Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Guns and the GOP

Well Trump Stumpers,

The issue of guns has come roaring to the front lines of the GOP civil war, er, I mean race for the candidacy.  Jeb Bush comes out of nowhere and posted a picture of his FN that engraved with his name.



 A nice gift to a visiting politician.  People are wasting time and getting distracted over nothing. There has been a grand tradition of giving firearms to world leaders throughout history.

Here are some famous examples:

Napoleon Bonaparte had a pistol gifted to him by Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Thornton.  This pistol was a three barreled flintlock.



George Washington received this matched pair of French made saddle pistols from the Marquis de Lafayette.  These same pistols would later be gifted to President Andrew Jackson.
George Washington The Father of Our Country was not only an avid hunter but also quite the gun aficionado. Numerous sets of pistols with provenance to the General are currently on exhibit at his Mount Vernon, Va., home as well as at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.


President Lincoln was presented a gold plated Henry Repeating rifle, serial number 6.

Another repeater made famous by its use during the war was the Henry Repeating Rifle. Serial No. 6 was presented to Lincoln with a fully engraved, gold-plated receiver. It was honored with the NRA’s first National Treasure Gold Medal Award in 1998, making it the finest-made, historically significant firearm in the country.


President Theodore Roosevelt was presented with a double rifle, Kornbrath engraved. in .450/500 NE by Fredrick Adolph.  

TR’s big stick was a Frederick Adolph .450-500 NE that he never got a chance to take to Africa. It spent most of its life on display at the Abercrombie & Fitch Manhattan store or at the National Firearms Museum at NRA HQ. A sportsman, described as a wealthy Chicago businessman, drowned in Alaska in 1910 leaving the arms importer, Frederick Adolph, stuck with a double rifle, Kornbrath engraved and in .450/500 NE that he had already taken delivery on. Not one to let a chance for some publicity escape him, Adolph, with some public fanfare, presented the gun to Theodore Roosevelt at his home on Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, Long Island, N.Y. TR never had any occasion to use the gun and asked that it be displayed in the window of Abercrombie & Fitch in Manhattan for a time. Eventually it was given to one of his hunting guides and donated to the NRA through the efforts of Ron Peterson of Albuquerque, N.M. Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt was the Executive Officer of the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry when it embarked from Tampa, Fla., in June of 1898 and headed to Cuba. Most of the infantry of the U.S. Army at that time was equipped with the .45-70 black powder Springfield Trapdoor single-shot rifle and carbine. Roosevelt used his political capitol to equip his men with the Model 1896 Krag Jorgensen carbine in .30-40 smokeless. TR personally took a Winchester Model 1895 Carbine with him and loaned it to Trooper Bob Wrenn who arrived in Cuba late and without a longarm. Wrenn was a four-time U.S. tennis singles championship winner, and a charter inductee in the International Tennis Hall of Fame. The carbine is currently on loan to the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Va., from the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site of the National Park Service in Manhattan, N.Y.

I think I have more than made my point that famous, and some infamous, people have received firearms as gifts over the history of the United States.  People need to stop losing their minds over it and not get distracted by establishment fluff.  We need to get our focus back and start thinking about what is going to be done to save the Republic we live in, or at least make sure that the implosion is a controlled one.

Here is one last parting picture for you gun fans out there:




This is the 1911 that Elvis gave to President Richard Nixon when he visited the White House.  Can you imagine somebody getting a gun into the White House to give it to Obama?

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