Category: All About Guns
Oxford, Mississippi, is a quaint, storybook-sort of place. The University of Mississippi and the sprawling Winchester ammunition plant keep the community young, busy, and well-funded. A genteel southern population ensures the town is clean, safe, and cool. It’s like 1950’s America without the social baggage. Lots of people want to come here. However, it was not always so pleasant.
Liam Little & Mississippi Arms
A delightful little burg of 26,430 people nestled in north central Mississippi, Oxford has a colorful past. General Grant burned the courthouse square back in August of 1864. Two cop-killing losers were publicly executed here in 1903. James Meredith boldly broke some serious racial barriers as the first African-American student at Ole Miss back in 1962. Despite all that chaos, nowadays the Oxford Square looks like something out of Disneyworld.
As you face east, you will see Neilson’s clothing store. They’ve been in business in the same location since 1839. Neilson’s sits alongside Square Books Junior and City Hall. Now direct your gaze to the right and down the hill past the Tallahatchie Gourmet restaurant and you will find a small, nondescript store front with a neon “Open” sign in the shape of an AK-47. The sign reads, “Mississippi Arms.” Mississippi Arms is the coolest gun shop I have ever seen.
Origin Story: Mississippi Arms
Mississippi Arms began life several years ago as Mississippi Auto Arms. At the height of the Obama gun-buying frenzy, MAA sold 1,000 black rifles per year. MAA enjoyed a robust online presence selling guns, ammunition, gun parts, and accessories. They specialized in the cool, edgy stuff that keeps Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi awake at night. When the owner retired, he sold the business and they changed the name.
Nowadays Mississippi Arms is Candyland for gun nerds like us. They have most everything on their website. The business is licensed as both a dealer and manufacturer of Title 2 firearms. They build their own machine guns as well as a dedicated line of sound suppressors. This store is where dreams are made. Mississippi Arms is not your typical Fudd gun shop.
The first thing you notice is the Lahti 20mm anti-tank rifle sitting on the floor alongside a Ma Deuce .50-caliber machine gun on a tripod. Hanging on the wall is a live RPG-7, a PKM belt-fed machine gun, an M-60 with a sound suppressor, and a German MG34. A row of selective-fire, short-barreled FN SCAR carbines sits along one wall waiting to be cut up into parts kits. A bewildering array of black rifles blankets the walls. At any given time, a handful of local gun geeks congregates in the place griping about gun laws and generally solving the problems of the world. Throughout it all, sitting behind the counter is an amiable young guy with an ever-so-slight foreign accent. That’s 26-year-old Liam Little, owner and chief bottle washer at Mississippi Arms. Turns out Liam is a political refugee from Canada. His is a simply fascinating tale.
The Guy: Liam Little
Have you noticed that illegal immigration seems to be in the news a lot these days? With 320,000 migrant encounters on the southern border in December of 2023 alone and an estimated 16 million undocumented aliens already in the country, immigration will undoubtedly be the seminal issue of the upcoming Presidential election. It seems half the planet is flowing across our porous borders claiming asylum from something or other. Amid a veritable sea of unwashed humanity streaming into America illegally, Liam Little actually did it right.
Liam is a die-hard gun nerd with the poor grace to have been born in Montreal, Canada. If you are a gun guy, living in Canada these days is not philosophically unlike growing up in North Korea. The Canadian government just doesn’t trust its citizens with firearms anymore. When faced with a lifetime of unarmed servitude, Liam immigrated south.
Talking to Liam is a bit like chatting with Elon Musk. The guy just has an energy. He sees problems and engineers solutions. He is a natural businessman.
Liam is technically in the United States for law school on a student visa. When I was last there, he was complaining that they wouldn’t let him CLEP out of law school a year early. He runs his thriving gun business while simultaneously attending class at the University of Mississippi law school right down the road. The storefront is closed Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday so Liam can get his coursework done. He’s a pretty busy guy.
Draconian Politics
So, how does a kid from Canada in the country on a student visa for law school legally own a machine gun business? For starters, you have to be really smart and know the law really well. Then you just have to have the drive. Liam’s motivation is a pure and holy quest for freedom.
