Category: All About Guns
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THE GATLING GUN !!! 😱
U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- More people own guns today than ever before. That growth continues a long-term trend that goes back several decades. In addition to that gradual increase, we’ve also seen extraordinary growth in new gun buyers in the last two years. We had to rewrite who owns guns and why they own them.
Today, about four-out-of-ten families have a firearm in their home. Despite the astounding changes in gun ownership, the way some politicians talk about guns and gun owners is out of date. New gun owners are subjected to a crash course in being misperceived and misrepresented by politicians and the mainstream news media.
What is real, and what is fantasy?
Sitting President, Joe Biden, echoed old myths about gun owners at a fundraising event in June. He said, “More people get killed with their own gun in their home trying to stop a burglar than, in fact, any other cause.. Think about that. Because it’s hard to do. It’s a hard thing to do.”
Mayor John Fetterman, the Democrat candidate for the US Senate from Pennsylvania, also felt the need to comment on guns and gun ownership. He said, “I have seen with my own eyes at the scenes in my community what a military-grade round does to the human body.” He said that rifles, particularly modern rifles, should be outlawed.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said, “This whole concept that a good guy with a gun will stop the bad guys with a gun, it doesn’t hold up. And the data bears this out, so that theory is over.”
Those statements don’t fit what we know. We know a lot about new gun owners because we talked with them. Gun stores asked new gun owners why they wanted a gun so the gun shop employee could direct the customer to the appropriate products. The industry trade group representing firearms manufacturers and distributors collected those answers.
The stereotypical gun owner used to be an old white man who bought a gun to go hunting. Several years ago, personal safety replaced hunting as the major reason new gun owners buy firearms. Today, gun owners are from every demographic group; male and female, rich and poor, urban and rural. Gun owners represent every ethnic and racial group. About one-out-of-four African-American adults own a firearm. It seems strange that the mainstream media and politicians have deliberately ignored that change.
We saw firearms ownership increase for many reasons. Concealed carry of a personal firearm is now common in all but a handful of states. Not only are tens of millions licensed to carry a personal firearm in public, but we also exercise those permits daily.
Today, about one-out-of-a-dozen adults carry a firearm in public when and where it is legally permissible to do so. We also stop most attempted mass murders when the government allows us to carry our firearms. Good men and women, ordinary civilians, use firearms to protect themselves and their families more than four thousand times a day. Excluding some politicians, more and more of us have concluded that armed defense works.
Another reason for increased gun ownership is the unusual increase in crime we’ve seen in the last few years. Our judicial system stopped removing repeat criminals from society during the Covid lockdowns. The resulting increase in crime touched our families and friends. Many of us discovered that the police will not be there to protect us. Millions of us responded by buying a firearm and protecting ourselves.
We should probably add a third factor that increased the rate of firearms ownership. The Covid lockdowns reduced the time we could spend with friends and extended family. We spent more time looking at our computers and our phones. During the lockdowns, the news media had a larger influence on our perception of what is happening in the world around us.
To deliver viewers to their declining list of advertisers, the news media fed us a concentrated diet of sensationalized crime reports. Crime indeed increased in the last few years, but the tiny screens brought crime to where we live as never before. In combination, factors like these significantly increased both the number and diversity of legal firearms owners.
We defend ourselves with a firearm between 1.7 and 2.5 million times a year. 44 percent of black gun owners reported using firearms to defend themselves or their families. Many of us know someone who used a firearm in self-defense. In contrast, I never heard the mainstream media correct President Biden’s statement that our guns kill more of us than they save. That leaves our personal experience in direct contradiction with the President’s claim and the media’s twisted narrative about gun owners.
Mayor Fetterman’s claim sounds strange to me as well. Looking at our history, even the ubiquitous 9mm handgun cartridge was first carried as a military round. Today, the 9mm is the most common handgun cartridge carried by both law enforcement and civilians.
When a policeman is carrying it, the modern rifle is called a “personal defense weapon” or a “patrol rifle.” The same gun made out of metal and plastic is relabeled by anti-gun politicians as an “assault rifle” and a “military-grade weapon” when our neighbors own one. The modern rifle is called a “weapon of war,” even though no modern military branch would field the semi-automatic rifles that US civilians are allowed to own today. Today’s military rifles are capable of automatic fire, and ours are not.
