First, a preview of something that I hope to post very soon.
You may remember a while back – April of 2022, as a matter of fact – I said I was special ordering a gun from my local gun shop for Buy a Gun Day.
It came in…on August 3rd. Yes, this year. I actually waited longer for this than Someone Who Isn’t Me expects to wait for their Form 4 item. (Don’t ask. I will not be taking questions at this time.) Not that I blame my local gun shop for this. As I understand it, there are reasons for the delay related to the manufacturer. All will be revealed soon, I hope.
In the meantime, let no man say that I am not PC.
After the jump, some more gun books for my loyal reader…
Military and Sporting Rifle Shooting, Edward C. Crossman. Small-Arms Technical Publishing Company, Marines, Onslow County, North Carolina, 1932. Riling 2122.
He also said, did this publisher person, that while there were a great many people who could do the book better than I could, he had to work with the tools available to his hand and that he found the rifle shooters were all too busy shooting to write books.
-E.C. Crossman from his forward.
It seems like he was a somewhat modest man. Smith describes this as the definitive book (for the time) about shooting high-powered military and sporting rifles. Samworth’s PR stated “There us nothing known today about modern rifle shooting which is not included within the covers of this book.” At 499 pages, I believe this one of the longer Samworths. As a matter of fact, the story goes that when Crossman sat down to write this book, he had so much material about the Springfield rifle that he ended up splitting the content into two books. I don’t have The Book of the Springfield yet.
(Crossman was one of Samworth’s prolific authors. He’d previously written Small Bore Rifle Shooting for SATPCO, so this would have been his third book. Townsend Whelen is the only person who did four books with SATPCO, if you count the two volumes of Small Arms Design and Ballistics.)
The cover on this is a bit misaligned, but that can probably be fixed. I thought at first someone had done a color Xerox of a cover and substituted it, but the experts I consulted say it looks legit. It does have the Plantersville imprint on the rear, however, and the back jacket advertises several books (McBride and Alvin Linden’s “Firearm Design and Assembly”) that were published post-1932 so…I don’t know. The books on the jacket flaps and ad page are consistent with the 1932 publishing date. This has the green cloth binding instead of the mustard yellow that Smith says characterizes the second and third printings, but has a gilt “Samworth” above the tailcap: this doesn’t match any edition that Smith lists. So beats me.
I would call the condition “very good”. There’s a little bit of what I consider to be minor shelf wear at the top and bottom of the jacket, and a small (1/4″) tear at the top of the spine. Other than that, I think this is a very nice copy of an important book.
I touched on Crossman in my previous entry on Small Bore Rifle Shooting: Clarence Anderson, in his 2010 Gun Digest article (“The Xman”) quotes a contemporary describing Crossman as “the outstanding writer of his time in the field of guns and ammunition”. He spent time in the Army post WWI, and during that period was assigned to a ballistic research station in Florida. He got a lot of time, military ammo, and military equipment to experiment with, which influenced his later work. In addition to gunwriting, he also testified as an expert in criminal cases, and kept writing for various periodicals. He probably would be better known today if he hadn’t died in 1939.
$43.25 (with shipping) from Circle City Books on ABE.
Cooper on Handguns: By the Publishers of Guns & Ammo, Jeff Cooper. Peterson Publishing Company, 1975.
This seems thematically appropriate, for reasons related to the preview of coming attractions above. Jeff Cooper tells you everything you need to know about handguns, including how to pick a gun and a caliber.
This is in good, but not great shape: there are a couple of small tears to the right side of the front cover, and the usual amount of general wear. Keep in mind, this is a nearly 50-year-old publication that I’m pretty sure was sold on magazine racks and not intended to last.
And: the cheapest copy currently on ABE is nearly $63 in “acceptable” condition. The next cheapest is nearly $80 in “good” condition, and ironically is being sold by a Canadian seller.
Hard Rain : History of the Browning Machine Guns, Frank Iannamico. Moose Lake Publishing, Harmony, ME, 2002.
326 pages on the Browning .30 and .50 caliber machine guns, including mounts, ammunition, ammunition links, and even the neat little Tippmann .22 variant.
I think this is “very good”, almost excellent. There’s a tiny bit of wear to the top and bottom right corners, but other than that no tears or edge wear.
Frank Iannamico also wrote The Smith & Wesson Model 76 Submachine Gun which I’ve read and liked, and AK-47: The Grim Reaper which I have in a box somewhere but haven’t read. I think Moose Lake Publishing may be out of business: I can’t tell for sure, and it is possible they moved to another state from what DuckDuckGo returns.
Cheapest copy on ABE is just under $200 from a UK seller in “very good” condition. Half-Price Books in Dallas has it for $214.
The Cooper book and Hard Rain I bought as a package deal from Legendary Guns in Phoenix for $30 total. So I don’t feel cheated at all: as a matter of fact, I almost feel like I cheated them. But both these books had clearly been sitting on their rack, possibly since publication (at least for Hard Rain: I don’t know how long Legendary has been there, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve had the Cooper since 1975, too.) I suspect the owner might have been glad to sell them to someone who wanted them, and didn’t really care about online prices.
Next time: why not load your own?
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