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Guns & Firearm Info
Updated: 1 week 5 days ago

A Spencer That’s Not Just a Spencer, and Connects to Two Famous Men

Mon, 12/21/2015 - 05:00

Here’s a nice little rifle, for sale by Ancestry Guns. It’s a Spencer Model 1865 cavalry carbine, possibly issued to Union cavalry during the Civil War or shortly thereafter. This particular example is for sale at Ancestry Guns. Spencers aren’t terribly rare — tens of thousands were made, and many survive — but they’re historic guns. It was the Spencer that was brought in for Abe Lincoln to take some shots with, and the President quickly became an advocate of the repeater. An apocryphal story has a Confederate calling it, “The Damn Yankee gun you can load on Sunday and shoot all week.” Indeed, Spencers put seven rapid shots in a horse soldiers hands, giving him about the firing cadence of his revolver but in a more accurate shoulder weapon. Light and handy, they were popular with the troops.

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Sunday Sunshine

Sun, 12/20/2015 - 07:00

It continues to be a strange “winter” here at Hog Manor, with no snow yet (not that unusual, but not an every-year thing) and daytime temps breaking into the fifties (very unusual). If this is Global Warming, we say, burn more coal.

As we close in on the Christmas season, a warning that we will not publish on Christmas Day, or will publish only minimally.

Although we wrote this en avant, we’re pretty sure that, for a change, all Saturday posts (including the Matinee and the TW3) ran on time Saturday. We’re looking forward to 2016 already.

The big event in January is SHOT, at which we will not be. (Conflicts). Beyond that… who knows?

That Was the Week that Was: 2015 Week 50

Sat, 12/19/2015 - 21:00

Another week has drawn to a close, and a new week is hopping up and down at the door, aching to be let out.

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Saturday Matinee 2015 050: The Mountain Road (1960)

Sat, 12/19/2015 - 17:00

The good in this film includes Jimmy Stewart in his only actual war film; the bad includes the script he has to work with. It’s based fairly closely on a novel by journalist Theodore White, which in turn was based loosely on stories told White by OSS demolition team leader Frank Gleason Jr., who stalled a Japanese advance in 1944 by blowing up 150 bridges and an ammo dump. (In the movie, we don’t get that much demo: a couple of bridges, a couple of mountain cuts, an airfield, and the ammo dump).

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Castillo De San Marcos Part 4: Armament; Accommodation; Two Notables

Fri, 12/18/2015 - 17:00

Sorry for the long delay on getting this launched. More to come!  -Ed.

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When Guns are Outlawed , Only Outlaws will have Government Jobs

Fri, 12/18/2015 - 13:00

The DIplomat — as his public sees him.

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Patton’s Lessons Learned for Tank Warfare, WWI

Fri, 12/18/2015 - 10:00

We’ve been reading Treat ’em Rough: The Birth of American Armor 1917-20 by Dale Wilson. It...

Bubba Customizes a Mo-Nag

Fri, 12/18/2015 - 05:00

About the only thing Bubba the Gunsmite missed on this one is that he seems to have chosen a fairly uncommon Dragoon Rifle, instead of, say, a Finnish Mosin as his playground. But that’s OK, because he did go full Bubba sporterizing this one.

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Crimmigration as a Non-Priority

Thu, 12/17/2015 - 17:00

¡Yo quiero Taco Bell, señor — pas de Chipotle!

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When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Trees

Thu, 12/17/2015 - 13:00

Oregon passed a bill requiring backdoor gun registration, aka “background checks,” and therefore all Oregonians live forever.

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How’s that Women in the Service Thing Working?

Thu, 12/17/2015 - 10:00

In the Navy, not so good. Especially in submarines, last year’s (well, 2011’s) Triumph of the Sisterhood. Color us shocked: the lady officers (1) don’t stick with it; (2) often expect assignment to where Hubby is even if they have to create a make-work job for her; (3) caused disruption to the culture and undermined the command climate on at least one boat, through no fault or failing of their own, but because horny, immature sailors acted like horny, immature sailors; (4) neither join nor stay in sustainable numbers; and, (5) are the beneficiaries of an (unsought, we believe) culture of impunity which guarantees the advancement of any toxic leaders in their ranks.

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Brown Bess: Guest Post by Rudyard Kipling

Thu, 12/17/2015 - 05:00
Brown Bess...

Wednesday Weapons Website of the Week: Kanshoan Sword Shop

Wed, 12/16/2015 - 21:00

Kanshoan, a sword shop in Japan, offers up this poem, the origin of which we do not know. Perhaps they made it up:

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Admin: Our Straight was Busted, but, Readership Goal Made

Wed, 12/16/2015 - 19:00

Yesterday morning, as we cranked up the admin interface to monitor WeaponsMan.com, our unique visitors since we changed stats plug-ins was an interesting number: 2,345,768. Almost a straight! (In stats, you can’t reorder your “cards,” er, digits). But that led us to the discovery that our object of breaking 2 million unique daily visitors in 2015 was met sometime on the 14th, with our count at about 0630 on the 15th being 2,003,928, with only 1,302 having come between midnight and 0630, and 7,155 having dropped by during the 14th.

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A Messerschmitt on the Market

Wed, 12/16/2015 - 17:00

Not many pilots these days get to write “Messerschmitt” in their logbooks. And here’s one that’s affordable, but… the “but” in this case being that the machine hasn’t flown in quite a while, which means it’s a pretty sure bet that getting the beast airworthy will take an application of large quantities of cubic money.

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When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Gravity (No. 3?)

Wed, 12/16/2015 - 13:00

Gerry Mooney’s original poster (From Asimov Mag 1977).

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Annals of the .00002%

Wed, 12/16/2015 - 10:00

No, this has nothing to do with rich people. This is about the 0.0002% of criminal aliens that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency’s managers are proud of catching and deporting.

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Jerry Shot First

Wed, 12/16/2015 - 05:00

Every once in a while we use a Jerry Miculek video here because they’re so damn entertaining. This one, in which Jerry too piles on to the Star Wars movie publicity blitz bandwagon, is no exception:

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In the Warrior Caste, We’re All Connected

Tue, 12/15/2015 - 17:00

Motherboard (a Vice site) has an interesting post on two Air Force brothers, one, Uriah or Yuri Hines, an F-15E backseater and his older brother Reese, an enlisted EOD tech. Their lives and the lives of other USAF personnel intersected in peculiar ways, but it may just come down to math: this endless war is being conducted, on the ground and in the air, by a very small handful of personnel, from a relative handful of families.

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When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Mexican Food

Tue, 12/15/2015 - 13:00

Is this really news? “Students ate Mexican food, got sick”. We mean, isn’t that a headline that could have run every year since Mexican independence, and maybe earlier?

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