Posted on 06/09/2008 5:11:08 AM PDT by marktwain
I came into this world in July of 1926, the 150th birthday of America. It was fitting. My maker, Smith & Wesson in Massachusetts, created me to be a comfort to the law abiding citizen and a tool in the hands of those who would protect America.
I weighed - but I see it in your eyes. You really don't want to know my specs, do you. How much I weighed, how long my barrel was, the fact that I was chambered for a .38 special. No, you're like most of the other people who aren't sure about guns. Who think that all guns are made for just one purpose - to kill people.
You want to know just how many people I've killed. I'm sorry...but you're going to have to wait just a little bit for that part of the story. There's a lot to tell between here and there.
My first owner bought me in a little gun shop in West Virginia just outside our nation's Capitol. Sheriff George, that's what every one called him, had just won election as the county sheriff. He wanted something that he thought was going to give him the protection he needed with what he could afford in his meager budget. No new-fangled semi-automatic for him. Sheriff wanted something he could trust with his life. He always said, "They call it the Military & Police for a reason."
I was a beauty back then. Deep blue... with wood grips that shone with a luster. A fine, fine piece of American craftsmanship if I do say so about myself. And I was proud to be part of Sheriff George's career. His was a rural county and we never knew what the day would bring. Mostly good people, you understand, but there's always someone who wants to take advantage of someone else.
Sheriff George took good care of me. But he worked me hard. Fired dozens of bullets out of me each week. But never in anger. And never at anyone. It was all either down at the county range or at the local dump, where we made a deadly team keeping the rat population down. Sheriff George always said nothing could train a shooting eye better than picking of a running rat at a hundred paces. He sure didn't seem to miss many. And several generations of boys learned about life, honesty, and being a man while helping Sheriff George keep the rats down. A select few even got to shoot me at a rat.
I rode on Sheriff George's hip for 17 years. Until Junior came home from college and told the Sheriff and Mrs. that he and his whole class at the University was joining the Army.
I still remember the day that Junior was going away on the train. Cold day for summer. Rainy. Maybe that explained the moisture on everyone's faces.
The Sheriff pulled him aside under an awning; gave him a box and said, "Open it."
Junior opened it an saw me, nestled between cleaning rages and supplies.
"This old gun has protected me since right after you were born," said the Sheriff. "And I want to know that he's protecting you in the Army."
With lots of hugging and loud voices proclaiming everything was going to be all right and yes, everyone would try to write at least once a week, Junior's train finally chugged out of the station. And I began a new chapter in my life.
I'd like to say I saw action across Europe with Patton, or to have landed in Normandy, but I didn't. I never left the box that Junior's father had given him and Junior never left England when he arrived. Turns out that Junior had a real flair for getting needed resources from one area to another, and he spent the entire war behind a desk. Oh, I'm sure he helped save many of our boys' lives with his ability to have the right supplies just where needed the most, but it meant that I spent the next few years gathering dust. Junior just wasn't the shooter that he father was, and although he ensured that I was kept safely he never found the time to go out shooting.
I did have a number of offers, though. Quite of few of those foreign soldiers took a real fancy to me when Junior showed me off. I sometimes wonder how it would have turned out for me if he had sold me. But that would have been like selling a piece of his family he always said.
Even though I spent the war in a box, I was prepared. I was willing to do my duty to defend the country that made me. But one day it came to an end. And Junior took the long ship home from England back to West Virginia.
But I didn't go back to Sheriff George. While we were overseas the Sheriff got into his first real gun fight with a piece of lowlife trash who thought he could rob the grocery in the next town. The Sheriff was a peace officer and he really believed that. He thought that with the right persuasion most everyone could see reason - and it worked for him every time but that one June day. By the time he understood that the man was just faking a stomach cramp the man had already straightened out and shot Sheriff George point blank in the chest.
Seems he was on the run from the Virgina police for a lot of nasty stuff over there, and he was more than willing to kill to keep from going back and accounting for himself. He never was brought to trial. No need to. Even with a .25 caliber bullet in his heart Sheriff George managed to pull his gun, my replacement, and put five rounds into the man.
I like to believe that if I was there that day I would have somehow kept the Sheriff from being hurt. It was my job and I wasn't there.
Junior put me in the back of the closet when he came home and there I stayed for ten years. Then he sold me to a gentleman from two counties over. Sometimes life is full of little surprises.
But I grew to really enjoy my new owner. He was retired military like Junior but he never got tired of the excitement of matching his skills against others. I was still very fundamentally sound, and really hardly used at all even after all those years. He took me to a gunsmith and had me slicked up, and outfitted with the nicest trigger job you can imagine. There wasn't a shooting match for years that he didn't dominate with me as his partner. Those were the days where I was almost as happy as I was with Sheriff George. I wasn't protecting the community as I had been, but I was in the hands of a man who loved me, and I stayed in his nightstand every night guarding his family.
