American Gun: A History of the U.S. In Ten Firearms

by Chris Kyle

  Of historical note: The Spencer was a key development on the road to the modern combat rifle

  Trivia: Following the Civil War, Spencer rifles and carbines were sold overseas to France and Japan. Abe Lincoln tested the Spencer himself before approving its use.

  COLT SINGLE-ACTION ARMY

  Nicknames & other titles: Peacemaker, Model P., M1873, Colt .45

  First designed by: William Mason and Charles Brinckerhoff Richards for Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Co.

  Type: Pistol, 6-shot revolver

  Predecessor: Colt Army 1860; there were many other earlier influences

  Caliber: .45 Colt

  Variations: Many, but among the most notable is the Colt Frontier, chambered in .44–40 to be compatible with Winchester 1873 Repeater

  When used: First introduced in 1873, the .45 is still available from Colt

  Used by: Everyone from Teddy Roosevelt to George C. Patton, Pat Garrett to Buffalo Bill Cody

  Trivia: While Colt .45 is the best-known caliber, many revolvers were chambered for other calibers, including the .44-40, so that the ammunition could be used in both the Colt handgun as well as Winchester Model 1873 abd 1892 rifles

  WINCHESTER 1873 RIFLE

  Nickname: The Gun that Won the West

  Type: Rifle, lever-action repeater

  Predecessor: Volition Repeating Rifle, Henry Repeater

  Caliber: .44

  Historical note: One of the key members of a family that was the iconic frontier tool for settling the American West

  When used: First introduced in 1873, the gun is still offered for sale by Winchester (although they’re actually manufactured by Miroku in Japan)

  Variations: Among the most important was a carbine version with a shorter barrel and rifles chambered in .38 WCF, .32 WCF, and .22 rimfire. Later Winchester models built on the 1873, even as they added improvements

  Trivia: A musket version with a 30-inch round barrel was among the family’s lesser-known members

  TV & movies: The gun has its own movie: Winchester ’73, produced in 1950 and starring James Stewart. Various other Winchesters have been featured in TV and movies; Chuck Connors used a .44–40 Winchester 1892 in the Rifleman.

  SPRINGFIELD MODEL 1903 RIFLE

  Nickname: Springfield

  Origin: The rifle was designed at the Springfield Armory immediately after the Spanish-American War

  Type: Bolt-action rifle

  Predecessor: Mauser bolt-action rifles, 1889–91 & Spanish M93

  Caliber: .30

  Notable features: Bolt-action, five-shot magazine

  Cartridge: The gun fires a .30-06 round. The “aught-six” refers to the year the cartridge was introduced.

  When used: The Springfield 1903 was the standard American Army rifle from its introduction in 1903 until 1936. A large number of Springfields were used in WWII. The weapon is still used for recreation

  Trivia: The cartridge was changed and the gun rechambered after it was discovered that the original cartridge burned too hot. The .30–06 has a slightly shorter case and bullet.

  COLT M1911 PISTOL

  First designed by: John Moses Browning

  Type: Pistol, semi-automatic

  Predecessor: The M1911 evolved from a series of designs by Browning in the years before 1911

  Caliber: .45

  Notable features: 7-round detachable box; works on recoil principle

  When used: Continuously, from its introduction in 1911 to the present day

  Primary users: Military, police, civilian

  Major conflicts involved in: World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam

  Trivia: In WWII, the U.S. military designated the gun “Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911.” (Current terminology deems the gun a semi-automatic.)

  A .22 caliber version was developed as a training aid for the Army.

  THOMPSON SUBMACHINE GUN

  Nickname: Tommy Gun, Trench Broom, The Chopper, Chicago Typewriter, The Gun That Made the ’20s Roar

  First designed by: John T. Thompson

  Type: Submachine gun

  Predecessor: While large machine guns predate the Thompson, the weapon defined the submachine gun category when introduced in 1919

  Caliber: .45

  Notable features: Forward grip, drum magazine (interchangeable with stick magazine on most but not all models)

  When used: Developed in 1919, most popular during Prohibition and WWII

  Variants: The first production model was the M1921. Various improvements and refinements continued over the years, especially with the advent of war. The main military variants were the 1928A1 and M1.

