Famous Firearms ~ Guns

Famous Guns ~

Guns have been a part of America since it's beginning. All American wars were fought with guns. Guns tamed the wild west. Guns were the main tools of the American gangsters of the 1920s and '30s. And, sadly, guns were used to assassinate presidents and alter our history.

Like anything else, a few guns survived their bloody past and are still with us today. These arn't mearly antiques or novelties. Many were owned and used by famous outlaws, lawmen, gangsters, assassins, etc. This blog shows many of these "famous" weapons. Also, there are several guns that were used in television and the movies that have gotten a "famous" title because of their users.

By TIFFANY HSU

OCT. 1, 2012 12 AM, L.A. Times

Two guns found on the bullet-riddled bodies of star-crossed outlaw lovers Bonnie and Clyde in 1934 were auctioned off this weekend for more than half a million dollars.

The weapons are staying together, bought by the same, unnamed Texas collector.

The Gangsters, Outlaws and Lawmen affair, put on by RR Auction at a Nashua Crowne Plaza Hotel in New Hampshire, pulled in more than $1.1 million for 134 artifacts.

Among the items: a handwritten note from Old West gunman Wyatt Earp, a deposition from Prohibition-era gangster Al Capone, a letter from Mafia boss Lucky Luciano and a stock certificate for mobster Bugsy Siegel.

But the stars of the show were the guns.

Bonnie Parker’s .38-caliber Detective Special, which was attached to her inner thigh with medical tape when she was gunned down by law enforcement officers, went for $264,000. It was the highest bid of the auction, according to Bobby Livingston, vice president at RR Auction.

Clyde Barrow, who died at Parker’s side, had a 1911 Colt .45-caliber automatic tucked into his waistband. The gun sold for $240,000.

“It was a great success for us,” Livingston said. “It was just thrilling.”

The auction company has held other themed auctions, some involving items from the Titanic or space missions to the moon. Events that bring in more than $1 million tend to involve 400 or more artifacts, Livingston said.

But stories such as Bonnie and Clyde’s continue to live on in public imagination, in part through television shows such as HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire.” Recent reports peg starlet Miley Cyrus as a possible contender to play Bonnie Parker in a Lifetime miniseries.

“In American culture, for whatever reason, there’s a romance with rebellious outlaw types,” Livingston said. “We glorify Jesse James, Billy Kid and more because they’re seen in that spirit of individualism and Americanism and this concept of fighting the evil banks.”

“They’re seen in this mythological presentation that can often be so far from the truth,” he said.

Probably one of the most famous firearms in American history is a very small handgun that was used in the first assassination of a United States president. On April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC, a man named John Wilkes Booth slipped into the presidential box through an unlocked and unguarded door, and with a single-shot .44 caliber darrenger, shot Abraham Lincoln through the back of the head. Booth escaped but Lincoln lingered through the night in a deep coma, then died early the following morning.

Days later, Booth would be cornered on a tobacco farm and killed. But his little gun would begin it's life as, perhaps, the most famous weapon in history.

From the Ford's Theater Blog

Numerous lithographs, engravings and other depictions of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln came out soon after the event (not to mention in the 149 years since). But the limits of technology of the time meant that no photographs exist of John Wilkes Booth committing the act. (If it happened today, we most likely would have lots of images, from different angles and instances, taken on various portable devices and shared on social media.) The photograph here may be the only one showing someone pointing the actual deringer pistol that Booth used—not something to be recommended from the standpoint of either proper museum collections management or, arguably, good taste.

After Booth fired the fatal shot from his one-shot weapon, he dropped the deringer pistol in the Presidential Box at Ford’s Theatre, struggled with Major Henry Rathbone, and then—jumped onto the stage and fled out the Theatre’s back door into infamy and eventual death. The gun, permanently separated from its owner, then underwent a journey of its own.

William T. Kent, a theatre patron who had helped to remove Lincoln to the Petersen House, found the deringer on the floor of the Presidential Box when he returned to look for his lost keys later that night. The federal government kept the pistol as a piece of evidence for the conspirators’ military tribunal in May and June of 1865. Because the Judge Advocate General’s Corps prosecuted the case, it retained the deringer. Eventually the War Department, predecessor to today’s Department of Defense, displayed the deringer at its headquarters.

