Gun Club

“ When the gunner has reached the point where he can hit the stationary target by swinging his gun both fast and slow, he has acquired better control of the weapon than many old shooters, and he is well prepared to take up snap-shooting at flying or moving targets. The access to a gun club [67] where clay birds may be shot at, will prove of much value, but this is not absolutely necessary, since tin cans, bits of brick, and bottles, thrown in the air at unknown angles by a companion, will afford the needed variety. ”

“ Baskets suspended from steam-cranes permitted them to satisfy their curiosity. There was a perfect mania. Women, children, old men, all made it a point of duty to penetrate the mysteries of the colossal gun. The fare for the descent was fixed at five dollars per head; and despite this high charge, during the two months which preceded the experiment, the influx of visitors enabled the Gun Club to pocket nearly five hundred thousand dollars!
It is needless to say that the first visitors of the Columbiad were the members of the Gun Club. ”

“ Dick declared firmly, holding it by the muzzle and ready to employ the weapon as a club.
"You'll make a lot of trouble and danger for yourself and the girls if you don't put the gun on the ground and walk away from it," warned Tag, glowering. ”

“ In other words, other than your being the owner of a nightclub, which because of the type of customers you occasionally have, you would have to use some force, perhaps hit a customer or hit someone in your club?
Mr. Ruby. Yes.
Mr. Herndon. Have you ever been involved in any other situation where you actually struck at somebody with a weapon? “Weapon” here I’m referring to as a gun, club, or knife or anything that would be other than just a normal fist-fight. ”

“ The long shed of the Village Rifle Club reeked with the oniony smell of smokeless powder, machine-oil, and creosote from the stop-butt, as man after man laid himself down and fired at the miniature target sixty feet away. The Instructor’s voice echoed under the corrugated iron roof.
“Squeeze, Matthews, squeeze! Jerking your shoulder won’t help the bullet. . . . Gordon, you’re canting your gun to the left. . . . Hold your breath when the sights come on. . . . Fenwick, was that a bull? Then it’s only a fluke, for your last at two o’clock was an outer. You don’t know where you’re shooting.” ”

“ Now when an American has an idea he seeks another American to share it. If they are three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they elect a clerk, and a company is established. Five convoke a general meeting, and the club is formed. It thus happened at Baltimore. The first man who invented a new cannon took into partnership the first man who cast it and the first man that bored it. Such was the nucleus of the Gun Club. ”

“ The lid at the top must first have been opened, and not only so, but must have been kept open all the time the weapon was used as a gun, and then, previously to closing with the foe, it must have been necessary to secure it, lest, in brandishing the instrument as a club, the open lid should strike against the head of the man who wielded it. No wonder that this dangerous compound of club and gun soon went out of fashion, and survived its invention only a very few years. ”

“ The first requisite of a shooting club is a suitable range. A 50-yard range adapted to pistol and revolver practice can be constructed at a comparatively small expense. At the firing point a room or house should be provided with booths at least three feet wide with openings facing the targets. A substantial butt must be supplied behind the targets to stop the bullets, including the wildest shots. ”

“ At the same time, if you will make him the present, untrammelled by conditions, he will accept it; as by thrusting a tough stick up one of the barrels the revolver may be converted into a handy club, with which a man may kill his enemy in such a way that half a glance will show the manner of his death.
The club, then, is the universal weapon among the utterly savage; it is a weapon which may be procured without trouble; a round stone lashed to the end of a stick, the thigh-bone of a buffalo,—anything in fact of a handy length and with a heavy knob to it will suffice. ”

“ Whenever three or more persons in any locality are interested in rifle or revolver shooting, a club can generally be organized and additional members secured. If the business affairs are properly and conservatively managed, much pleasure will result for the members at a nominal cost. Approximate ideas of the cost of constructing and maintaining ranges and indoor “galleries” can generally be obtained by communicating with the officers of existing clubs. In preparing the Constitution and By-Laws, that of the United States Revolver Association will be an excellent guide. ”

“ Those at the front strove madly to retreat from the fire-spitting guns in their very faces, and those in the rear pressed as madly forward to the attack. The bullets from the big 45:90's drove through half a dozen men at a shot, and the passageway, gorged with surging, helpless men, became a shambles. The rifles, pumped without aim into the mass, withered it away like a machine gun, and against that steady stream of death no man could advance. ”

“ In the last of May a crew of first classmen from each company will go out into the bay and will fire at a regulation target with the 'Nevada's' six-pounder guns under the regular target practice conditions. Each company six-pounder crew may practice as much as it can find time to with the six-pounder gun in the armory gun shed. ”

“ The rising sound of the reports told plainly of the swinging muzzle, and officers and men dropped flat in the mud and waited till the sweeping bullets had passed over their heads. Men may work on and 'chance it' against rifle fire alone, but the sweep of a machine-gun is beyond chance, and very near to the certainty of sudden death to all in the circle of its swing. ”

“ At the instant the dark muzzle showed itself and the gleam of the firelight was reflected from it, Avon leaned his own rifle against the door at his side, quickly drew his revolver from the holster at his hip, sprang forward like a cat, and seizing the 23 muzzle of the gun threw it upward toward the ceiling. ”

“ The platoon stopped for a moment as if stunned. Then they advanced without increasing their pace. In their faces a machine-gun spat angrily, the bullets flying past like peevish wasps. Automatic rifles were manipulated in the middles [176] of the automatic rifle squad, and the loaders took their places at the sides of the men who were firing, jamming in one clip of cartridges after another. Rifle bullets fled past the advancing men with an infuriating zing. The Maxim machine-guns kept up a rolling rat-t-t-tat, coldly objective. ”