  Rivals: The Browning Automatic Rifle or BAR is sometimes cited as a competitor for the title of first submachine gun. But the weight and length of the BAR, along with its selective fire mode, make it more a processor of the assault rifle or, alternatively, what today is commonly called a “squad level machine gun”—a light machine gun that can be carried and operated by one man, such as the FN Minimi.

  Trivia: It is estimated that 1.5 million Thompsons were produced for the U.S. military during WWII

  M1 GARAND

  First designed by: John Garand

  Type: rifle, gas-operated, semi-automatic

  Predecessor: The M1 was selected after a competition with another Garand design and a rifle by John D. Pedersen. It was the first truly successful gas-operated semi-automatic infantry rifle in the world

  Caliber: .30–06

  Magazine/clip size: 8 bullets

  Notable features: Loads from the top; can be fieldstripped with no tools

  When used: Primarily WWII and Korea. Recreational use continues to the present day. The M1 is also used by some color guards and drill teams.

  Countries where used: U.S., West Germany, Italy, Japan, Denmark, Greece, Turkey, Iran, South Korea

  Trivia: The gun’s inventor was Canadian

  .38 SPECIAL POLICE REVOLVER

  Nickname: “.38 Special” is a generic nickname for revolvers chamber in .38 Special and related calibers

  Type: Revolver, double action, 5 or 6 shots

  Predecessor: Assorted revolvers; the most famous was probably the Colt New Army Special, chambered for .38 Long

  Caliber: .38

  Notable features: Easy to load, simple to maintain, rugged and dependable, available in a number of barrel lengths and sizes

  When used: Early 20th century to present day

  Used by: Police and recreational users as well as for personal-protection

  Major manufacturers: The classic examples are from Colt and Smith & Wesson. But many other manufacturers have had success with pistols chambered for different .38 caliber rounds and continue to offer them, most notably Ruger and Taurus International.

  M16 RIFLE

  First designed by: Eugene Stoner for ArmaLite

  Type: Assault rifle, gas-operated, selective fire, automatic

  Predecessor: AR-10

  Caliber: 5.56 mm (.223 caliber)

  Notable features: Selectable three-round burst or full automatic (depending on model). Current military-issue magazine holds 30 rounds; original held 20.

  When used: First introduced in 1963, the gun has been the standard military rifle for American soldiers ever since.

  Notable family members: AR-15, M16A1, M16A2, M16A3, M16A4, M4 carbine, MK12 Special Purpose Rifle (SPR)

  Manufacturer: Colt’s Manufacturing Company, Colt Defense LLC. Members of the AR15 family are produced by a number of other companies

  Materials: Aluminum, plastic, steel

  Trivia: The Marine Corps’ current bayonet for the M16 is the OKC-3S, which replaced the M7. A version of the M16 is made specifically to fire from the ports of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle; it is the M231.

  Source Notes

  Key sources for this book include the resources of the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia; the publications American Rifleman, Guns and Ammo, Gun Digest, and American
Handgunner; and the research and historical collections of the New York Public Library. Interviews with Doug Wicklund, senior curator of the National Firearms Museum, also provided valuable historical detail, as did American Rifle, A Biography by Alexander Rose, 2008. In addition, The Sinews of War, Army Logistic, 1775–1953, by James A. Huston, 1997, provided information on problems with U.S. Army Ordnance and weapon selection through the years.

  Chapter 1: The American Long Rifle

  “I never in my life saw better rifles”: Henry J. Kauffman, The Pennsylvania-Kentucky Rifle (1960), p. 24.

  Timothy Murphy and Battle of Saratoga detail: Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War (1997); Richard Worth, Saratoga (2002); Timothy Murphy: Frontier Rifleman, New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center website; William Conant Church, “General Burgoyne’s Original Order Book,” The Galaxy Magazine, June 1876/January 1877. Note: there is some historical dispute over whether the sniper’s actual name was Timothy Murphy.

  In his autobiography, Sam Houston described his father as having served with Daniel Morgan’s riflemen. I have not yet located additional records to pinpoint exactly when and where this service took place, as unit rosters from the Revolutionary War are often incomplete or lost to history, and units were periodically attached to various different units and commands. Also, American “after-action reports” in that war were very spotty, and do not often contain precise inventories of weapons used.

  “when they understood they were opposed”: Roger D. McGrath, The American Rifleman in the Revolutionary War, The New American, September 13, 2010.

