Fascinating Guns For Firearm Enthusiasts

Guns have been around a long time. And if you consider yourself a fan of either history or firearms, you're going to want to check these guns out.

By Peter Rapine

Published 2 years ago in Ftw

"It's days like today that I curse the Chinese for inventing gunpowder." If you know the reference then bless you, and if you don't, I do not curse the Chinese for inventing gunpowder, I'm simply kidding.

Which, considering how controversial (and rightfully so) guns have become, is hard to do when talking about firearms. Guns kill people. That's the problem. It's what they were designed for.

So without glorifying these tools of slaughter, we are going to focus this report solely on the design and function of these historic guns.

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Let's begin with the oldest of all guns, the Heilongjiang Hand Cannon. As the name suggests this weapon was a cannon that you held in your hand. Created by an unknown gunsmith in China in the year 1288, in Banlachengzi, Heilongjiang province, the hand cannon is the grandfather of all firearms.

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The second oldest gun according to the record books is Emperor Charles V’s Wheellock Pistol, designed in 1540 by German watchmaker Peter Peck. What made the wheellock pistol special was it could be fired with one hand as it was the first self-firing gun.
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First introduced to Japan by the Portuguese the Tanegashima, a matchlock firearm was used by samurai in battle. The story goes that Portuguese adventurers were forced the land on Tanegashima island, where Lord Tanegashima Tokitaka commissioned two rifles from the sailors.
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Georg von Reichwein’s Revolver dates back to 1597. Country of Origin: Nuremburg, Germany Gunsmith: Hans Stopler

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King Louis XIII’s Flintlock rifle marks a turning point in the manufacturing of guns, as this rifle used a flintlock mechanism. Flintlock rifles were originally produced in the early 17th century in France and this gun, in particular, was built in 1620, by Pierre Le Bourgeois and Marin Le Bourgeois.
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The Puckle Gun which is named after its inventor, James Puckle was the first ever machine gun and was created in 1718, in the United Kingdom. At the time, Puckle struggled to find investors for his weapon and was unable to sell his Puckle gun to the British Armed Forces.
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The Musket Modèle 1777 was at one time the most sought-after gun in the world and at the height of its production, there were roughly 7 million of them in circulation. Originally created in 1777 in France, the Musket Modèle 1777 was the most commonly used weapon in Europe.

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Maybe the most famous gun on this list, the Colt Revolver was made in 1836 in the good ole United States, by non-other than Samuel Colt. The Colt would be carried by cowboys and soldiers and would make appearances in westerns and Hollywood action films. The name Colt would become synonymous with guns in America and is today one of the most famous names in gun manufacturing.
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The Gatling Gun was created in 1862 in the United States of America, by gunsmith Dr. Richard J. Gatling. If you had designed such a powerful death machine as the Gatling gun, would you have named it after yourself? This weapon was the bridge between early rapid-fire guns and what we know as the modern machine gun.
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The Sedgley OSS .38 is one of the most brutal gloves ever created. A gun fitted to a heavy leather glove that holds a .38 caliber round that fires when a compression button is charged. Usually in the form of a punch in close combat. This insane weapon wasn't just given to OSS members but apparently found its way into the hands of Navy men in the Pacific. All we can say is being punch-shot sounds like one brutal way to go.

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The Lipstick Pistol, aka 'The Kiss of Death" is a Soviet-era gun used by the KGB which fires a single 4.5 mm bullet and could be concealed and slipped past security. It fires when the barrel is pressed into the target, which gives it the name, 'the kiss of death."
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This Frankenstein gun is known as the Apache Revolver and was designed in the 1860s by Louis Dolne and combines multiple weapons into one ungodly device that is as ugly as it is deadly. Though due to the gun's short barrel the range of fire is not great, which is probably why a knife and brass knuckles were included.
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You've probably seen images of this ridiculously large gun before, and despite these two men looking hilariously out of place, this gun had a very real and not so insane purpose. This is a Punt Gun and was used by commercial hunters in the 19th and early 20th to hunt waterfowl. The Punt Gun is many, many, times larger than a normal shotgun or rifle and was placed on a stand (punt) while the shooter typically lay in a boat.

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The Punt Gun was able to kill dozens of birds in a single shot. Here we have a man comparing the sizes of his two guns, and you can see the Punt Gun almost doesn't fit in the frame.
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This is what a hunter using a Punt Gun looked like while out on the hunt. So, while the out-of-context pictures are hilarious, the Punt Gun is rather boring in its application.
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The Stinger Pen is another single-shot and easily concealable pen gun used and created by the OSS, the precurse to the CIA. This pen gun fired a 22 caliber round and was notoriously difficult to use. It's said that the best thing about this gun was it could be hidden in plain sight.

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Two gorgeous Colts, one a Pocket Model made in London and the other an American-made Navy proofed in London and likely bought by a British Victorian officer as his sidearm.