Fetterman’s gun-confiscation proposal might make some sense if we only looked at one side of the argument. Fetterman deliberately ignored the hundred thousand times a year that long guns were used in armed defense. We have about 25 million modern rifles in civilian hands here in the US. If these gun owners were a problem to society, then we would surely know it. Modern rifles save many more lives than they cost, but that isn’t what we see on television.
The news media sells sensationalized stories and leaves out the additional facts that put violence into perspective. About four times as many people are killed with knives than are killed with rifles each year. Drowning kills ten times more people each year than die from “assault weapons.” According to FBI homicide statistics, more people were killed with hands and feet than were killed with a long gun of any kind.
We agree that violent crime is shocking, but the mainstream news media never called out the distortions of these anti-gun politicians. The media often reports when a criminal uses a firearm. In contrast, the media seldom reports when our neighbors use their legally owned firearms to stop a crime.
Each time that a major US media outlet mentions an armed citizen using a legally owned firearm to save lives, the media runs hundreds of stories where criminals used a gun. That media bias turns the world upside down. In fact, armed defense is several times more common than a criminal using a firearm during the commission of a crime. This deliberate editorial policy misrepresents the news of armed defense by a factor of over a thousand to one. That is why we think that mass murder is common and that armed defense is rare.
If you only know what you’re told by the mainstream press, then you might believe the gun-control politicians too. One hint is that many Democrat politicians own guns even as they vote for ever more gun-control laws to disarm the rest of us.
The stereotype of gun owners is a lie. The media calls us male-pale-and-stale, and who cares if old white men are disarmed anyway. In fact, gun owners now look like a cross-section of the USA. Minority urban women are the fastest-growing segment of new gun owners. I think Democrat politicians are afraid that more women and minorities will decide to become gun owners. These new gun owners might enter the culture of armed America and protect themselves.
That fear keeps Democrat politicians up at night.
About Rob Morse
The original article, with references, is posted here. Rob Morse writes about gun rights at Ammoland, Clash Daily, Second Call Defense, and his SlowFacts blog. He hosts the Self Defense Gun Stories Podcast and co-hosts the Polite Society Podcast. Rob was an NRA pistol instructor and combat handgun competitor.
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What I call a great start!
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REAL Old School!
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Gun owners in Delaware are now being forced to turn in their “large-capacity” magazines to law enforcement following the passage of the “Delaware Large Capacity Magazine Prohibition Act of 2022” in June of this year.
The new law broadly prohibits the production, sale, purchase, receipt, transfer, and possession of magazines with a capacity of over 17 rounds.
The Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security (DSHS) issued guidelines late last month along with dates, locations, and compensation for the mandatory “buyback” program.
The DSHS said that “residents are eligible to receive fair market compensation for” their LCM or large capacity magazine.
Delawareans providing valid identification for proof of residency may receive:
- LCM 18 to 30 Rounds – $15
- LCM 31 or greater round – $25
- LCM Drums – $80
“This buyback program is for Delaware residents only,” states the DSHS. “The program is only intended for individuals and does not apply to wholesale, retail, manufacturers, and distributor business entities. Anonymous relinquishments will be permitted. However, no compensation will be provided.”
Violators face a misdemeanor charge for their first offense and a class E felony for subsequent offenses.
A felony conviction for the possession of an LCM would result in the permanent loss of one’s 2A rights.
There are some key exemptions. Active and retired law enforcement, members of the U.S. military, and licensed concealed carriers are excluded from the ban.
The NRA-ILA is actively suing Delaware over its magazine ban and its 2022 ban on modern sporting rifles, known as the Delaware Lethal Firearms Safety Act of 2022.
However, while gun-owning Delawareans await the outcome of the lawsuits, state officials are hoping to complete the “buyback” program by June 30, 2023 — the end of the fiscal year, according to WHYY.
Mark Oliva, the managing director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association, lamented the present situation in Delaware.
