Collective Insanity

WALNUT HILL

- Terry Wieland

Gun collectors are very, very strange people. They are so strange, in fact, that even other gun collectors are often at a loss to explain their behavior.

For example, there is now a class of collector that goes by various names, but the one I’ve heard is the “ethical” collector. This is a man – gun collectors are invariably men – who collects military guns of various sorts, but insists on provenance that the specific firearm was never used in action. This seems to me like a contradiction. As someone who owns quite a few military arms of all types and nationalities, I like to look at their scars and imagine where, and under what circumstances, they were used.

Was one of my guns ever in battle? I expect so. And no, I’m not worried about bad juju from a gun with an active past. By the same token, I have long been fascinated by duelling pistols, although I’ve never been able to afford a set. Not only do I see nothing wrong with duelling, morally, I agree with Walter Winans who wrote, well into the twentieth century, that he saw positive results from a return to legal dueling as a means of settling disputes. Compared to endless litigation, it looks pretty good from here.

James J. Grant, who was a lifelong collector of single-shot rifles and became America’s acknowledged expert on the subject, was often at a loss to explain his fellow collectors. For example, he could not understand those who demanded specimens that were in virtually unfired condition, and who were horrified at the idea of taking a rifle out and shooting it. He wrote that he had no interest whatever in owning a rifle he could not shoot. In fact, much of his pleasure in collecting was acquiring an old rifle and doing whatever it took to get it shooting again.