Most of the guns made today are sterile in style, spiritless in quality. I’m sure they’re accurate and functional, but they lack a certain something. Something big. The first test of a gun is if it’s worth handing down generation after generation and if it’s a tool that can inspire beyond itself. Can today’s gun do that? Uh, no.
What’s a proper gun? It’s made from hand-machined metal and built on good wood. Quality metalwork and parts-fitting have a buttery feel. Real wood gets better with age. Since I’m no expert, and can’t predict the future, I lean toward guns that have already been around a few decades and already show these qualities. Their wood darkens and wears in just right. Like well-used furniture. Their actions sound and work great even though they’re old by today’s measure. I get guns that have already been handed down a few times and have only gotten classier for it. If they’ve been well-kept when I get them I think they can last through my life and go down to my kids just fine.
In contrast, the new guns advertised and discussed in mags and websites today are ugly. They’re made by robots. And it shows. They’re designed around crudeness: they use crude parameters to achieve accurate and functional results. I know efficiency is key today but it’s just not my first choice.
To be specific: most guns today are made of plastic and stamped metal and stainless steel.
The words “burnish” and “patina” have no place around today’s scene.
If you look for books, mags or websites about traditional-style firearms, they’re actually a bit hard to find. Sure, the re-enactors are out there, but that’s not this. And the elite custom dudes are out there, too. Again, a miss.
For instance, try to find a website or book featuring the most elegant lever-action rifle ever made, the Savage Model 99. No one disputes its merits. But no one showcases it either. Yet it’s a common rifle. Its production values actually wandered quite a bit, especially in recent decades, but glorious examples abound. There are websites dedicated to it—to the geek aspects of sorting out parts numbers. Not to its legacy, lore, art or quality. This is a rifle that’s affordable and which has been famous for a century. It’s innovative in several ways.
Or try to find an online image of the first autoloading hunting rifle, the Rem Model 8, .35. It’s still highly regarded. It’s a gorgeous gun in a splendid shortrange caliber. You just can’t find nice pics of it online.
I have a great postcard showing the romance-era writer James Oliver Curwood (who lived near us) and his wife standing, wearing snowshoes, in the northwoods snow, with dogs at their feet, and great wool classic sporting outfits, and one of them is holding a Sav 99, the other a Rem 8. Be still my heart! …I gotta find that postcard and scan it.
Hot-diggety, I just googled myself (!) and found a couple images that are close to the one I mention above! I remembered that I used some of the postcards in an old issue of Out Your Backdoor magazine. So here ya go…Class!
OK, I also googled some more and finally found a couple sites that show off classic guns. Here’s a sales site full of pics: www.collectorsfirearms.com/. And here’s a guy’s blog full of pics plus opinions (I notice him praising the “soul” of older guns quite often!): www.theothersideofkim.com/index.php/ggps/ggplist/. So I found a couple decent pics to show you what I mean. Still, I look forward someday to photographing some everyday classic guns in their glorious detail, to really show you what I mean.
A couple Savage 99’s:
And a Remington Model 8:
Ya know, there are mags for classic cars and motorcycles. Nothing yet really for classic guns—except for the elite stuff. OK, I did buy one on Mausers the other day. Pretty thin in the end, but a neat concept.
It’s that old wood and buttery metal that we like.
The Winchester 94 lever-gun is the standard classic item, but traditional values spill every which way beyond it. Every format of gun has its glorious highwater mark. And, if I wasn’t clear enough before, I don’t mean fancy. An individual firearm is by definition a Populist tool. It’s for one guy to shoot and to show his family and friends. It’s not organizational. It’s not elitist. So the proper gun is something a guy could use every day of his life then hand it down to his kids still looking and working good. Scratches look good on it. Most everything can be readily maintained and repaired. Worn wood looks great. Rubbed metal.
Just to show my values I put the $50 singleshot shotgun high on the list. Many specimens of this breed have it all: good wood, good metal, good times. Lots of dinners per shell fired. I personally never ate so much variety from my hunting as when I only had my grampa’s singleshot.
Now, I’m picky. Not just any singleshot will do. Some have terrible wood and ugly designs. I’ll take a pass. And some are overly garish or fancy—like the Weatherby’s or the disco finishes of the 1970’s Remingtons.
The magazine “Backwoodsman” celebrates this class of gun, but it’s a pulp mag with smallish photos and can’t show the beauty.
I’ve published my “Ten Best” guns list here before. Lists are fun. Let’s do it again…
Rifles: Savage 99, Win 94, Sporterized Mauser, Rem M8 auto .35 (oh yeah!).
Shotguns: $50 singleshot, Browning A5, Win 21 dbl (another cheaper dbl escapes me).
Muzzleloaders: Kentucky squirrel, Hawken.
Pistol: Colt Officer .38, Colt Walker blackpowder revolver.
There are plenty other fine guns—great guns for vital uses—but these perhaps capture the classic legacy-type everyday values the best. (I’m obviously skipping over the must-have .22 auto rifle, the must-have Ruger .22 auto pistol—which a shooting fan will likely use more than any other guns if only for practice, as well as a duck classic like the Win 12 pump, the marvelous new TC Encore system or the awesome glory of the SW M29 original .44 mag. I was just going for the core of the core.)
Now, when I visit my contemporary hunting pals I see that the new way has taken over: they all have plastic guns. These guns surely have their place: they take abuse and function wonderfully. But I thought that my values were clearly on the outs.
That is, until I saw a recent issue of one of the big outdoor mags (either OL or FS, I don’t know which, they come at the same time, are published by the same people, and blur in my mind). They surveyed their readers on The Best Guns. The results were boring and predictable in one sense: the winning guns were the cheapest ones easiest to buy at WalMart. The survey should’ve just been called “My Gun.” There were a couple standard wish-guns on the list which anyone would have off the cuff.
But the surprising thing that stood out in the survey and which was headlined in the article was the repeated remark that guns today suck. That wood and hand-tooled metal is what makes a real gun. That plastic and stainless are ugly. I was shocked. It seems that quite a few of the new breed of Texas Hold-em hunters sees it my way after all.
The crazy thing is that it’s hard to find any images online to show what I mean. Maybe I could take some of my own pics sometime.
