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History Detectives: St. Valentine’s Day Shotgun

2.2K views 17 replies 15 participants last post by  aardq  
#1 · (Edited)
Years ago we talked about this TV show episode about the possible shotgun used at the famous massacre. Back then a Colt Forum member bought a Stevens Westernfield identical to it and made a dead on legal copy and even got a violin case for it. This lucky girl gets to shoot one of the Thompson’s used and also the shotgun. She’s pretty cute, too.

 
#2 ·
It's unfortunate the shotgun shells recovered from the scene were not still available for comparison. That would have absolutely confirmed it either way. So it remains just a story, but an interesting one. Nice article to watch. And to have the opportunity to fire the actual Thompson used that morning...wow! Lucky young lady.
 
#7 ·
Kinda grim, actually.
I can't say I'm all that hot on the idea of test firing old murder weapons.
But it does raise the question of whose guns are actual crime guns.
I have a pistol that appears to have a notch cut in the grip frame. I prefer to think that it is damage from a handling mishap. I don't wanna know.....
This topic comes up from time to time. Firearms are sport equipment. They often have historic value. They are collector items. They are marvels of industrial age technology. But in the original concept, they are anti-personnel tools, and as such they can have a grisly past.
Not to put too fine a a point on it, but there are many guns that were used for their primary purpose. Some utilized in righteous legitimate circumstances, and some used in situations that were not righteous or legitimate, and often very sad and tragic.
To my simple minded way of thinking, the actual known crime guns ought to be permanently out of service, and certainly out of circulation. Museums are suitable homes for such things, if they bear any significant notoriety. As for the crime guns of the common thug, do whatever seems appropriate with evidence once it has served its' purpose in the legal system.
Sure, I'll look at 'em, read about 'em, and will be interested in the criminals and their crimes, but there is a stain of something unsettling about the things, the artifacts, that were part of such a horrific event that hits me in here....where my conscience expresses itself. I can't define it, nor should I even attempt to.....The word 'evil'. comes to mind.
 
#8 ·
While I agree I don't want to glamorize any gun of notoriety, I don't want to label any inanimate object "evil". It's sometimes asked on camera forums, "how could you USE a Leica that was probably used by a Nazi?!" We all are sinners and every foot of ground has probably had someone killed on it over the past 10,000 years. So if you happen to own a gun used offensively in war or defensively, or in a crime, it doesn't relate to YOU. Any more than the reparations movement tries to punish the current generation for something that happened hundreds of years ago. There have been crimes throughout history. I don't believe in hauntings.
 
#9 ·
I wouldn't knowingly want a gun used in a murder or other heinous crime...or a suicide. Bad ju-ju in my estimation. As one agency I worked for there was an officer who somehow snuck out an agency revolver (before my time there and we couldn't take issue firearms for off-duty)...he took it home and swallowed a .38. After it was all over and done with no one else in the agency wanted to carry that revolver. Eventually a different set of stocks were put on it that covered the serial number (a S&W) and no one knew different.

I have owned numerous M1 Garands, M1 Carbines, 1903 rifles, Krags and such over the years...I've no idea how many may have been used to take lives in combat...or even potentially used in a war crime. What I don't know is sometimes better. I choose to think that any actually used in combat were used to defeat a ruthless enemy and saved the lives of other Americans and innocents.

Back in the '80s when the M1 rifles and Carbines were being brought in from Korea I remember seeing a Garand with a hunk of hair and scalp with dried blood sticking to from the under the buttplate. Whether it was done in combat or training...who knows? The ROKs had a reputation for not eff'n around so it could have been the result of either.
 
#10 ·
Back when I was in the 'Spartan Training Program' with the ROKA, that bit of lost hide and skin was common when those boys trained.

Hard troopers, all of them...

Military weapons were 'purpose-built' - any of the old DCM/CMP issues would have seen combat, so any could have been used for purpose - I never let that bother me.
 
#11 ·
History Detectives is a show. No evidence at all about this gun. Interestingly, they failed to mention that one man killed had nothing to do with the gangsters and had the unfortunate position of having been there when it happened. They also failed to mention a Thompson recovered from a Rum Runner by the Coast Guard that was matched forensically to the murders.
 
#12 · (Edited)
They also failed to mention a Thompson recovered from a Rum Runner by the Coast Guard that was matched forensically to the murders.
Never heard of this.

Two Thompsons were recovered from Fred Burke's apartment following a traffic accident and police shooting in St. Joseph, Michigan. Of the 70 casings recovered at 2122 N. Clark Street, 20 had been fired by one of the guns and 50 by the other.

As a side note, one of the guns had also been used in the murder of Frankie Yale in New York.
 
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