Ok here's the story..
My sons were playing in the backyard today, and one of them came to me and said "Dad, I found a bullet"! Being smart kids, they knew not to touch the cartridge, and find an adult. I told him to go ahead and bring it to me, and what I have here is a spent .38 S & W casing. I did a little research on the internet and found out that it is an older cartridge, one that fell out of popularity around 40 years ago, but was once a popular and widely used caliber for police and military use. The casing is not brass, but appears to be steel or aluminum (it's shiny silver) which leads me to believe it is of rather recent manufacture. You can still purchase this caliber cartridge, but it is rare and expensive, not the type of thing your average criminal would be running around shooting. My wife and I bought our home just over a year ago, and the house that was built in 1939. We live minutes away from a downtown city area, in a residential neighborhood, not they type of place where you can discharge a firearm and not get noticed by neighbors and police.
So I'm just wondering, doing amateur detective work, about the history of this old revolver cartridge, and if anyone knows if it was loaded in anything other than brass in the modern era? At the top, above the primer is the marking W-W and below is 38 S & W. The punch in the primer is a solid, heavy round dent in the center, very rounded and uniform.. if that matters.
The only thing I can speculate is that at some point, long ago, when there were far far fewer houses built in my city (Chattanooga, TN) and times were way different than they are today, it might have been commonplace for a person to discharge a firearm in a semi-urban wooded area and not have the cops called on you. Otherwise, why would there be a spent revolver round in my backyard, maybe 10 feet from the deck of my 70 year old home?
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to post this on this forum, and see if anybody has any theories about the .38 S & W cartridge, and how a spent round ended up in my yard. Thanks!
My sons were playing in the backyard today, and one of them came to me and said "Dad, I found a bullet"! Being smart kids, they knew not to touch the cartridge, and find an adult. I told him to go ahead and bring it to me, and what I have here is a spent .38 S & W casing. I did a little research on the internet and found out that it is an older cartridge, one that fell out of popularity around 40 years ago, but was once a popular and widely used caliber for police and military use. The casing is not brass, but appears to be steel or aluminum (it's shiny silver) which leads me to believe it is of rather recent manufacture. You can still purchase this caliber cartridge, but it is rare and expensive, not the type of thing your average criminal would be running around shooting. My wife and I bought our home just over a year ago, and the house that was built in 1939. We live minutes away from a downtown city area, in a residential neighborhood, not they type of place where you can discharge a firearm and not get noticed by neighbors and police.
So I'm just wondering, doing amateur detective work, about the history of this old revolver cartridge, and if anyone knows if it was loaded in anything other than brass in the modern era? At the top, above the primer is the marking W-W and below is 38 S & W. The punch in the primer is a solid, heavy round dent in the center, very rounded and uniform.. if that matters.
The only thing I can speculate is that at some point, long ago, when there were far far fewer houses built in my city (Chattanooga, TN) and times were way different than they are today, it might have been commonplace for a person to discharge a firearm in a semi-urban wooded area and not have the cops called on you. Otherwise, why would there be a spent revolver round in my backyard, maybe 10 feet from the deck of my 70 year old home?
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to post this on this forum, and see if anybody has any theories about the .38 S & W cartridge, and how a spent round ended up in my yard. Thanks!
