Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, October 22, 1911. Black Powder to Smokeless Powder in shotgun shells.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, October 22, 1911. Chinese Assembly opens i...: With the country in the throws of a budding revolution, the Chinese National Assembly opened in Beijing, as scheduled. The revolution was ma...

Sunday, October 22, 1911. Chinese Assembly opens in the midst of revolution.

Hunting season was on, and an add for shotgun shells demonstrated how slowly some technological advances were impacting things.

Last edition:

Thursday, October 19, 1911. Zapatistas advance.

Labels: 1910s, 1911, California (Long Beach), Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Mexico (Morelos), Pacific Ocean, Zapatistas

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, November 4, 1945. Goose Hunters on the Cover of Parade.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, November 4, 1945. Independent Smallholde...: The Independent Smallholders Party won the Hungarian parliamentary elections. Contrary to what is commonly assumed, Eastern Europe didn'...

The Sunday Parade magazine installment to newspapers across the country had a man and woman on the cover, goose hunting.  This cover, posted under the fair use exception, shows how widely hunting remained part of the culture before the post war relentless advance of urbanization cut into it.

The man is carrying a Browning Auto 5 or the Remington equivalent of it.    The device on the barrel of the shotgun on the right is a Cutts Compensator, which was designed to reduce recoil and in later versions allowed for changeable chokes.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, October 9, 1900. Auto 5.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, October 9, 1900. Auto 5.:  

Tuesday, October 9, 1900. Auto 5.

 John M. Browning was granted a patent for what would become the "self loading" Auto 5 shotgun, which would go into production in 1902.

A phenomenally successful shotgun, it blazed the trail for all later semi automatics.  It became so popular that Browning had trouble ceasing to offer it in its catalog even after it desired to do so.  The shotgun was manufactured in Belgium for Browning and also offered in the United States by Remington, as the Model 11.  Remington's production of Browning's design ceased in 1947, but FN's for Browning carried on until moved to the Japanese firm Miroku in 1975.  In 1998 full production finally ceased, with FN carrying on with commemoratives for one final year.

Primarily a hunting weapon, you'll oddly see a lot of inquiries on the net today about whether it saw military use.  It did, but mostly as a training weapons.  As great as it was, it's action was not suitable for combat conditions, although you'll occasionally see some that were used as police riot guns.

It still has a huge following.

Blog Mirror: Browning Auto 5 Shotgun Review: Still One of the Greatest Semiautos of All Time

Last edition:

Monday, October 8, 1900. Annexation of the Cook Islands.

Labels: 1900, 1900s, 1940s, 1949, 1960s, 1965, British Empire, Cook Islands, New Zealand

Lex Anteinternet: Friday, December 12, 1924. Soviet Gun Control.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday, December 12, 1924. Soviet Gun Control.: 

Friday, December 12, 1924. Soviet Gun Control.

The Central Executive Committee of the USSR issued a decree prohibiting the possession of almost all firearms, with the exception of shotguns for hunting, although much hunting in much of Russia, which was fairly common, was in fact done with rifles by necessity.

Following 1933, the penalty for violation was five years imprisonment.  In 1935 knives were added to the list.

During World War Two the ban was expanded with all firearms being required to be turned over to the state, although following the war, the USSR was awash in captured German weapons.  

Presently, rifles may be registered for hunting.

The USSR/Russia we might note, shares this status with Ireland, in being a country whose freedom, if you will, was brought about through the private exercise of arms, that then went around banning them.  In the USSR's case it isn't too surprising, as armed resistance against the Communists continued on into the 1930s in some areas and revived during the Second World War, to continue on until nearly 1950 after the war.

Truly, there's a lesson here.

1931 vintage Soviet hunting travel poster. Russia had a very vibrant hunting culture until the Communists came in.  Knowing that an armed populace would overthrow them sooner or latter, the Communists banned possession of rifles and pistols, which the Czar's government had not.  This poster shows a hunter taking on a grizzly bear with a double barreled shotgun, which might well end up in a bad result for the hunter.  Based upon the travels of a fellow I once knew who had hunted in the late stage USSR, later on you could hunt with a rifle, but it was a crappy rifle that belonged to the government you had to check out.  Interestingly, shotguns remain the one firearm produced in Russia which are somewhat good, although they are peculiar.

The first issue of the weekly Saudi Arabian newspaper Umm Al-Qura, the official newspaper of the Saudi government, was published

Blog Mirror: The Affordable Side-by-Side Shotgun Is Making a Comeback with American Bird Hunters

 

The Affordable Side-by-Side Shotgun Is Making a Comeback with American Bird Hunters