[Mike Irwin]

Cripes...

Saw on the news crawler that the Home Office apparently has "serious reservations" about a museum exhibit in Liverpool that is scheduled to display 6 or so handguns once owned by Elvis Presley...

Someone better tell those choads about the dual 15" naval rifles on display in front of the Imperial War Museum, then...

[Bruce in West Oz]

Mike

Doesn't surprise me ...

Went to a bushranger's museum here in Western Australia not that long ago. The (inoperable) muzzle-loading longarms on display (in a locked metal cage) had been removed because "a mother complained they were inappropriate for her children to see". :banghead:

At a (magnificent) country museum here dedicated to the early Benedictine monks, the (again, inoperative) cap and ball handguns carried for defence by the monks had been removed.

Bruce

[Mk VII]

the high cost of a government museum licence and security measures mean that many museums are disposing of or deactivating their firearms, especially if they were acquired haphazardly and are not part of their core focus. The stuff in the Royal Fusiliers museum at the Tower is all deactivated, and so is the stuff at the Tank Museum at the Armoured Warfare Centre at Bovington Camp - even the flintlocks.

[ACP230]

I used to have a certain grudging respect for the Brits... :barf:

[greyhound]

"a mother complained they were inappropriate for her children to see".

Deactivated, OK, I can see it - it wouldn't take away from their display value.

But removing them? From a Bushrangers museum? What about accurately learning Australian history?

When that little kid asks how the Bushrangers got food what are they going to tell him, that they negotiated it to death? Good grief.

[JPM63US]

Watch for good opportunities . . . a couple of years ago the Pennsylvania State Museum sold a bunch of historic peices which did not fit into its collection. They were not of local historic significance being made in other states. My dad got a nice pistol from the auction.

I Europe, they will likely destroy them to save the kids from having to look at them . . . I suppose they will soon remove all the cool fighter planes from the Imperial War Museum . . . since they used to kill people. All that will remain are models and pictures . . . and that stupid "Blitz Experience" exhibit.

JPM - Who misses his annual pilgrimage to the Imperial War Museum - at least I saw it before it gets neutered.

[TrapperReady]

Here's a little anecdote from a trip this past summer...

My wife was attending a conference in Madison, WI so the kids and I went along for kicks. While there, I took the boys down to the children's museum near the capitol builing. Almost right next door is the Wisconsin Veteran's Museum.

The boys and I went in and were looking around. We were talking at length about the WWII display (since my dad fought in the ETO) and the Gulf War exhibit.

Anyway, there was a mother there with her 5 or 6 year-old son. The boy was naturally inquisitive, and was asking a lot of questions. The mother wasn't doing much in the way of answering them, and looked very nervous. Finally, she said "I just don't feel comfortable here with all these guns. I think we should leave."

It made me sick to my stomach. You don't have to glorify war or think that guns are cool, but you need to be able to recognize and accept that they are both an integral part of our past, present and future. She could have easily used the exhibits and her son's questions to discuss why wars happen, the consequences and the lessons that can be learned.

Instead, she chose to let her discomfort take over. I'd bet she offered up some sort of "Guns are bad and peace is good." lecture as she drove off in her mini-van. She probably thinks that To Kill a Mockingbird would be improved with Atticus Finch calling the local Animal Control Officer.

What's next? Should swords and armor be removed from museums? How about pointy sticks and clubs?

[El Tejon]

Maybe they are worried about the bacon grease on them. It can attract bugs.:D

[ElToro]

what a shame... while on the other hand i seek out museums that make firearms the centerpiece!

ie... the Cody Firearms museum

and the Winchester Mystery House here in my hometown has a really cool display of winchester rifles and shotguns and you dont even have to buy admission to the house tour, just go through the gift shop

And there was a casino in Sparks that i stopped in one time that had 2 walls of those cheesy commeratives behind glass... all makes, Colt, S&W etc
you know like somestatehood 100 anniversary or a CHP commem...

even the presidio musem in SF has a good represntation of military arms

anyway, anybody know of any more good firearms museums?

[RustyHammer]

The Brits are just afraid that if they put the guns on display, the French will surrender (again) ! :p

[Mike Irwin]

"Watch for good opportunities . . . a couple of years ago the Pennsylvania State Museum sold a bunch of historic peices which did not fit into its collection. They were not of local historic significance being made in other states. My dad got a nice pistol from the auction."

