If you could talk to any "gun guy" past or present.

[gmerkt]

If I could choose any person to talk to about this subject, likely my father-in-law. Who was a teenager in the USMC in WW2, including on Guadalcanal beginning August, 1942. I was able to coax a few gun stories out of him, but not enough and none re. his face-to-face combat experiences.

Related, we could start a thread about, "If we could know the history of a particular firearm." I've owned several Polish Eagle Vis pistols, the pre-war pieces. These would all have had very interesting histories.

 

[orygun]

Fortunately, a LOT of the older "gun guys", like Hatcher, Crosman, Chinn, Ezell, Stevens, etc. - wrote copious books on the subject. E.G. W.W. Greener wrote a book on guns that is almost 800 pages long that I have, but have not started reading yet. Hatcher wrote a "Notebook" that I give as a present to relatives who show any real interest in firearms. Ezell is considered an true authority on firearms and wrote several books.

Greener's book, The Gun and it's Development is dry, sterile and hugely boring. I'd just read Phil Sharpes"Rifle in America" when I started Geener's book. Couldn't get more than a chapter into it and I had to put it on the shelf...

Arthur William Savage::::::: Way ahead of the times. The infamous 99, first bullet to achieve 3000 FPS. I had a 243, 250-3000 and a few 300's until the recent boating mishap.

Savage was an incredible designer and one of Bill Ruger's Idols, but the 250-3000 Savage was Charles Newton's brainchild.

 

[BillM]

Casimir and Eugene Lefaucheux

 

[CountryGent]

A few come to mind:

• Audie Murphy
• Gordon Ingram
• Robert Ruark
• Alvin York
• Paul Mauser
• Whoever was behind the Smill & Welson. Something tells me the conversation would be a riot.

 

[1371JarHead]

Alvin York
JMB
Eugene Stoner...that M16 I humped what a babe..

 

[Grumpy 1]

You are absolutely correct orygun, Charles Newton did in fact invent the 250 savage case to fit the new savage 99 but Savage Arms reduced his recommended projectile weight to achieve the 3000 FPS which is the first American cartridge to achieve that speed.

Stay safe, Stay dry.

 

[turq]

Colonel Hiram Berdan
Camo and the Sharps breech loader.

 

[Lesliet]

Jim Clark, Elmer Keith, and my Grandfather.

 

[TTSX]

Wyatt Earp would be real interesting. Doc Holiday, too. Well... Really any of the wild West legends.

 

[orygun]

You are absolutely correct orygun, Charles Newton did in fact invent the 250 savage case to fit the new savage 99 but Savage Arms reduced his recommended projectile weight to achieve the 3000 FPS which is the first American cartridge to achieve that speed.

Stay safe, Stay dry.

For sure!
Didn't matter that the heavier bullet was better, being the first to 3000fps was marketing fluff that normally couldn't be bought.
Impressive either way.


Just ask Spitpatch.

 

[Rem725]

Dad

 

[RedCardinalSeven]

In no particular order:

• Gerhard von Scharnhorst
• Lysander Spooner
• John Franklin Ross
• Edward Abbey
• William S. Burroughs
• Julie Golob
• John Dean "Jeff" Cooper
• Frederick Douglass
• Massad Ayoob
• Cheryl Todd
• Kimberly S. Corban
• Stephen Halbrook
• Cody Wilson
• Paloma Heindorff

 

[skeezix]

Col. Jeff Cooper.....Jerry Miculek.....Sam Fadala

 

[Rem725]

Add Huelet Benner to my list
And Lou Lombardi

 

[orygun]

Dad

There are a lot of good "names" on these lists and the conversations would be very cool, but Dad's the only one I ever cared about.

 

[55JD]

Lot of great names and potential conversions in this thread! Echoing the guy who said his Dad... yeah, a few things I wish I had thought to ask Grandpa before he passed...

William S. Burroughs...really?! LOL

So many of these guys were professional writers who left us a mountain of material, so their thoughts on guns are mostly known... or else good biographies have told us most of their experience with guns.

I'd choose someone who could clear up some mysteries or at least gaps in knowledge...

Maybe William Ellis Metford. Ask him to detail some of the long range rifle work he pioneered in the 1860s-1880s. Or James Paris Lee... I'd love to know what was happening during the "dark" years between his departure from the newly bankrupt Remington and his invention of the Winchester-Lee in '95...and especially about the Lee rifle that he demonstrated personally at the US Army magazine rifle trials in 1892 in New York... he lost to the Krag.

Would love to have a beer with Georg Luger OR Hugo Borchardt and ask them their opinions of each other... and maybe a few keen questions on pistol development if they are willing to talk... clear up a few things.

 

[CountryGent]

William S. Burroughs...really?! LOL

Oh, I'd imagine the conservations would be really out there.

 

[dancinghippos]

Chris Kyle.

 

[RedCardinalSeven]

William S. Burroughs...really?! LOL

The question was about talking to people. I like talking with thoughtful people who don't play to type even if I don't always agree with them.

Around 1991, Burroughs told an interviewer: "After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military." It's hard for me to imagine many significant American literary and artistic figures today saying something like that.

 

[titsonritz]

J.M.B.
E. Stoner
M. Kalashnikov
Steve McQueen
Ad & Plinky Topperwein
Anny Oakley
Simo Häyhä
Harris Holland
Bill Jordan
Audie Murphy
The Mauser Brothers
Smith and Wesson