At a time when disdain for America seems to be the engine that propels the radical Left to ever more-rarefied attacks on individual liberty, Liam has tasted the pure elixir of freedom and just can’t get enough. As a burgeoning lawyer, he knows the rules and goes to meticulous lengths to work within them. He obtained the requisite licenses to run his thriving gun business all with Uncle Sam’s blessings. I’ll spare you the details except to say that his approach was undeniably elegant.
Like most people I have known who came to America seeking political freedom, Liam has little use for those who denigrate the United States. Most folks who gripe about America have simply never lived anyplace else. Liam cannot stand Justin Trudeau and his mob of meddlesome Left-wing socialists up north. He knows from personal experience what it is like to live in a place where gun ownership is prohibited and cherishes the unique liberties we enjoy in America. His life goal is to fully assimilate into our culture and make his way in the gun business.
Details
It’s worth a surf over to Liam’s website. His home-grown .22 rimfire cans will run $235 apiece. When I was there he showed me prototypes for a replica WW2-vintage Soviet Bramit suppressor. The Bramit can slips over the muzzle of a Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle and locks in place with a twist. Like the originals, there is ballistic data engraved on the side to accommodate reduced-charge subsonic loads.
Russian grunts in WW2 were trained to pull the bullets from standard 7.62x54mm ball rounds and dump part of the powder charge before reseating the bullets manually. In so doing they converted their standard bolt-action infantry rifles into short-range covert subsonic sniper tools. They also made similar cans for the M1895 Nagant revolver. Liam is planning on manufacturing those as well. He really does have some extraordinary projects in the works. I ordered myself one of his .22 cans on my first visit to the store.
Ruminations
We gripe about American gun laws all the time, and rightly so. Without constant vigilance the freedom-averse hoplophobes in Washington will invariably strip our rights away just as their counterparts did up north. However, for the time being at least, we still enjoy unrivaled access to firearms for both personal protection and recreation.
Liam Little is the real deal. Raised in a socialist paradise, Liam came to America seeking the purist expression of personal freedom on planet Earth. Liam personifies the American dream in the Information Age. Unlike so many other immigrants, however, he is doing so legally through personal force of will, detailed knowledge of the law, and raw, unfiltered heart.
The next time you need some gun widget, surf on over to MississippiArms.com and see if Liam has it in stock. If ever you are passing through Oxford, Mississippi, on a Wednesday through Saturday, do yourself a favor and drop by the store for a chat. Mississippi Arms is a cool place, and Liam Little is a cool guy. Mississippi Arms is where freedom thrives.
Walther PPs, .22 LR (left) and .32 ACP (right). Roy started with the .32
then discovered the joys of the twin in .22. Finish is Robar’s NP3 on the .22.
That’s six shots at 15 yards. Roy zeroed the sights by welding and carefully filing the front to match CCI Mini-Mag HP ammo.
I’m a firm believer in .22 autos like the classic Rugers, Browning Buckmarks and modern models like S&W’s “Victory” .22s introduced a few years ago. I’ve owned and shot all of them extensively. They’re all accurate, reliable and most work very neatly with a scope or red dot mounted. But none of them are what I’d call compact pistols.
At the other end of the spectrum are guns like Ruger’s newer LCP II .22 LR, Beretta’s 21A .22 LR and their kin. All are true pocket pistols and are highly concealable and fun to shoot but aren’t the best trail or “tractor” guns.
It wasn’t until a happy coincidence I had in the middle 1980s I realized there was another category of personal .22 auto I call “Little Big Guns.” I’d long been a fan of the Walther PP series, especially in .32 ACP. In the late 1970s, I picked up a nice, clean PP in .32 ACP and enjoyed it a great deal.
I bought and later sold several PPK/s guns in .380 because I just found them not nearly as accurate as that PP .32 and not nearly as fun to shoot. They were snappy, and unless you really kept them clean and paid close attention to your grip, locked wrist and ammo, they tended to malfunction now and again. The little PP .32 ran like the proverbial three-year-old toward the candy counter and the almost nonexistent recoil and “shoot the jackrabbit at 30 yards” accuracy spelled sheer delight in the field.
Then I got to handle a good friend’s PP in .22 LR. I was smitten instantly, especially when I realized it had a “Duraluminum” frame. Those Germans knew what they were doing. But alas, not only are those models rare, they’re dear too. Can you say thousands? Then that coincidence occurred.
