5 gun illegal purchase and shows the 1000 year +
sentence (much of it mandatory) if only the existing laws were enforced.  It's
real interesting reading for awhile, but gets ludicrous as he gets toward the
end of the second page (which I'm sure was intentional to hammer home the point
he was trying to make.) 

    If you skipped that column, it would be worth your while to go read it. I'm
very tempted to send a letter to the editor using that column as a reference..

Al