Tweet
On another board someone quoted Condeleeza Rice as saying she couldn't understand why anyone "needed" military style firearms. Actually the notion of a "military style" firearm is only from the last century or so. In 1775 the British and the Colonists were pretty evenly matched when it came to small arms, the Redcoats had the Brown Bess, the Patriots either Brown Besses or Committee of Safety muskets-a Brown Bess copy, plus what they brought from home-club stock fowling pieces, you name it. The British advantage was their superior drill and discipline-and the bayonet, though that didn't do them much good as Lexington and Concord-and Bunker Hill. Later the Colonists received Charleville muskets from France, functioned the same as the Brown Bess. Through the war of 1812, the Mexican War and the various Indian Wars of that period, the smoothbore musket that could double as a fowling piece was the standard. the Civil war saw the introduction of the rifled musket, in many respects just a development of the long rifle. Repeating rifles such as the Henry and Spencer were seen as unsuitable for military use, too short range, underpowered cartridges, a little too difficult to clean and maintain. It's really only in the first decade of the 20th Century with the introduction of the machine gun, the machine rifle, the submachine gun-usually seen as a police weapon-that you start to see firearms with a more strictly military application.
But those military style firearms are so much fun to shoot and collect.
But those military style firearms are so much fun to shoot and collect.