And then in 1970 I got stolen. By a criminal. And began the darkest period of my life. Passed from hand to hand to hand. Some times traded for a couple bottles of booze, or a twenty dollar bill here or there. I once was even traded for a one-night stand with some pimp's whore. Before I knew it I was somewhere outside Atlanta, Georgia.
In the process someone took a hacksaw to my beautiful barrel and chopped off an inch. Someone else took a grinder to my hammer spur and ground it down half way down. I was hideous looking. I don't even want to think about it.
Convenience store robberies, strong arm robberies, even a sexual assault or two. I was forced to participate in them all. I was designed to protect people. To help the innocent. If a gun has a soul mine was beginning to despair that I would ever again be able to be the gun I was made to be.
Sometimes I was even left along for long periods. Once for even five years, tucked away behind a wall where no one could find me. I thought I was going to spend eternity there, but I was happy that I no longer was being used to hurt people.
All this time I was never ever fired. At all. Not in anger, not for intimidation. Not even for practice. By now I was so dirty that I feared that anyone attempting to fire me would find that it was safer being in front of my barrel instead of behind it.
But the peaceful life I was living, if you could call it that, ended when a teen drug dealer was looking for a new place to hid his stash. His day was made and thoughts of power began running through his head - especially about ripping off his new supplier that very night. Keep the money... keep the drugs also. What could be easier. And I saw my future was never going to get better, only worse.
But much to my new owner's surprise, and certainly mine also, his new supplier turned out to be an undercover policeman who had busted a lot of teenage drug dealers with illusions of power. He was more than able to grab my cylinder and clout the kid upside the head with a pretty good smack. Turns out the dealer hadn't even bothered to load me.
So I sat again. This time in the evidence room. Surrounded by other guns of all kinds, and every known tool that could be picked up and harm someone. I laid next to a hoe for five years. Not the kind that is out on the streets but the gardening kind. Seems a man couldn't agree with his wife over where the tomatoes should go in the garden and whacked her a couple of times with it to "get her attention."
They tried to track down my owner, but back when I was stolen the record keeping in that part of the country was less than efficient. So I sat.
Then one day about a month ago all of us gun were loaded up and dumped into boxes. We were taken into a large room filled with people of all kinds. It turns out the department was auctioning off the older guns no longer needed to authorized firearms dealers in order to raise money for new weapons. Those new-fangled semi-automatics that apparently really seem to have caught on.
I had one bid. Ten dollars. And I was sold.
Five days later, with nothing more than a wipe with a rag to get the dust off, I was in a gun show with hundreds of guns on the table. No one looked at me but I could hardly blame them. Ugly, filthy, and most of my finish gone. One of my grips had been cracked in half and fixed with duct tape. Duct tape! My price was fifty dollars. Most people there would not have taken me for free.
But I knew that I was mechanically sound. Almost as good as the day I left the factory. Smith & Wesson built me strong for a purpose. Cosmetically I was junk. Inside I was still a beauty if only people could see it.
Towards the end of the show one man did stop and pick me up. He offered twenty dollars for me, and told the dealer that it was a shame an old gun like me had been so abused that I was worthless but he could strip a few parts from me. They settled for twenty five.
And so that was to be the end of me. Dismantled and junked. Even so... better than where I had been the past 28 years.
But I wasn't.
My new owner knew guns. And he saw what no one else saw. A old charger that was still more than capable of being useful with just a little be of love. Well, okay. A lot of love.
He took me to his gunsmith the next weekend and told him to do what was necessary to make me workable.
I was cleaned, and cleaned again. I was sandblasted and lost all my original finish, but then, miracle of miracles, I was given a brand new finish. Not that I'll ever look as good as I did with my factory finish... but this one looks pretty good. My insides were all brought back to specs, and the gunsmith marveled at just how well I had stood up all those years.
And fancy rubber grips!
I found myself with another half inch off from my barrel, but this time with all the care in the world, and with it recrowned and 100% fully functional. My hammer was left ground down, but it was smoothed off and made so that it could still be used if necessary, but it wouldn't catch on anything.
But what was I to be used for? That was the question.
My new owner only had me for a few days. But it wasn't like the last time that I went through revolving owners, if you pardon the pun. After he got me back from the gunsmith he took me to the range with his girlfriend and they put several boxes of .38 specials through me. There's quite a difference in those rounds between then and now, let me tell you. It was quite a kick. But I was built to take anything that was put into my cylinder, and I did.