“There was a time when Delaware was respected for standing for freedom and against restricting God-given rights. Now, the state is literally financing magazine seizures with taxpayer funds,” he told GunsAmerica via email.
“The state cannot buy back something it never owned. As a matter of intellectual honesty, state officials should call it what it is. This is a state-sanctioned seizure of magazines done to bolster President Joe Biden’s gun control agenda,” he continued.
Oliva spoke about the legal challenges the magazine ban is currently facing, especially in light of the landmark Bruen decision.
“The audacity of Delaware lawmakers to move forward with this plan is astounding. The U.S.Supreme Court ordered the U.S. Court of appeals for the Ninth Circuit to revisit its ruling upholding California’s magazine restriction law in light of Bruen,” he said.
“It’s clear that Delaware lawmakers are determined to cause as much damage as possible to the Second Amendment rights of their fellow citizens and it will be the taxpayers that find it and potentially compensate those harmed by this effort,” Oliva concluded.
Operation Overlord. In the overall pantheon of cool military names, Overlord flirts with perfection. The term projects the sort of gravitas demanded of the event.
June 6, 1944, was a Tuesday. From the comfortable vantage of my favorite writing chair, it is tough to comprehend the truly timeless significance of D-Day. Comprising the largest amphibious invasion in human history, on that fateful morning, some 156,000 Allied ground troops supported by another 195,700 sailors seized a foothold on mainland Europe. Never before had there been such a single seminal moment that so starkly reflected the struggle between the forces of good and evil.
Europe was engulfed in darkness. For four long years, mainland Europe had endured under the heel of the Nazi jackboot. In 1940 Hitler’s thugs had waltzed across France and the Low Countries like they owned the place. As D-Day approached Dwight David Eisenhower’s boys now stood poised to give the Germans a healthy dose of perspective.
It cost the Allies more than 10,000 casualties to acquire title to that precious beachfront property in Normandy, all in that single day. Of those thousands of casualties, some 4,414 were confirmed dead. We lost 185 Sherman tanks. Casualties on the German side ran somewhere between 4,000 and 9,000. So many of them were buried underneath untold tons of rubble that the final tally was known only to God.
Around 15,000 Frenchmen died in the pre-invasion bombardment. Roughly the same number perished in the crossfire during the invasion. In aggregate that’s more folks than live in my thriving little Southern town. The French equivalent of every man, woman, and child in Oxford, Mississippi, died to evict the Germans from Western France. Through the lens of history, it is easy to overlook such extraordinary stuff as that.
Drilling Down
Those numbers are the purview of the Generals, politicians, and historians. The few men I have known well who were there gave a very different perspective. Their world was much, much smaller. One gentleman, a member of the 5th Ranger Battalion who landed in the first wave, described events as utter chaos. They cared little for strategy. Life is distilled down to resisting death whenever possible and killing the enemy. It was here on that blood-soaked beach that General Norman Cota coined the epic phrase, “Rangers, lead the way!”
In times of such unimaginable madness, a man’s true nature bubbles forth. Many self-described brave men turn out cowards, while some of the more quiet sort show unimaginable resolve. Such combat is the ultimate crucible. It burns away the dross and leaves a man’s core character exposed for all to see.
Of the 83,115 British troops who landed as part of Operation Overlord only one man earned the Victoria Cross. Abbreviated VC, the Victoria Cross is England’s highest award for valor in the face of the enemy. It is the British equivalent of our own Medal of Honor, and it is not easily acquired.
British Backbone
Stanley Hollis was born in Middlesbrough, North Riding of Yorkshire, England, in 1912, six years before the end of the First War to End All Wars. As a child, he worked in his parents’ shop selling fish and chips. At age 17 he apprenticed as a ship’s navigator, making regular voyages to the western coast of Africa. He contracted blackwater fever, a particularly vile malarial variant, and was forced to quit the merchant marine.
Hollis came home, married, and started a family. In 1930 he enlisted in the Territorial Army, the British counterpart to our Army National Guard. With the outbreak of WW2, he deployed to Europe with the British Expeditionary Force. He narrowly escaped during Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Dunkirk. Dynamo may be the second coolest military operation name ever contrived.
