World News Heard Now Hears, and Reports on, M1 Story

Finally, others in the media are starting to pick up on the M1 story, and we thought we were the only reporters looking into the issue. Mary Bargeman at World News Heard Now has posted an interesting read titled “More Proof of Anti-Constitutional Agenda with Gun Sale Nix.”

As much of the mainstream media has gone out of its way to note that President Obama hasn’t instituted new anti-gun legislation, it is nice to see someone report that the administration is no friend of the gun lobby. In fact, this is the latest proof that the Obama administration is actually hostile to gun owners. Read more

Obama Praised for Vintage Gun Ban

If you have been following FirearmsTruth over the last few weeks, you know that the federal government has banned the return of vintage Korean War small arms to this country. The facts of this issue are like drunk drivers, they are all over the place. What is clear is that the president is being praised for stopping the import of M1 Garands and M1 carbines. These firearms are popular with history buffs and collectors. But because of the popularity of recent WWII movies and TV series, these weapons have become expensive to buy.  It seems that anti-gun zealots are ecstatic over the ban.

As Mary Bargeman of World News Heard Now wrote: “The Brady Campaign is aglow with praise for the Obama Administration, because these people would love nothing more than to take away the one Constitutional right which guarantees all others- the right to keep and bear arms.” Read more

Bergen County Gun Buyback Includes Potentially Valuable Guns

We hate gun buybacks. We can’t say that enough. These in all likelihood fail to actually get guns off the streets, and pay gun owners in most cases a mere fraction of what the firearm was worth. We’ve reported on these events time and time again, but this past weekend a buyback in Bergen County, New Jersey just proved our point, as two potentially valuable World War II era handguns were amongst those handed in. Read more

Gun Collecting: The Martini-Henry, Rifle of the British Empire

Many shots have been heard around the world. And each time it was fired from a different rifle. During the Victorian era that rifle was the Martini-Henry. At the end of the 1964 film Zulu, which chronicled the events of the almost infamous frontier outpost of Rorke’s Drift along Zululand where approximately 100 British soldiers fended off an attack by some four thousand Zulu warriors, Stanley Baker replies that the victory wasn’t merely a miracle, but rather, “a short chamber Boxer Henry .45-caliber miracle.”

Whether the real Lieutenant John Chard ever said such a statement is most certainly lost to time, but the fact remains that the cartridge and the weapon that fired those bullets played a very decisive role in determining the outcome of the battle. In many ways the British conflict with the Zulu has become symbolized by the rifle of the day as much as the red jackets and tropical sun helmets worn by the European combatants. This rifle is the Martini-Henry, and today it has become a favorite among collectors. It remains the embodiment of the classic Victorian “Thin Red Line,” and is English through and through. Read more

Gun Business: Key Indicator Points to Gun Industry Strength

Financial analysts closely track the FBI’s monthly report on firearm background checks as a key indicator of gun sales. This figure doesn’t tell the whole story related to industry performance but much like analysts look at mall traffic to predict retail sales, the background checks usually provide a hint into the strength of firearm purchases. So what do the numbers say? Read more

Firing Back: Fine Guns are Like Fine Art Too

Perhaps one problem with firearms in this country is that movies, TV shows and video games only depict the worst side of guns. Seldom are guns shown in movies or TV shows where someone defends their home from a break in. If anything, usually the bad guy loses control of his big, mean gun and the homeowner gains the upper hand. This is seldom the reality. Read more

Gun Collecting: Semi-Automatic Versions of Vintage Machines Could be the Next Best Thing

Certain collectible guns bring out that “wow” factor. This is especially true of the vintage firearms from the Soviet Union that helped turn back the Nazi invaders and were carried by soldiers of the Red Army during the so-called Great Patriotic War. Of course actually trying to obtain a live firing version of the infamous PPSh-41 submachine gun, or DP-28 light machinegun can be no small challenge. Read more

Golden Guns From Mexican Cartels

The American mainstream media has remained somewhat fixated on American guns that head south of the border, but the British press has picked up on the so-called “narco bling weaponry” that has been confiscated from Mexican drug lords. The Daily Mail noted several actual “golden guns.” Read more

Is the United States Blocking Importation of American Guns?

In an interesting twist, it seems that American M1 rifles – the type of rifle that helped win the Second World War – are potentially being kept out of collectors’ hands in the United States. Our friends at Ammoland.com are reporting that the rifles had been in South Korean warehouses since the end of the Korean War, and the South Korean government was looking to sell to firearms to collectors, only to face opposition from the American government. In total there were somewhere around 86,000 M1 Garands and 22,000 M1 Carbines that South Korea had been looking to have imported into the United States. Read more

Gun Seized at Border “Not a Machine Gun”

Last month two “machine-gun like weapons” were seized by Customs and Border Protection officers at the border to Mexico. At the time even we questioned whether these were semi-automatic or fully automatic weapons – of course the mainstream media has moved on. It was enough for the MSM to denote the guns as American made machine guns and leave it at that, thus implying to the less knowledgeable reader that fully automatic weapons are readily available. One paper did go the extra distance to clarify exactly what type of firearms were in fact seized. Read more

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