He gave me to his girlfriend, Suzie. She loved me as much as he did. And it seems that she had a real problem with someone who had gotten fired from where she worked. He blamed her for what he considered a ruined life. He had made several threatening phone calls to her, and had been seen hanging around outside her place of employment.
All I knew was that I had my purpose back... my mission. To protect the innocent from harm.
Last night we were coming home together. I was in Suzie's purse, in a special holster designed just to allow a woman to carry a gun there. I was getting used to a new normal after only a few days. And everything did seem normal.
Except that her former co-worker had worked up enough drunken courage to carry out his threats. Some people just can't cope with life.
As she stepped up to open her car door the sliding door on the van next to us opened, and he stumbled out with a big kitchen type knife in his hand. Suzie froze as he began waving the knife in her face and uttering threats that I don't even want to repeat. Even the low-life drug dealers that owned me never spoke to a woman that way.
Suzie was frozen like a statue, and I knew that I was going to have to face the agony of knowing that I was going to lose another owner... another friend that I could do nothing to save. I was there, ready to be used. But Suzie had to do what she had to do by herself.
Suddenly Suzie opened her eyes wide, and looking over her attacker's shoulder whispered, "Oh, the police are coming."
He turned to look, and lowered the knife. By the time he saw there was no police in view and turned back to us Suzie had me out of the purse and pointed at him.
Yes, to answer your question that you've been waiting so patiently for. I have taken a life. Last night. A drunken sot who refused to accept that a woman with a gun is more than his equal, even if he is armed with a knife and alcohol fueled rage. He took one step forward towards Suzie, and it was just like the hundreds of times that I have been at the dump. The bullet was on target, the rat was killed dead, and an innocent was saved.
Now I am back in the police evidence room. It seems like some things never change. But they told Suzie that I should be back out and in her custody with a few weeks. Just some paperwork with the prosecuting attorney's office. They found in the van a suicide note detailing just what Suzie's attacker had planned for her. After reading that the only criticism the police gave Suzie is that she should have emptied the whole cylinder into him just to be sure.
And I will remain Suzie's protector until she no longer needs me. Then, hopefully, someone else will give me a home where I can do what I was built to do. Defend the innocent.
So glad Suzie doesn’t live in NYC.
This story could fit a million guns or more.
I have the gun my ex wife used to kill her boyfriend.
My career Army (Airborne) dad bought a new S&W Combat Masterpiece right before he went to Korea in the 50’s. A really well designed and functional gun. I remember it well. For some reason he later traded it for a S&W model 36 with someone.
I was really disappointed about that. I had hoped to inherit the gun that my dad had carried in Korea. I talked with him before he passed away and he expressed regret at the trade.
Ok...you can't just leave it like that...what's the whole story?
Or the UK.
The Gun is Civilization
by Marko Kloos of the
Munchkin Wrangler blog
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat—it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed.
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.
Well, 1st let me tell you I had a pretty horrible marriage. By 1991, I had already thrown my ex out of the house (drugs, booze, etc.). I did let her come around to see the kids as long as she left her lifestyle elsewhere.
I was at work one day and she got into my house and had a fight with her boyfriend. The fight went south and she got my S&W model 19 and pumped 5 .357's into his mid-section + one shot to my new fridgerator. Killed em both.
She got off claiming self defense, which I didn't believe.
My M&P was made in 1952, spent most of its life in a Florida police chief’s desk drawer before somehow making it to Ragans’ Gun Shop in Statesboro, where I bought it in 1987.
I have several guns like that. One is a 1924 S&W 38 that was passed down through the decades by baseball players in the old Negro League. Another is a 1761 english horse pistol given to my three times great grandfather by the general he served as quartermaster during the Revolution. I found an 1858 Remington revolver that my great grandfather carried during the Civil War. It was wrapped up in old oily rags stuck up in the rafters of the smoke house on their farm. All of them still shoot quite well.
Both ended at room temperature?
That is a cool story. I envy you having those handguns.
Not sure I want to know the specifics behind that story.
Was it a Maytag or a Kenmore?
Antique Handguns Horst Held
interested in collectible small arms:
derringer, pistol, revolver, engraved,
cased,
odd system, early self-loading = semi-automatic
My favorite hand gun web site.
Great photos and info on the hand guns.
My favorite is in his private collection.
It is a 4 cylinder flint lock revolver.
The cylinder is hand turned.
It is said that Sam Colt had one and used
it to perfect his first revolver.
I guess it would have made the title too long to call it Military & Police Model of 1905 4th Change. Smiths didn’t get model numbers until 1957.
Some time ago there was a story out of San Francisco, I think, about an older man who stopped an attacker in his home with a gun which he had owned and not fired for about fifty years. Worked fine when he needed it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.