Hollis fought at El Alamein with Montgomery’s Eighth Army and was subsequently wounded during the invasion of Sicily in 1943. This was but one of multiple combat wounds Hollis received during the war. He was shot or hit with shrapnel so many times his men came to think him unkillable.
On June 6, 1944, Hollis had recovered sufficiently to join the 6th Green Howards as they stormed Gold Beach. Serving as a Company Sergeant Major Hollis moved forward with his troops. In their rush to get off the beach, the British inadvertently overlooked a pair of German fortifications.
Realizing that these active emplacements now threatened the flank of the British invasion force, CSM Hollis charged the first, his Sten gun blazing. Once he reached the pillbox under heavy fire he shoved the muzzle of his Sten through the embrasure and emptied his magazine. Leaping atop the fortification he swapped magazines, threw a Mills bomb through the back door, and emptied his second magazine behind it. In the process, he killed two of the German defenders and captured the rest.
Hollis immediately indexed to a nearby slit trench and supporting fighting position, singlehandedly taking another 26 prisoners. Later that day Hollis led an assault on a heavily fortified position that included a field piece and several MG42 machineguns. Seizing a PIAT gun, Hollis fired upon the German cannon from a range of 50 meters. This attack was ultimately repulsed, but two of his men were pinned down in the aftermath.
Hollis then rushed back into the enemy fire, this time with a Bren gun. He distracted the German defenders long enough for his men to escape. In the process, he threw a Mills bomb but forgot to prime it. The German defenders, however, did not appreciate this. As they scattered in the face of the inert grenade Hollis charged their position and cut them down with his Bren.
The Weapons
The Sten gun was a desperation weapon developed by Reginald Shepherd and Harold Turpin while working at the Enfield Small Arms Factory. The name Sten is a portmanteau combining elements of all three names. Designed in 1940 specifically to be inexpensive and easy to produce, the Sten was intended to help stave off the expected seaborne invasion by the Germans. More than 4 million copies were produced, making the Sten the second most-produced SMG of the war after the Soviet PPSh.
The Sten was manufactured in five different marks during the war. The Mk IIS and the Mk VS were the world’s first operational sound suppressed SMGs. The Sten fed on a ghastly side-mounted double-column, single-feed magazine and cycled at a sedate 500 rounds per minute. At a time when an American M1928A1 Thompson cost $200, the Sten ran about $11. That’s roughly $200 today.
The PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) was technically a spigot mortar. Designed to replace the obsolete Boys antitank rifle, the PIAT was a 32-pound beast of a thing. While the published maximum effective range was 115 yards, in reality, the weapon was only reliable out to about half that. However, it did launch a shaped charge warhead that, when it detonated properly, was quite effective at penetrating German armored vehicles.
The PIAT benefitted from not having any backblast upon firing, but the recoil was said to be murderous. The gun itself contained a massive spring that kicked the 2.5-pound round out. The recoil force from firing would theoretically re-cock the heavy action. 115,000 copies were built.
The Mills bomb was the standard British hand grenade from 1915 into the 1980s. More than 75 million were produced. The Mills bomb was named after William Mills and produced at the Mills Munitions Factory in Birmingham. This patented design was based upon a previous Belgian grenade contrived by a Captain Leon Roland. There actually resulted in a most acrimonious row over patent rights.
The Mills bomb evolved over time. It was eventually configured such that it could be fired from a rifle equipped with a grenade discharger cup. The serrations in the grenade body were included to make the bomb easier to grip, not to enhance fragmentation.
The Mills bomb was a defensive grenade. This means that it produced a large volume of lethal fragments. By contrast, the German stick grenade was an offensive grenade that produced a great deal of blast but not so many fragments. A competent British Tommy was expected to throw a Mills bomb between 15 and 27 meters. The effective range of the grenade’s fragments was on the order of 90 meters.
The Bren gun was developed from the Czech ZB vz.26 light machinegun in the mid-1930s. Chambered for the British standard .303 cartridge and cycling at around 500 rpm, the Bren was one of the most reliable and effective light machineguns of the war. After WW2 the British rechambered the Bren for 7.62x51mm and redesignated it the L4A4. In this configuration modernized Bren guns served all the way through the First Gulf War.