The Ruger autos seem “small” until put next to a Walther PP in .22 LR. Roy
finds the tidy size of the PP makes it handy on the tractor or when stashed
in a back pocket on his property.
Take down on the .22 is classic Walther PP series.
Import Dreams
If you remember the old Shotgun News, it was a newspaper format newsprint monthly chock full of great gun deals, surplus goodies, ammo and sundry other such wonderfulness at often tantalizing prices. I always zeroed in on the surplus stuff, and when my latest issue arrived right after seeing that Duraluminum gun, an ad jumped out at me. “Surplus Walther PP pistols in .22 LR. Limited numbers, so order fast!” These were all steel, but close enough. I grabbed the phone.
For $132 (!), one was shipped to my local FFL, and that’s when I discovered “modest field wear and use” meant rust pits and cracked grips. But I could see past that, paid my transfer fee and soon had my “sort of dream gun” in hand.
Some research led me to learn my gun was one of a batch sent to, of all places, the Ministry of Defense in Great Britain during 1974–1975. I was never able to learn what the MOD did with them, but mine had been used hard and put away very wet. Nonetheless, the bore was bright and the action tight, mirroring what so many law enforcement and military guns exhibit — carried a great deal but fired little.
I soon learned the little gun was a delight to shoot, accurate as all get-out and, unlike the .32 sister gun I had, didn’t eat me out of house and home when it came to ammo costs. I also discovered something else. It was effortless to carry tucked into a back pocket, tossed into a pack or in a simple belt slide holster. I soon found my Ruger .22 Standard Auto tended to stay home when I went wandering in the high desert. The Walther did everything I needed, but in a tidy, 23-oz. package.
Can’t find a PP in .22 LR? Nose around, and you’ll likely find a good deal on a classic Beretta Model 71 in .22 LR, about the same size.
Roy calls the PP .22 a “Little Big Gun” since it handles like a big gun but
is compact and handy. Note the lanyard loop on this former military pistol.
Improvements
The PP series was introduced in about 1929 and just pre-war really leapt into being as a military and police gun for the Axis. Post-war, various iterations continued to be made, extending into today, where Walther here in the states still manufactures these classic pistols. You can even get a PPK/s in .22 LR, but not a PP, which I think is more elegant and handles better.
I eventually sent my gun off to Robar, and they were kind enough to clean it up, get rid of much of the pitting, then apply their amazing NP3 finish. The result was a very business-like look and a newfound life for the old pistol. I was always a bit bothered by the fact it tended to shoot a tad high at 15 yards, so I recently carefully added a bit of TIG weld to the top of the front sight, then re-shaped it and zeroed it perfectly. If you do such a thing, keep in mind the Walther sights are hard as diamonds for some reason, and a standard file glides right off. I use diamond hones.
These days, the Walther rides with me often around the property here, most usually tucked into a back pocket. It’s spent hundreds of hours on the tractor with me and is often in the hands of new shooters here too. Keep your good eye open, and just maybe, you might get lucky and have an interesting coincidence like the one I had. You might also keep your eye open for an old Beretta Model 71 in .22 LR. It sort of does the same job. Or maybe get both?
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Shooting a FN-49 (SAFN)
Five months after the longtime face of the gun rights movement, Wayne LaPierre, was found liable for misspending $5.4 million of the National Rifle Association’s money, the gun group’s leadership will return next week to a Manhattan courtroom.
For the N.R.A. itself, the stakes this time will be far higher.
Mr. LaPierre stepped down as the group’s chief executive in January, on the eve of the first phase of the trial, which featured testimony about years of lavish spending and executive perks, including Zegna suits, superyacht junkets, charter flights and vacations in the Bahamas. The jury’s verdict was a victory for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who brought the corruption case.
But the N.R.A. itself was not then a defendant. In the second phase, scheduled to begin on Monday in State Supreme Court, a judge will decide whether the group needs outside monitoring, a step that would curb its independence, at least temporarily, and that it stridently opposes.
For decades, the N.R.A. was at the forefront of a movement that repeatedly beat back gun control legislation while vastly expanding the scope of the right to bear arms. But this new challenge comes as the group’s influence within the gun rights movement has waned, along with its standing as a power player in Republican politics.