I used to work for the Pennsylvania State Historical and Museum for the curator of military history. As such, I had run of all of the "fun rooms."

Unfortunately, virtually all (if not all) of the items disposed of in that sale were dewatted by the 28th Infantry Division after WW II, which is where the vast majoity of the rifles sold came from.

The sale was held some time after I worked there, but to the best of my knowledge, no functional firearms were sold, or at least there weren't supposed to have been any, unless there was a second sale.

Interestingly, many of the handguns were NOT dewatted, for some reason.

I always wanted the .30-40 Krag Gatling Gun that was kept on the 5th floor...

[TallPine]

Another attempt to revise history

Next they will be banning books - just wait and see ...

[Jrob24]

JPM - Who misses his annual pilgrimage to the Imperial War Museum - at least I saw it before it gets neutered.

Yeah I'm glad I stopped there during my brief visit to England. They had a real german Jagdpanther :what:

[Bart Noir]

...is just east of Tulsa Oklahoma. I've driven hours to get there and then did it again a few years later. It's that good.

http://www.thegunmuseum.com/

Bart Noir

[RobW]

Reminds me of something happened here: The "Western" theme casino "Sam's Town" had a lot of Winchester leverguns displayed in cases on the walls. At my last visit 2 months ago, they were all gone.

Additionally, the former large, barn-style western-shop made place for more slot-machines.

No reason for my friends and me to go there anymore.

[Soap]

THR member Chris Rhines said to me once: To effectively ban guns, you would have to ban knowledge of guns. To ban knowledge of guns, you would have to ban knowledge.

Britain is a prime example of this phenomenon. If the Brits are willing to sacrifice their knowledge for the sake of feeling safe, let them. Let's just make sure that attitude never takes root in our country (any further at least).

[Airboss]

Two of the best in the U.S. that I have been to were the Winchester Museum in New Haven Conn. and the Colt Museum at the state house in Hartford.Where I spen a lot of my time when I was a kid late 50's was at a Gun collection at Texas A&M in Collage Station Tx,a large room on the 2nd floor of the Student Union must have been 300 to 500 guns in there and very often no people in the room except me spent hours in the Metisger (sp)Collection Room.
What happened to the ARMS and Armor at the Tower of London??

[Standing Wolf]

Rarely does a day pass when I fail to feel grateful to our forefathers for having rebelled against the English and founded a republic.

I think England would have been much happier as a Nazi subject state: no decisions to make, no laws to uphold, no traditions to live by, and of course, none of that pesky freedom to clutter things up.

[quick68]

Come On People! They have to remove the weapons from the museums. Havent you seen Demolition Man? Dont you know what could happen?

[C.R.Sam]

Paranoid revisionist actions.

"Your children belong to the state, and they will be educated by the state, for the good of the state."

Sad, sickening and dangerous.

Sam

[greyhound]

I'm just waiting for the day when I go to the Smithsonian Museum of American History and find all the guns gone. They already have it pushed back in a far corner, and unlike their spiffy displays on more PC stuff like how slave women lived and such, it looks like the gun display hasn't been updated in 20 years....

[NonServiam]

Silly Brits.

If you are ever in Copenhagen, Denmark, make sure to visit the marvellous Danish defence and arms museum, Tøjhusmuseet (http://www.thm.dk/). They have activities and particular exhibitions for children, teaching them the history of Danish defence and arms history in general. When I visited in 2000 (for the annual Danish-Norwegian University Shooting Championships), they had a charming program for schoolclasses called "From the bow and arrow to the Kalashnikov" :) That was sweet. Whish I took one of the leaflets with me ...

[Tamara]

Finally, she said "I just don't feel comfortable here with all these guns. I think we should leave."

The (inoperable) muzzle-loading longarms on display (in a locked metal cage) had been removed because "a mother complained they were inappropriate for her children to see".

Y'know, I really just can't get my head around this mindset. How do folks that feel this way manage to muster enough courage to poke their head out from under the covers in the morning? Do we even belong to the same species? Are they sure that herbivorous, grass-munching A. robustus died out completely, because their descendants seem to be doing a lot of voting... :scrutiny: