Landlady and M were up for a couple of days. M runs the very informative website Forgotten Weapons, a useful resource for anybody interested in the weird, wonderful ways guns fail to become iconic military weapons. Anyway, over supper M told me he’d recently posted the handbook for the M1895 Lee straight-pull rifle, and said he’d seen something weird on the cover. I looked it up:
Click for embiggenment, and then check out the store locations where you could buy one of these state-of-the-art weapons of mass destruction right off the shelf, legal as breathing. I’m so glad we’re so much safer now, than then.
I bought my first shotgun from Woolworth’s in downtown Boston. Took it home on the bus. No second looks, no ID required. Long time ago.
-S