  Detail of the Battle of Cowpens is mainly from Lawrence E. Babits, Devil of a Whipping: The Battle of Cowpens (1998); and Kenneth Lewis Roberts, The Battle of Cowpens (1958). I’m most grateful to Cowpens historians Lawrence Babits and John Robertson for additional details and perspective they shared with me.

  “The enemy front is not the goal”: Roman Johann Jarymowycz, Cavalry from Hoof to Track (2008), p. 18.

  “seldom has a battle”: John Marshall, The Life of George Washington (1843), p. 404.

  “an unbroken chain of consequences”: George Otto Trevelyan, George the Third and Charles Fox, Volume 2 (1915), p. 141.

  “a tall man with flowing hair”: Wallace O. Chariton, Exploring Alamo Legends (1992), p. 470.

  “Now hold your fire, men”: Louis Wiltz Kemp, Edward W. Kilman; The Battle of San Jacinto and the San Jacinto Campaign (1947), p. 13.

  “Take prisoners like the Meskins do!”: T. R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans (2000), p. 232.

  “Parade! Parade!”: James W. Pohl, The Battle of San Jacinto (1989), p. 43.

  “San Jacinto! San Jacinto!” “The scene that followed”: Ferenbach, Lone Star, p. 234.

  “be generous to the vanquished”, “You should have remembered”: Charles Edwards Lester, The Life of Sam Houston (1860), p. 147.

  Chapter 2: The Spencer Repeater

  “What kind of Hell-fired guns have your men got?” Alexander Rose, American Rifle: A Biography (2009), p. 147.

  Details and dialogue of Lincoln’s shooting guns in spring of 1861: ibid., page 143; and William Osborn Stoddard, Inside the White House in War Times (1890), p. 41–44.

  “I believe I can make this gun shoot better.” Robert V. Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War (1956), p. 115.

  “handled the rifle like a veteran marksman”, “Boys, this reminds me”: Charles Augustus Stevens, Berdan’s United States Sharpshooters in the Army of the Potomac (1892), p. 10.

  “newfangled gimcracks”: Phil Leigh, The Union’s ‘Newfangled Gimcracks,’ ” NYT Blogs, January 23, 2012.

  “Hoover’s Gap was the first battle where the Spencer”: Larry M. Strayer, Richard A. Baumgartner, Echoes of Battle (1996), p. 18.

  “Those Yankees have got rifles”, “What kind of Hell-fired guns have your men got?”: Alexander Rose, American Rifle: A Biography (2009), p. 147.

  “a circus rider gone mad”: James Welch, Paul Stekler, Killing Custer (1997), p. 57.

  “come on, you Wolverines!”: Edward G. Longacre, Custer And His Wolverines (2004), p. 143.

  “the most dramatic, largest man-to-man”: Paul D. Walker, The Cavalry Battle That Saved the Union (2002), p. 15.

  “the inwardness of the thing”: ibid. p. 147.

  “you are younger than I am”: Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, p. 263.

  “This evening and yesterday evening”: John Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts From Diary (1908), p. 93.

  “There is no doubt that the Spencer carbine”: Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, p. 290.

  “If a large part of the Union Army”: ibid., p. 102.

  Valuable information on the Ordnance Department and other facets of Army supply were provided by The Sinews of War: Army Logistics, 1775–1953, by James A. Huston, Center of Military History, 1997.

  Chapter 3: The Colt Single-Action Army Revolver

  “The good people of this world”: Herbert G. Houze, Samuel Colt: Arms, Art, and Invention (2006), p. 1.

  “yonder comes a thousand Indians!”: Andrew Sowell, Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas (1900), p. 319.

  “They are fixin’ to charge us”: Frederic Remington, “How the Law Got Into the Chaparral,” Harper’s magazine, December 1896, p. 60.

  “Crowd them!”: Sowell, Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas, p. 320.

  “Any man who has a load” Mary A. Maverick, Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick (1921), p. 83.

  “Sometimes a bad horse would blow up”: “Glocks vs. Peacemakers,” American Handgunner, May 1, 2005.

  Davis incident: Massad Ayoob, “The Jonathan Davis Incident,” published online in American Handgunner, The Ayoob Files, February 21, 2013.