This is how it wound up literally in the hands of the man in the picture: Edwin B. Pitts, the Chief Clerk of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Collections management processes in 1937, when the news agency Harris & Ewing snapped this photo, weren’t a stringent or scientific as they are today. Notice that Pitts is not wearing gloves—a big no-no today. Modern museum practice when handling a priceless artifact like this is to always wear gloves, as human skin oils cause deterioration and staining on wood and metal, the materials that compose the deringer. Additionally, one should try to handle an object like this as little as possible, lest one inadvertently cause damage.

Three years after the Harris & Ewing photographer snapped this image, the Booth deringer and other pieces of evidence from the 1865 military tribunal joined objects from Osborn Oldroyd’s Lincoln collection, formerly displayed at the Petersen House, in the Ford’s Theatre Museum collection. Today the deringer resides in the Museum—protected in a secure glass case—directly underneath the theatre where Booth fired that one shot. As far as we know, Pitts was the last person to handle the deringer in this way. Or so we hope.

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Check out more pictures of Pitts with Booth’s deringer, as well as the other evidence in the possession of the Judge Advocate General Corps, courtesy of our friend Dave Taylor of BoothieBarn.com.

David McKenzie is Digital Projects Manager at Ford’s Theatre. He is also a part-time History Ph.D. student at George Mason University, studying 19th-century U.S. and Latin American history, as well as digital history. Before coming to Ford’s in October 2013, he worked at the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, The Design Minds, Inc. and the Alamo.

Hello, I'm Mr. Ed

Blog Created: 2006

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Television Guns of the 1950s

Famous Guns ~

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Exploded Civil War Musket ~

Bob Ford's Winchester

Terminator 2 Shotgun. 1991. Customized 1887 Winchester. Used by Arnold Schwarzenegger

Colt Paterson Revolver. Very rare. Sold at auction for $977,500 ~

Jesse James' Scofield Revolver. Valued at $350,000 ~

Gun owned by Jesse James' wife, Zerelda Mimms ~

Texas Ranger Sam Wilson’s Colt Walker. Sold at auction for $920,000 ~

Teddy Roosevelt’s Double-Barreled Shotgun. Sold for $862,500 ~

Simon Bolivar’s Flintlock Dueling Pistols. Auctioned for $1,687,500 ~

Wyatt Earp’s Colt .45-caliber Revolver. Sold for $225,000 ~

Hitler’s Golden Walther PP. Sold for $114,000 ~

Gold-Inlaid Colt Model 1849 Pocket Revolver. Sold for $1.1m ~

George Washington’s saddle pistols. Sold for $1,986,000 ~

President Donald J. Trump's Hand tooled Model 1911 .45 Semi-Automatic ~

Old west outlaw Bob Dalton's Colt revolver. ~

Gangster Frank Nitti's .38 revolver ~

Robert Stack 'Eliot Ness' prop Colt .38 revolver from The Untouchables ~

Tom Selleck

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Clint Eastwood

Charles Bronson

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John Wayne

Wanted Dead or Alive

Annie Oakley's Stevens rifle

Bonnie & Clyde's fire power

Gangster auction: Bonnie and Clyde guns fetch $504,000 ~

The Rifleman (TV Series), starring Chuck Connors

John Dillinger Gang (1930s)

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Revolver that once belonged to Western badman, Sam Bass

Western Sheriff, G. Cooper Wright's .44 cal. revolver

Jesse James Gang firearms & misc. items

Bat Masterson, western lawman, 1880s

Western outlaw, Frank Jackson's Colt .45 revolver

Texas Ranger, J.M. Brittain's Bulldog revolver

Buffalo Bill Cody's black powder revolver

Cook outlaw gang of the old west

Old west outlaw, Bill Doolin's Derringer

The Gun That Killed Lincoln ~

The Gun ~

DON’T SHOOT!: THE JOURNEY OF BOOTH’S DERINGER PISTOL ~

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