The Rest of the Story
Three months after the D-Day invasion CSM Hollis was wounded once more, this time in the leg. He was subsequently evacuated back to England. He received his Victoria Cross a month later from the hand of King George VI himself. After the war ended, like so many of those great old heroes, Stanley Hollis simply wanted to have a life.
Hollis worked as a sandblaster at a local iron works before opening a motor repair business. He spent five years as a ship’s engineer from 1950 until 1955. Apparently earning your nation’s ultimate award for gallantry in combat trumps a little malaria.
The man needed some stability. Stanley Hollis took over the operation of the “Albion” public house in Market Square, North Ormesby. Under his management, the name of the pub was changed to “The Green Howard” after his wartime combat unit.
Stanley Hollis never fully recovered from his wartime injuries. His children later reported that he carried ample German shrapnel as well as a couple of bullets around in his body for the rest of his life. If he stood too long at the pub his leg and foot wounds would purportedly begin to bleed spontaneously. On February 8, 1972, CSM Stanley Hollis, VC, died. He was fifty-nine years old.
A commemorative plaque followed, as did a bronze statue of Hollis with his Sten gun. A Middlesbrough school was renamed Hollis Academy in his honor in 2016. Stanley Hollis’ Victoria Cross is on display in the Green Howards Museum in Richmond, North Yorkshire, today. We just don’t seem to make guys like that anymore.
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FM AA52 – La nana
LANSING, Mich. (FOX 2) – From the streets of Detroit to the woods of the Upper Peninsula, it may seem as if residents in Michigan can’t agree on much. But a new statewide survey shows that a majority of citizens are in favor of more stringent gun control.
When you ask Michigan residents if they support strong gun control laws, you would assume that Up North a majority would oppose it. As it turns out, you would be wrong.
Across the entire state, 66% of all citizens back tougher gun control. Included in that is 50% of Up North residents.
In the Metro Detroit tri-county area, 73% of all those surveyed support stricter controls while central Michigan – including Lansing – is around 54%.
EPIC-MRA Pollster Bernie Porn conducted the poll and made sure to sample gun owners in the survey.
“To include gun owners which represent 53% having one or more gun owners in the household. Concealed Pistol License holders represent 29% and also NRA members – which represents 14%,” Porn said.
It appears that after years of school shootings like at Oxford High School, an impact is registering with citizens. Porn makes this poignant point.
“Several of the proposals that are supported by all those groups would have prevented or could have prevented the Oxford shooting,” Porn said.
A majority of Michigan voters support a ban on assault weapons, a limit on the size of gun magazines, a ban on guns in schools, and 90% in the EPIC-MRA survey want stronger background checks before gun buyers get a weapon.
The GOP legislature, with strong support from the NRA has resisted these controls. In light of this data, will that change?
“That should suggest that no legislator – Republican or Democrat – unless they are pretty much well-owned by the NRA, should vote for these gun safety laws,” Porn said.
Only time will tell if that happens with the Republican-led legislature.
With somebody that knows what they are doing. You can get almost anybody to agree on almost anything. Grumpy
Perhaps no gift is more American than a fine firearm, and Samuel Colt presented one of the most desirable guns available to Muragaki Norimasa, the Vice Ambassador of the first Japanese embassy to the United States in 1860.
Representing the feudal Tokugawa Shogunate government of Japan, Muragaki Norimasa’s delegation was not only the first group of Japanese to visit America, but also the first Japanese embassy dispatched to any Western country in more than two centuries. The Colt New Model 1855 military revolving rifle inscribed to Muragaki Norimasa is an immensely historic firearm that represented a first exchange of technology, culture, and philosophy between two nations on opposite ends of the globe at a time when the world was growing ever more connected.
Commodore Perry and the Black Ships
In 1630, Japan’s Tokugawa Shogunate government closed the country to the West except for a small Dutch outpost in the port of Nagasaki. For the next 223 years, Japan remained isolated from the world and all its innovations, including evolving gun technology. Japan’s seclusion was shattered in 1853 when U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry rolled into Tokyo Bay with a force of steam-powered battleships, fired a cannon volley, and demanded the nation open its doors to American trade.
