Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Legacy Weapons

It's been a while since I had a chance to blog. I am in the realm of law school finals... so that has kind of consumed my life for the past couple of weeks. My grandparents came to visit over the weekend and my grandpa gave me a .32 revolver from the 1890's that used to belong to my great-great grandpa. Being a huge history nerd (and a weapons nerd) I was pretty stoked. I had talked to my grandpa about getting a pistol a while ago but then law school started and I stopped having a life. :-P



I have a lot of weapons and replica weapons on the walls of my home theater room. In the room with my Martin Logan speakers and Pioneer plasma you'll also find Sting (the sword of Bilbo Baggins), an Igorot shield and spear (from the Philippines), a Sephiroth sword (Final Fantasy VII), and a replica of a George Washington flintlock pistol (from Mt. Vernon). I'll continue to add to this room over time.

The coolest weapons I own though were passed down to me from my grandpa. My great-grandpa had a massive collection of guns, bows, arrows, etc. The two items that have made it down to me are an English longbow and the .32 revolver I received Sunday night. If nothing else, I figured it would be cool to post some pictures. I'm feeling lazy today though because my torts final was yesterday so these pictures were taken with my iPhone.

English Longbow


A longbow is a bow long enough for its owner to draw the string to a point on the face or body so it varies with the user. Longbows generally have been anywhere from 3 ft to 6 ft tall. Mine is closer to 6 ft (it's a little taller than I am). You can find out more about them here on Wikipedia.

I've thought about having it restrung but I don't know if it would break. It's old and not in the best shape. I used it as a staff when I played a guard in Hamlet in 6th grade so I've had it for a long time now.

1890's Smith and Wesson .32 Revolver


For being over 100 years old, this revolver is in really good shape. The handle is slightly cracked on the other side but there's no other real signs of damage. This particular revolver was made by a Smith and Wesson subcontractor, Harrington and Richardson Arms Company. The patents listed on the top are from 1895 and 1896.

This gun was originally purchased by my great-great-grandpa and then it was passed down to my grandpa and now has found its way to me. Grandpa told me it hasn't been fired in around 40-50 years so I'm now thinking I might try to find a way to display it somewhere in my house as opposed to checking to see if it will still fire. Like I said, it's in decent shape with no visible cracks so I bet it would still fire, I just don't want to risk breaking it.

So there was no real point to today's blog post, I just didn't feel like studying for Friday's final yet. Also pictures of weapons are cool. Oh and if you're still looking for Christmas gifts, might I suggest any of the books I've written as most of them are now available in paperback. You can check them all out on my Amazon Author Page.