A recent court filing underlined how wounded the N.R.A. has been by a half decade of scandal. Its membership fell below 4 million last year, from nearly 5.3 million in 2018. Annual dues and contributions have fallen by far more than half over the same period, from $281 million to roughly $115 million.
“Ironically, a monitor might help the N.R.A. right the ship,” said Nick Suplina, a former senior adviser and special counsel at the attorney general’s office who now works for the gun control group Everytown. “Basically the same leadership circle isn’t going to be the path to them digging out of the hole.”
In May, the group’s annual conference saw an actual contest for its top posts, a rare occurrence, but insiders ultimately emerged. Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia and an N.R.A. stalwart, was elected board president, while Doug Hamlin, a little-known figure who ran the organization’s publications division, was the surprise choice for chief executive. Both are scheduled to be witnesses during the court proceedings.
Some good news for the N.R.A. followed the annual conference. In late May, the Supreme Court sided with the group, finding that the N.R.A. could pursue a First Amendment claim against a New York state official who had urged companies to cut ties with it after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
Now it says it has spent nearly six years reforming its corporate governance on its own and does not need outside oversight.
“Every witness with personal knowledge of the internal workings of the association today concurs that further state intrusion poses a grave, needless threat to the N.R.A.’s recovery,” the association said in a recent legal filing, adding that the first part of the trial had aired events from its “distant past.”
Ms. James disagrees, and her office sees little reason to let up, having largely prevailed in the trial so far. She and her legal team are seeking the appointment of a compliance monitor for three years who would oversee the N.R.A.’s spending, assess its governance practices and determine whether it is following nonprofit law.
Ms. James’s office argues in court filings that “the N.R.A. did not voluntarily self-disclose its misconduct,” adding that “any attempts” to overhaul its corporate governance were “reactive” and only took place after the attorney general’s office warned it to “essentially get its house in order, and after the media began publishing investigative reports about financial misconduct.”
Her office said it would “introduce evidence concerning the nascent, untested and incomplete nature of the N.R.A.’s new compliance program.” The judge in the case, Joel M. Cohen, will rule from the bench in the second phase of the trial, which is expected to last two weeks. (New York has special jurisdiction over the N.R.A., since it was founded as a nonprofit in the state more than 150 years ago.)
The N.R.A.’s lead counsel, William A. Brewer III, acknowledged in a statement that “there was misconduct by former vendors and insiders” but said there was “no evidence it continues today. Not a shred.” Court filings show that the group is spending between $1,150 and $1,500 an hour for the consulting and testimony of Daniel L. Kurtz, who once ran the attorney general’s charities bureau, which oversees the N.R.A.
In a filing, Mr. Kurtz lauded “the N.R.A.’s willingness to self-examine and course correct,” adding that “if some few million dollars went ‘sideways,’ more than a billion dollars were devoted to N.R.A. causes and activities.”
The N.R.A. is not the only defendant. This week, Wilson Phillips, the former chief financial officer, sidestepped a role in the trial by agreeing to a 10-year ban on managing money for New York nonprofits. He had been ordered to repay $2 million in the first phase. A third official, John Frazer, is also a defendant. He was recently removed by the new leadership as general counsel but still serves as corporate secretary.
Mr. LaPierre will also be back in court. In addition to the financial judgment, Ms. James is seeking to bar him from any future fiduciary role at the N.R.A.
Mr. LaPierre’s attorney, P. Kent Correll, argues in legal filings that banning Mr. LaPierre would essentially mean “censoring, deplatforming and canceling him” and “excluding him from the national arena in which the debate over gun policy and legislation occurs.”
As an exhibit, Mr. Correll appended a seven-page passage from Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th-century Frenchman who was a keen observer of the United States. (“In our time, freedom of association has become a necessary guarantee against the tyranny of the majority,” read part of the quotation.)
The N.R.A. alienated many of its own supporters in the late stages of the LaPierre era, and recent leadership changes notwithstanding, it remains restive and fractious. One dissident board member, Phillip Journey, is seeking to intervene in the case, and said in a recent note to the judge that he wanted some other board members removed “who actively aided and abetted the looting of N.R.A. assets.”
Mr. Journey is not in lock step with the attorney general’s office, but is among the insiders exasperated by the N.R.A.’s governance. As he has put it: “We don’t need a financial monitor, N.R.A. needs a hall monitor.”
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