Nearly seven years later, three samurai ambassadors and their entourage were chosen to deliver a Treaty of Amity and Commerce to President James Buchanan. Traveling to Hawaii, then San Francisco, then crossing Panama by rail and sailing to New York, the samurai envoys recorded their experiences in vivid detail. Muragaki Norimasa was particularly impressed by the advanced arms of Industrial-age America, and Japanese gun production took great inspiration from Western manufacturers like Colt in the decades to follow.
Colt Presentation Guns
This new relationship between Japan and the United States was also a remarkable business opportunity for enterprising Americans such as Samuel Colt, who presented an engraved Colt Model 1855 revolving rifle to the samurai delegation with an eye toward procuring a Japanese military contract. Offering the finest custom revolvers to celebrities, dignitaries, and war heroes had proven an effective marketing tool for Colt in America, and it was a strategy he hoped would pay off in foreign markets as well.
Samuel Colt’s efforts to expand his business internationally were well known. In the 1850s, Colt went to great lengths to display his guns at various European World’s fairs and exhibitions, placed stories featuring his revolvers in various magazines, and opened an ill-fated factory in London. Though the Japanese military only purchased a limited number of Colt guns, they became enormously popular with the civilian market.
Samurai in America
The arrival of the three samurai ambassadors and their 74-man entourage was a major event in the United States. Congress had provided a lofty $50,000 budget to host the historic embassy, and these funds ensured that an endless succession of parades, parties, and lavish tours would greet the Japanese envoys at every stop. The samurai kept careful records of their visit, noting the stark differences in culture, customs, and technology between Japan and America.
Thousands of spectators appeared to cheer on the samurai delegation, including an onslaught of press coverage that included aggressive attempts to photograph the reluctant ambassadors. Muragaki Norimasa was taken aback by the brash American hospitality and repulsed by the “lack of distinction between high and low,” though the stoic samurai was impressed by American architecture and the steam-powered engines that carried the Japanese embassy by sea and by rail.
For their part, the American media was fascinated by the kimono garments, top-knot hairstyles, and the formal manner of the samurai ambassadors. And most notable of all was the presence of their prominent samurai swords, which famed poet Walt Whitman was quick to include in the poem he penned to honor the Japanese envoys.
Over the western sea, hither from Niphon come,
Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys,
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
Ride today through Manhattan.
– Walt Whitman, ‘A Broadway Pageant’
East Meets West
In May 1860, the samurai ambassadors arrived in Washington D.C. to tremendous fanfare. Between reviewing troops, touring the American capital, and meeting with countless senators, cabinet members, and dignitaries, the Japanese envoys found time to attend a session of Congress. Muragaki Norimasa remarked that the chaotic and theatrical debates he observed within the U.S. Capital Building “resembled somewhat that of our fish market at Nihonbashi.”
President James Buchannan received the Japanese delegation in the East Room of the White House, where the Treaty of Amity and Commerce to the United States, an agreement seven years in the making, was finally officially ratified.
Despite being shocked that the American president was “dressed exactly like a merchant”, Muragaki Norimasa fondly remembered James Buchanan as “a silver-haired man” with “a most genial manner without losing noble dignity.” When the samurai delegation made a final call on President Buchanan on June 5, he presented them with several medals specially struck to commemorate the visit.
Ever since our arrival at the American capital we have frequently been asked by photographers to allow our photographs to be taken, but we have hitherto refused, as it is not the custom in our country. Today, however, we had to submit, in deference to the President’s wishes. – Muragaki Norimasa, June 4, 1860
Samurai in New York
After departing Washington, the samurai ambassadors toured Baltimore, Philadelphia, and finally New York City. While they did not travel to Hartford, Connecticut, the Japanese envoys were shown numerous American firearms that were significantly more advanced than the matchlock guns the samurai had been using for more than two centuries prior to Commodore Perry’s arrival.