  Butch and Sundance dialogue: Massad Ayoob, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: How did They Really Die?”, American Handgunner, January/February 2011, p. 74–5.

  “strange character,”: Joseph G. Rosa, They Called Him Wild Bill (2011), p. 111.

  “He was a broad-shouldered”: Joseph G. Rosa, “Wild Bill Hickok: Pistoleer, Peace Officer and Folk Hero,” originally published by Wild West magazine, published online by historynet.com: June 12, 2006.

  “Bill beat them to it”: Helen Cody Wetmore, Zane Grey, Last of the Great Scouts (1918), p. 329.

  “The secret of Bill’s success”: Joseph G. Rosa, Wild Bill Hickok, Gunfighter (2001), p. 48.

  “Whenever you get into a row”: George Ward Nichols, Wild Bill (1867), p. 285.

  “Charlie, I hope you never have to shoot”: Eugene Cunningham, Triggernometry: A Gallery of Gunfighters (1941), Introduction, p. xx.

  Hickok-Tutt gunfight details: William Connelley, Wild Bill and His Era (1933), pp. 84–5; Rosa, Wild Bill Hickok (1996), pp. 116–23.

  “I never allowed a man to get the drop on me”: Joseph Rosa, Wild Bill Hickok, p. 109.

  “Seven men shoot at each other”: Massad Ayoob, “The OK Corral Shootout,” American Handgunner, May 1, 2007.

  “The gunfight came in bursts”: Casey Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp (1997), p. 122

  Additional detail for this chapter is from John Taffin, John Taffin’s Book of the .44, published online at sixguns.com.

  Chapter 4: The Winchester 1873 Rifle

  “The Winchester stocked and sighted”: Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt—Volume 3 (1902), p. 38.

  Dalton Gang’s raid on Coffeyville banks: Robert Barr Smith, Daltons! The Raid on Coffeyville, Kansas (1999), pp. 83–150.

  Like many others, newspaper editor David Elliott spelled Bill Power’s name as “Powers.” Powers may in fact have been the actual spelling, as many relatives before and after styled it that way. But it’s Power on the official tombstone, and that’s what I used here.

  “The Sharps was a different kind”: Keith McCafferty, “Guns of the Frontier,” Field & Stream, February 1997, p. 35.

  Little Bighorn details:
Thomas Powers, “How the Battle of Little Bighorn Was Won,” Smithsonian magazine, November 2010; Hamlin Garland, “General Custer’s Last Fight as Seen by Two Moon,” McClure’s magazine, September 1898, p. 446; Richard G. Hardorff, Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight (1991), p. 44; Doug Scott, email to the authors.

  “is by all odds the best weapon”: Theodore Roosevelt, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (1904), p. 39.

  “carries far and straight”: Theodore Roosevelt, “Ranch-life and Game-shooting in the West,” Outing magazine, March 1886, p. 616.

  “No one but he who has partaken”: Lamar Underwood, Theodore Roosevelt on Hunting (2006).

  Chapter 5: The M1903 Springfield

  “The French told us”: Alan Axelrod, Miracle at Belleau Wood (2007), p. 2.

  Details of the Battle at San Juan Heights, Cuba are from: Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (1899); Richard Harding Davis, Notes of a War Correspondent (1911); Herschel V. Cashin, Under Fire With the 10th U.S. Cavalry (1902); and Peggy Samuels, Harold Samuels, Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan (1997).

  “The armory also spawned a culture”: John Lehman, “Bookshelf: Save Ammunition, Lose Wars,” Wall Street Journal, March 9, 1995.

  “I think that ramrod bayonet”: United States Army Ordnance Department, Report of the Chief of Ordnance, 1905, p. 129.

  One British general: See John S. D. Eisenhower, Yanks, the Epic Story of the American Army in World War I (2002), page 17.

  Details of the Battle at Belleau Wood are from Axelrod, Miracle at Belleau Wood; Albertus Wright Catlin, Walter Alden Dyer, With the Help of God and a Few Marines (1919); and David Bonk, Chateau Thierry & Belleau Wood, 1918 (2012).

  For more information on the Springfield’s use as a sniper rifle, see “No Drill” 1903A4 Sniper Rifle—1903 Springfield at the GunsAmerica.com website: http://www.gunsamerica.com/blog/no-drill-1903a4-sniper-rifle-1903-springfield/.