Only small problem is the disclaimers that it's good the NRA's evil political message is minimized. Otherwise, pretty positive article on the front page of the travel section. There was also a good front-page article about the feral hog problem in Texas which applied no evil stigma to shooting them. In fact, it seemed to indicate that as a positive thing. Way to go, Statesman!
http://www.statesman.com/travel/content/travel/021504/15nramuseum.html
A little firearms history
At NRA Museum, 'We let the guns talk'
WASHINGTON — Virginia never had a lot of cowboys. So at first glance, the larger-than-life bronze statue of a cowboy — with chaps, Stetson hat, lariat in one hand and rifle in the other — looks oddly out of place in the lobby of an office building in suburban Fairfax County.
But the face, craggy and handsome, seems familiar.
A glance at the accompanying plaque evokes an "of course" moment: It's Charlton Heston, posed in costume from an obscure 1968 Western called "Will Penny," way before he was the president and imposing face of the National Rifle Association. Heston served five years as NRA president before stepping aside last year after being diagnosed with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.
His statue stands at the entrance to the National Firearms Museum. Almost 30,000 people visited the specialty museum last year, and officials hope traffic will increase as tourists pair visits here with visits to the new Air and Space Museum annex not far away.
Even though the museum is an arm of the NRA, reminders of the organization's views are minimal and relatively subtle. A short excerpt from the Second Amendment is spelled out in brass at the entrance. The exit takes visitors past glass cases holding 100 rifles and shotguns, forming "Freedom's Doorway," a reference to a Heston speech in which he said, "Freedom's doorway is framed by muskets." And the brochures offer a toll-free number for visitors interested in joining the NRA.
But for the most part, visitors looking for an overtly political message would have to go to the museum store, where the goods range from NRA shot glasses with handles in the shape of revolvers to baby bibs printed with alphabet blocks spelling NRA.
Museum officials take pains to point out that the Firearms Museum is dedicated to the serious study of American history and is not interested in pushing any contemporary political views. The collection of more than 2,000 arms dating to the 14th century draws a bead on the nation's history through guns used at work, at war and at play.
"You see America through the barrel of a gun when you come to the museum," said curator Doug Wicklund, who has prowled antique stores and delved into boxes stored in his attic to come up with furnishings and props for the museum's dioramas.
"We try to show history in an unbiased manner and have visitors view guns without peering through a filter, whether it be left or right. We let the guns talk. You can see the wear and tear on them. Look at the engravings and imagine the time it took to craft them. There are guns that won medals at the Olympics and guns that served our nation. Each one has a story," Wicklund said.
Museum officials characterize the guns as a combination of art and history in the same realm as, say, elaborate sabers at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey. There are presidential guns, hunting guns, carnival guns, royal guns, toy guns, prototype guns and guns that went to Vietnam. There are guns that belonged to poets and guns that belonged to cops, guns big enough to shoot an elephant and guns small enough that only a sewing needle would fit down the barrel.
The oldest gun, so to speak, in the museum's collection is a European hand cannon dating to 1350 and found in the ruins of a castle near Salzburg, Austria. It doesn't resemble what most people think of as a gun. It is little more than a chunk of iron pipe mounted to a large stick that had to be rested in the nook of a tree to protect the firer from the kick of its powerful recoil.
The most valuable item in the museum's collection is a .66-caliber Italian wheel lock carbine that came over on the Mayflower in 1620 with Pilgrim John Alden.
The exhibits, spread over 20,000 square feet, are arranged in themes.
One case presents short biographies of men better known for their last names than their first: Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson, Eliphalet Remington Jr. and Samuel Colt.
A glimpse of Americans at war is offered up in dioramas of virtually every conflict from the Revolutionary War to Iraq. For Civil War buffs, there are Confederate sharpshooter rifles and a Union arms factory. One gun is believed to have been with John Brown during his 1859 raid on the U.S. armory at Harpers Ferry.
A soldier's-eye view of war is chillingly realistic in the scenes of World War I doughboys standing in a trench littered with guns and grenades, and a representation of U.S. troops gathering German war booty in the ruins of World War II.
"Many soldiers became arms collectors at that point," said Wicklund, standing beside the cavelike room with Nazi swastika armbands littering the floor. "It was opportunity."
The law enforcement display best exemplifies the museum's relentlessly positive outlook on guns. Dozens of firearms line the wall beside police badges and FBI posters of wanted men.
A small wooden box contains the half-melted titanium and aluminum gun that belonged to New York City police officer Walter Weaver, who was serving on Emergency Service Squad No. 3 on Sept. 11, 2001, when he rushed into the World Trade Center and never came out. His gun, twisted from the pressure and the heat, was retrieved from the ashes.
But the case also contains the only gun in the collection that was ever used by a certifiable bad guy — a shotgun retrieved by California fish and game officers one day after getting a complaint about a naked man shooting birds in the desert. They arrested him and confiscated the gun. His name was Charles Manson. (The gun was confiscated well before the August 1969 slayings for which he was convicted two years later.)
To Wicklund, the proportion seems about right.
"Think of the number of times firearms were used to protect life, used in a positive sense, and compare them to the number of times firearms were used for bad or evil," he said. "We've got one such gun in 2,000. We may be overemphasizing the negative side."
Wicklund said he has no desire to exhibit, say, the Bushmaster rifle used during the Washington-area sniper shootings for which John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were separately convicted last year, noting it is not a particularly rare or unusual gun.
Instead, his dream exhibit would be a collection of guns relating to every American president dating to George Washington, a noted fowler. As Wicklund put it, "Just about every president has used or owned a gun."
