American Gun: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms
This month we’ve been looking at books about firearms makers, and this weeks book is kind of a recap of some of the great firearms, American Gun: A History of the US in Ten Firearms by Chris Kyle.
Let me start by saying this book is exactly as advertised. It is a history of the United States, as told through the firearms that helped make her such a great country. And like any good story teller, he starts at the beginning, with the American Long Rifle, aka the Kentucky Rifle. This is the rifle that allowed America to win the Revolution, not least of which was through sniper actions. Which the British thought was ungentlemanly, not least of which is because prime targets were the officers. Which they thought was a bit of a war crime. Although as The Fat Electrician says, it’s not a war crime the first time, and for us, those tactics led to freedom and the founding of a new nation.
Descendants of that rifle were brought in the western expansion and used in Texas when Texas was first fighting for freedom from Mexico, then fighting to retain her independence, up until she joined the Union.
The next rifle he looked at the Spencer Repeater, was covered in last weeks book Gun Barons, but Kyle discusses how adoption of the Spencer Repeater earlier in the war could have significantly shortened the duration of the war.
Next we look at the first pistol on Kyle’s list, the Colt Single-Action Army Revolver. One of the best parts of this book is that in any given chapter, he doesn’t JUST discuss the chapter heading gun. He provides details and context for other significant firearms for the time being discussed. So in this chapter he introduces the rivalry between Colt and S&W which was discussed in detail in Gun Barons. Now, Kyle’s book was written first, he finished the bulk of the text before he died in 2013, and his wife Taya worked with his friends and publisher to complete fact checking. However, lest someone get the bizarre idea that Bainbridge was copying Kyle, stop right there. There are a million other sources of this same information, and it is not at all unheard of for more than one person to reach the same conclusions from different sources. The fact the same information is in both books bolsters the validity of the information being told. I was listening to a Thomas Massie interview a few weeks ago and he said he reads three books on any topic and goes with the consensus. True, he was talking about plumbing his own house, but the advice is solid. If multiple sources report the same information, then it’s probably solid.
In the chapter on Colt, he provides a nice recap of Tombstone and the OK Corral. I have a more detailed book on this by Tom Clavin, which I kind of want to read sooner rather than later now. It’s gonna have to be later, I already have the rest of my 2024 reading list set up.
Ok, back to this book. Next up is the Winchester 1873, aka The Gun that Won the West, which was brilliant marketing on the part of the Winchester Repeating Arms company, since many guns contributed to winning the west. He talks about the infamous Dalton Gang and their raid on Coffeyville, Kansas, which was mentioned in the Guns of John Moses Browning. And Kyle’s not wrong when he says nothing says cowboy like the look handled lever action rifle that was the Winchester 1873. In this chapter he discusses the Sharps rifle, from which we get the term sharpshooter, not least of which is from a shot made at Adobe Walls, TX, a trading outpost, on July 27, 1874. The outpost was besieged by Indians and sniper Billy Dixon, who managed to knock out the mounted Indian warrior who was leading the raid. The shot was later measured by US Army Surveyors as 1,538 yards. This is over ¾ of a mile…. .8 miles to be precise, which is an insane shot to make with iron sites. There is a reason the Sharps rifle was used in the movie Quigley Down Under. Also, people who think you can only be accurate with a scope….Practice more.
We move into the M1903 Springfield rifle, which was the first major upgrade adopted by the US Army, which includes the Spencer Repeating rifle, which only made an appearance on the battlefields of the Civil War because select officers made massive purchases on behalf of their own companies, not because the US Army ordinance officer, one James Ripley, hated advanced technology, specifically breech loading rifles, and basically believed if muzzleloaders were good enough to win the nation from the British, it was good enough to keep the country a United States. The 1903 was made as almost a direct rip off from the Spanish made Mauser’s used during the Spanish/American War, and was so closely related the US Government ended up paying royalties to the Mauser plant in Germany. Not sure how that played out with WWI and the M1903 making it’s first real appearance in modern warfare.
No real list of best guns ever would be complete with out the M1911, the brain child of John Moses Browning and progenitor of basically every automatic pistol invented since it was also adopted by the US Army in time for WWI.
Next up was the Thompson Submachine Gun, which was made by the same John Thompson who made the recommendation that the army adopt a .45 caliber firearm. And he completed the submachine gun just after WWI ended, and with no new looming conflicts, sales were really slow to start with. Until Prohibition started, and it became the favorite of gangsters across the country. And it kind of remained the domain of mobsters and criminal syndicates until WWII when it finally was adopted by the military and used extensively by The Greatest Generation as they fought for freedom in Europe.
Along with the Thompson submachine gun, the M1 Garand was adopted by the US military for WWII. The M1 Garand was a beast, it could take an absolute beat down and keep on firing. This was also the platform that would inspire the M14 and M16 down the line.
The last pistol discussed was the .38 special police revolver, which was wildly popular by law enforcement and appeared in almost every detective and police movie. It was one of the designs used by Secret Service when defending president Harry Truman against an assassination attempt in 1950. Truman ended up commuting the sentence of one of the would be assassins to life in prison, because he knew that would make the shooter a martyr to the Puerto Rican causes he had attempted to kill Truman over. The reason he needed commutation of his sentence, is that during the attempt, one of Truman’s guards, Leslie Coffelt was killed, and the assassin was initially sentenced to death. In the next few months, I’m hoping to learn by Jimmy Carter pardoned the shooter, Oscar Collazo. But that’s for future Katrina to find out.
And we round out our jaunt through US History with the M16, which is still partially in use, but is being replaced by the M4 carbine, all of which use the M1 Garand as the grandfather design.
I really enjoyed this book, it was a well organized review of American History, as told by the firearms that created us and made us a United States.
