Another demonstration of how different the past was:
Ask Dad For a Winchester this Christmas
How would you like to wake up Christmas morning and find a brand new .22 Winchester waiting for you? Wouldn't a real Winchester make this just about the finest Christmas you ever had?
What heaps of good, healthy fun you could have with it!
If you really want a Winchester for Christmas, better start thinking about it now because there are probably a number of different people who are already beginning to wonder what to get you for Christmas. Let Dad and all the rest of your folks know that there's nothing you want for Christmas so much as a Winchester.
A gift that will stay with you
Your Winchester will be a fresh joy to you every day of the year. There's no companion like a rifle for a boy. It teaches him the lessons of self-reliance and self-control that he must learn before he becomes a man. The chances are your Dad had a Winchester when he was your age. Tell him it's your turn now.
Talk it over with Dad and the others and Christmas morning it will be strange if you don't find a Winchester all your own waiting for you.
Be sure it's a Winchester you ask for. Everyone knows the traditions behind the name "Winchester" and you want the gun you can be proudest of.
What the name "Winchester" means
The name Winchester" stands for the best in gun making. For over half a century, Winchester has been the standard of pioneers and sportsmen. Winchester rifles built the West. As the need grew, Winchester originated a model and a calibre for every purpose.
The Winchester Company today is an organization of expert gun makers with fifty years of gunmaking reputation behind it.
Every gun or rifle that bears the name "Winchester" is fired many times for smooth action and accuracy, and is fired with excess loads for strength.
No Winchester barrel varies one one-thousandth of an inch in thickness or diameter. The Bennett Process, used exclusively by Winchester, gives the Winchester barrel a distinctive blue finish that, with proper care, will last a lifetime.
The same care that is taken with (Winchester guns is taken with Winchester ammunition. The two are made for each other.
Select your rifle in advance
Go to your nearest hardware or sporting goods dealer, and ask him to help you select a .22 Winchester. He will be glad to show his stock to you, even if you are not ready to buy. Learn the price of the gun you want, and be sure you let all the folks at home know how little it costs.
"Boys' Life, The Boy Scouts' Magazine, Dec 1917", page 57.
Selling guns to children through a Scouting magazine. Do you think they still do that?
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10 comments:
"What heaps of good, healthy fun you could have with it!"
You could shoot your classmates and teachers, for example.....
Reminds me of the movie "A Christmas Story"
Yes, they do still advertise rifles in Scouting magazines. Shooting sports are a big part of Scouting in the US. Gun culture is different here than in the UK. Generations of boys have received .22 rifles from their fathers. I have owned rifles and I am fully aware that they can be dangerous, if not operated properly. I'm not a holier-than-thou, "don't -you- take-my-gun-away-from-me-er," but I do think that a father can teach his son or daughter to shoot responsibly and safely, without worrying the they are going to go into their school and kill anyone. Do we have a handgun problem in the US— you bet. However, I don't think that owning a rifle at a young age is going to turn a child into a homicidal maniac.
I received the gift of a rifle for my 12th birthday. Haven't shot anyone with it yet.
Then again, it's only been 37 years...
You're probably better off giving the lad a rifle than a pistol - it's considerably harder to carry concealed, for a start.
Gun law in the UK only started stiffening up after the First World War. You'll notice in, eg, Sherlock Holmes stories, he and Watson would slip a revolver each into the pockets of their overcoats when leaving Baker Street on missions that might require packing some heat …
To your point Martyn, Birmingham's Gun Quarter, was named that for a reason! I think many Americans assume that they're are no firearms in the UK, which, as you know is untrue.
Gun manufacturing in the US and beer production in the UK are not that different from each other. Both are significant to our histories; both are backbone industries for our respective countries; and both are indelibly intertwined with our culture and identity as Americans and Britons.
I'm interested by "gun or rifle", implying that they're two different things. Did language evolve here in a similar way as with "beer" and "ale"?
Nut,
I apologize for the confusion. "Gun" is a generic term for large mounted or carriage-borne artillery pieces, like a cannon or naval gun. Unfortunately (and I do it, as well) the word "gun" has become commonplace for any small arm.
Rifles are shot from the shoulder, have rifled barrels and, usually fire larger cartridges all which allow for greater accuracy. Rifles can be single shot employing a manually bolt, repeaters which use a lever action to chamber their rounds, and automatics, which use the expelled gas from a previously fired round to chamber it's next round. Carbines are shortened rifles, originally, for horse-mounted shooters. They are now used when longer, more unwieldy firearms become a hindrance.
Shotguns are also shot from the shoulder but do not have rifled barrels, and are therefore less accurate at longer ranges. They fire a shot shell, filled with ball bearings or a sabot encased slug, rather than a primed metallic cartridge. The intent of a shotgun is to spay the target with a large number of tiny projectiles.
Handguns are devised into two main groups Pistols (implying automatic pistols) and Revolvers, which use a revolving cylinders to chamber their rounds. Handgun cartridges are often larger in diameter than rifle cartridges, but are shorter in length and are of a lesser grain (the weight of the powder used to fire a bullet.) Because handguns are small, have short barrels and less powerful ammunition, they are accurate only up to around 50 yards.
Machine guns are large weapons, usually, but not always mounted. Firing rifle sized ammunition, machine gun use belted ammunition fed through their receivers. MG's are usually used in conjunction with more than one person and may use tripods for stability.
Submachine guns and machine pistols are small, shoulder or waist fired weapons that use pistol ammunition, fired automatically. Submachine use external magazines to feed their ammunition into the receiver.
I hope that this clarifies things.
I miswrote something. The grain is the weight of the bullet not the powder. Sorry about that!
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