If you go
The National Firearms Museum is at the National Rifle Association headquarters, 11250 Waples Mill Road, Fairfax, Va., about 20 miles west of downtown Washington. For information, call (703) 267-1600 or visit www.
http://www.statesman.com/travel/content/travel/021504/15nramuseum.html
A little firearms history
At NRA Museum, 'We let the guns talk'
WASHINGTON — Virginia never had a lot of cowboys. So at first glance, the larger-than-life bronze statue of a cowboy — with chaps, Stetson hat, lariat in one hand and rifle in the other — looks oddly out of place in the lobby of an office building in suburban Fairfax County.
But the face, craggy and handsome, seems familiar.
A glance at the accompanying plaque evokes an "of course" moment: It's Charlton Heston, posed in costume from an obscure 1968 Western called "Will Penny," way before he was the president and imposing face of the National Rifle Association. Heston served five years as NRA president before stepping aside last year after being diagnosed with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.
His statue stands at the entrance to the National Firearms Museum. Almost 30,000 people visited the specialty museum last year, and officials hope traffic will increase as tourists pair visits here with visits to the new Air and Space Museum annex not far away.
Even though the museum is an arm of the NRA, reminders of the organization's views are minimal and relatively subtle. A short excerpt from the Second Amendment is spelled out in brass at the entrance. The exit takes visitors past glass cases holding 100 rifles and shotguns, forming "Freedom's Doorway," a reference to a Heston speech in which he said, "Freedom's doorway is framed by muskets." And the brochures offer a toll-free number for visitors interested in joining the NRA.
But for the most part, visitors looking for an overtly political message would have to go to the museum store, where the goods range from NRA shot glasses with handles in the shape of revolvers to baby bibs printed with alphabet blocks spelling NRA.
Museum officials take pains to point out that the Firearms Museum is dedicated to the serious study of American history and is not interested in pushing any contemporary political views. The collection of more than 2,000 arms dating to the 14th century draws a bead on the nation's history through guns used at work, at war and at play.
"You see America through the barrel of a gun when you come to the museum," said curator Doug Wicklund, who has prowled antique stores and delved into boxes stored in his attic to come up with furnishings and props for the museum's dioramas.
"We try to show history in an unbiased manner and have visitors view guns without peering through a filter, whether it be left or right. We let the guns talk. You can see the wear and tear on them. Look at the engravings and imagine the time it took to craft them. There are guns that won medals at the Olympics and guns that served our nation. Each one has a story," Wicklund said.
Museum officials characterize the guns as a combination of art and history in the same realm as, say, elaborate sabers at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey. There are presidential guns, hunting guns, carnival guns, royal guns, toy guns, prototype guns and guns that went to Vietnam. There are guns that belonged to poets and guns that belonged to cops, guns big enough to shoot an elephant and guns small enough that only a sewing needle would fit down the barrel.
The oldest gun, so to speak, in the museum's collection is a European hand cannon dating to 1350 and found in the ruins of a castle near Salzburg, Austria. It doesn't resemble what most people think of as a gun. It is little more than a chunk of iron pipe mounted to a large stick that had to be rested in the nook of a tree to protect the firer from the kick of its powerful recoil.
The most valuable item in the museum's collection is a .66-caliber Italian wheel lock carbine that came over on the Mayflower in 1620 with Pilgrim John Alden.
The exhibits, spread over 20,000 square feet, are arranged in themes.
One case presents short biographies of men better known for their last names than their first: Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson, Eliphalet Remington Jr. and Samuel Colt.
A glimpse of Americans at war is offered up in dioramas of virtually every conflict from the Revolutionary War to Iraq. For Civil War buffs, there are Confederate sharpshooter rifles and a Union arms factory. One gun is believed to have been with John Brown during his 1859 raid on the U.S. armory at Harpers Ferry.
A soldier's-eye view of war is chillingly realistic in the scenes of World War I doughboys standing in a trench littered with guns and grenades, and a representation of U.S. troops gathering German war booty in the ruins of World War II.
"Many soldiers became arms collectors at that point," said Wicklund, standing beside the cavelike room with Nazi swastika armbands littering the floor. "It was opportunity."
The law enforcement display best exemplifies the museum's relentlessly positive outlook on guns. Dozens of firearms line the wall beside police badges and FBI posters of wanted men.
A small wooden box contains the half-melted titanium and aluminum gun that belonged to New York City police officer Walter Weaver, who was serving on Emergency Service Squad No. 3 on Sept. 11, 2001, when he rushed into the World Trade Center and never came out. His gun, twisted from the pressure and the heat, was retrieved from the ashes.
But the case also contains the only gun in the collection that was ever used by a certifiable bad guy — a shotgun retrieved by California fish and game officers one day after getting a complaint about a naked man shooting birds in the desert. They arrested him and confiscated the gun. His name was Charles Manson. (The gun was confiscated well before the August 1969 slayings for which he was convicted two years later.)
To Wicklund, the proportion seems about right.
"Think of the number of times firearms were used to protect life, used in a positive sense, and compare them to the number of times firearms were used for bad or evil," he said. "We've got one such gun in 2,000. We may be overemphasizing the negative side."
Wicklund said he has no desire to exhibit, say, the Bushmaster rifle used during the Washington-area sniper shootings for which John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were separately convicted last year, noting it is not a particularly rare or unusual gun.
Instead, his dream exhibit would be a collection of guns relating to every American president dating to George Washington, a noted fowler. As Wicklund put it, "Just about every president has used or owned a gun."
If you go
The National Firearms Museum is at the National Rifle Association headquarters, 11250 Waples Mill Road, Fairfax, Va., about 20 miles west of downtown Washington. For information, call (703) 267-1600 or visit www.
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