The Colt New Model 1855 revolving percussion rifle may have been presented to Muragaki Norimasa through Colt’s New York office or one of the navy yards the samurai delegation visited. For example, Muragaki mentioned that the commandant of the Navy Yard showed the samurai various American guns and “demonstrated in the making of a six-chambered gun or pistol” which “greatly impressed us.”
In addition to presenting a revolving rifle to Muragaki Norimasa, Samuel Colt ensured that the samurai delegation would return home to Japan with a selection of Colt firearms. Among the guns presented to the samurai were two Colt carbines and two Colt revolvers, as well as 100 sets of revolver spare parts and 59 sets of carbine spare parts. Most of these items would have been transferred to Japan’s shogunate government.
A Samurai Worthy Gun
In 1860, the Colt Model 1855 military pattern revolving rifle would have been one of the most advanced guns in production and one of the few repeating rifles of the Civil War era. The samurai were impressed by Colt’s guns for a reason, as the introduction of the revolver was a substantial leap forward compared to Japan’s dated arms technology.
The Japanese characters on the right side of the rifle’s buttstock have been translated in an included document from the Historiographical Institute at the University of Tokyo as meaning “Jin-Shin [Meiji year 5]/Ni-Sen-Hyaku-Ku-Ju-Ku [series No. 2199]/Myo-To-Ken.” The markings indicate the gun was in the possession of the Kōchi Prefecture in Eastern Shikoku in 1872.
Return to Japan
The samurai delegation’s departure from New York Harbor in June of 1860 was met with a tearful sendoff from their American hosts, but Muragaki Norimasa was eager to see his homeland again. By visiting America before other western nations, the Japanese had conferred a great honor on the United States and successfully accomplished their mission of observation, discovery, and normalizing trade relations with their American neighbors across the sea.
The samurai’s visit to America marked the first Japanese delegation outside of Asia in more than two hundred years. Their voyage crossing the Pacific, then returning across the Atlantic down and around the Indian Ocean made them among the first Japanese to circumnavigate the globe. It had been an epic voyage, but the country to which Muragaki Norimasa returned to in November was even more fraught with turmoil than the one he had left.
Looking back at the hills of the American shore joyous is our heart as we set out on our homeland voyage. – Muragaki Norimasa, June 30, 1860
The Fall of the Samurai
Just as America was rearing closer to Civil War near the end of Buchanan’s term, Japan was bracing for a rebellion of its own. While Muragaki Norimasa was still en route to Washington, Chief Minister Ii Naosuke of the Tokugawa Shogunate was assassinated on March 24, 1860 by Ronin samurai who opposed western influence and shot the Chief Minister with a Japanese copy of a Colt Model 1851 Navy outside the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle.
Tensions exploded into all-out war in 1868 as the question of how to respond to Western influence turned Japan upside down. The pro-imperial nationalists defeated the shogunate forces in 1869, ending the Boshin War and ushering in what is known as the Meiji Restoration, marking an end to the Edo Period and restoring the country to direct imperial rule. Japan’s once feudal military government would soon transform itself into a modern empire.
Commerce between the United States and Japan was delayed during the American Civil War and the Meiji Restoration, but ultimately Muragaki Norimasa’s samurai delegation had been a critical step in establishing a prosperous trade relationship between the two countries. Japan’s Treaty of Amity and Commerce to the United State would remain enforced for the next 40 years.
A Gun Fit for a Samurai
The Colt rifle presented to Muragaki Norimasa found its way to America again in May of 1946 when it was brought back by 1st Lieutenant Stuart M Beard III after Japan’s defeat in WW2 and subsequent occupation by Allied forces. As historic presentation pieces go, this Samuel Colt presentation Model 1855 revolving rifle to the first Japanese embassy to America is one of the most significant guns featured in Rock Island Auction Company’s May Premier Firearms Auction, and the impressive rifle checks all the right boxes as a one-of-a-kind collector’s gun.
The guns gifted to the samurai delegation represented an offer of trade and future weapons deals, but Colt’s revolving rifle inscribed to Muragaki Norimasa also symbolized a new age for Japan in many ways. The Industrial Revolution had arrived by force in the Land of the Rising, and after more than two centuries of isolation and a brutal Civil War, the Japanese would enter the modern world as a major power.