“ Its muzzle pointed over the railway line towards the trenches.
Stuffing up their ears, Kenneth and Harry waited. The gun was fired. They heard the heavy projectile whizz over their heads. Three times the gun spoke; then it was swung round on the truck, and the train moved on to the north-east.
Dazed and deafened by the tremendous noise, the watchers followed it along the line. Here was a discovery indeed. It was no wonder that the gun had never been located. But what they had already learnt made them eager to learn more. Where was the gun kept when not in use? ”

“ Reading descriptions of them would be stale business for people at home who read magazines—the little dirt burrows roofed with withes and leaves, where machine guns' crews squatted behind guns whose muzzles aimed out across the debatable territory; the observation posts, where the lads on duty grumbled at the narrow range of vision provided by the periscopes and much preferred to risk their lives peeping over the parapets; the tiny rifle pits, each harbouring a couple of youngsters; the gun steps, or scarps, on which men squatted to do sniper work and to try for hostile snipers across the way ”

“ These guards were a queer conglomeration, and had the greatest assortment of weapons I ever saw—from the 32-calibre bulldog to the 45-calibre frontier sixshooter with its 7-inch barrel, from the sawed-off double-barrelled shot-gun to the latest thing in pump-guns. Most of the men were college students out for excitement, and glad to earn something at the same time during the long vacation; but there was a sprinkling of Western gun-men amongst them. ”

“ By observing these simple rules, serious accidents will be impossible. No one should be allowed to handle firearms in a shooting club or participate in any of the public matches until these rules have been thoroughly mastered. ”

“ As the Americans landed, some few dashing on and into a wide shelter or dugout lined with berths and concrete-floored, in which fifty men reposed or waited for night duty, the short, sharp, rapidly repeated bark of the ready pistols sounded almost like, though less regular than, a machine gun. ”

“ With deliberate celerity Allen drew his hands from the skirts of his coat, a cocked pistol in each, and, with one of them, he covered the man skulking towards the guns.
“The first man that draws a pistol or raises a gun gets a bullet through his carcass,” he said with authority.
At Allen’s first words Seth had mounted the ladder and as quickly reappeared with his gun. The movement was seen in the dancing shadows, and he was covered by the other pistol, which was lowered as he was distinguished to be helping a woman and child to mount to the chamber. ”

“ He turned to Pete, who sat immovable, hatred in his narrow eyes.
“I see you have a rifle on your saddle. I happen to have one with me. You take your gun and get down behind that log I saw out here by the road as we came up. That gives you an advantage. I’ll lie out in the open a couple hundred yards away, say.
“When these boys give the word, we shoot. Start advancing whenever you feel like it. We keep on shooting till one has enough, or”—he shrugged his shoulders—“somebody gets hurt.”
“For God’s sake, Henry!” burst out the larger khaki-clad man. “That’s murder! Think of your family.” ”

“ So he stood in the centre of the room and went through a series of odd gymnastics. Each gun in turn he placed in the holster and then jerked it out, spinning it on the trigger guard around his second finger, while his left hand shot diagonally across his body and "fanned" the hammer. Still he could not make his choice, but he would not abandon the effort. It was an old maxim with him that there is in all the world one gun which is the best of all and with which even a novice can become a "killer." ”

“ Soon I found what I desired and laid it aside, waiting for Monsieur Friard to return. Again I observed the other customer. There is always a mystery to be solved and a story to be told, when a man makes the purchase of a pistol in a pawnshop. A man who buys a pistol for the sake of protection does so in the light of day, and in the proper place, a gun-shop. He does not haunt the pawnbroker in the dusk of evening. ”

“ As one man drank he spun round and fell with a thud on his face. Machine-gun bullets were whipping up the earth. From Loos came a loud and constant rattle of machine-guns. Machine-guns were firing out of the broken windows of the houses and from the top of the “Tower Bridge,” those steel girders which rose three hundred feet high from the center of the village, and from slit trenches across the narrow streets. There were one hundred machine-guns in the cemetery to the southwest of the town, pouring out lead upon the Londoners who had to pass that place. ”

“ One of the old arrangements, often laughed at, I mean the bell muzzle in old guns, intimates that our ancestors possessed some smattering of science; as the relief in the muzzle of a gun has a tendency, by allowing a gradual expansion laterally, to keep the charge of shot better together: for it is quite apparent that any body severely compressed for a certain distance, expands in proportion when free of that restraint; and the consequence is a tendency to fly off at a tangent, as the friction of a [307] crooked barrel induces a ball to fly in a curve contrary to the bend of the barrel. ”

“ By my side sat a telephonist in communication with the Battery Command Post, some four hundred yards away to the left, beyond the Left Section. My only other apparatus was a megaphone, a notebook and pencil, and a pipe. Occasionally I would go and stand by one of the guns, to check the gun-laying and to see that the guns were recoiling and coming up again without undue violence. One had also to guard against a dust cloud being raised by the blast of the guns, thus giving away our position to the enemy. ”

“ Lyon.
"I don't know whether there is or not; but I put my revolver and a box of cartridges into my pocket."
"I never owned a pistol of any kind, and have hardly fired a gun since I was a boy; but in the storeroom out of the library I found some very nice weapons,—a double-barrelled rifle and a fowling-piece."
"The colonel had two revolvers; and they must be somewhere about the library. A few years ago some horse-thieves were in this vicinity, and we kept a watch on the place every night for a couple of weeks," said Levi. ”

“ The 18-pounder field-gun makes a most ear-splitting crack for those who stand in front of the battery, and, moreover, the sound seems to come from only a few yards away. The sniper’s bullet will strike the parapet with a resounding crack, followed by the whirr of its passage through the air, and a new-comer might easily imagine that one of our own men had fired from the next traverse. ”