Well, I hadn't heard of a Monitor. Looked it up. Interesting history: They Make All Kinds: The Colt Monitor Automatic Machine Rifle
Vic

 

A monitor was used by a Dallas Deputy Ted Hinton to help kill Bonnie and Clyde. There is debate as to the source of the gun. Some claim the deputy got the monitor from the Texas National Guard whereas the Hamer family maintains in his rush to get to the ambush site Ted Hinton wasn't able to grab a long gun and so Frank Hamer provided him with a Monitor that was his personal property. Having met and shook the hand of Frank Hamer the 3rd on one occasion I will go along with the Hamer family history.

 

I saw the movie The Highwaymen on Netflix and I personally saw Frank Hamer buy one at a gun shop. In all seriousness though, I would be inclined to believe the Hamer family story. If you haven't seen the movie, it is a pretty good one.

 

The first one I ever saw was at one of the old Houston Astro Hall shows. Price tag at the time was a hefty $8000, and couldn't imagine anyone paying that for it. I remember a recent RIA auction where one of the Monitors sold for something shy of $120,000.

 

They used to be one in Waco at the Texas Ranger's Muesum.

I saw it three or four years ago there.

 

No one knows of Henry Bowman, then? Too bad.......he fired an open-bolt firing rifle in semi-auto using it to shoot clays: he hit something like 90 out of 100. Fiction, of course, but a lot of the lore is not.

Ed McGivern back in the '30s or so, could hit 5 Coke bottles thrown into the air simultaneously with his D/A revolver, point-shooting from the hip with nearly 99% repeatability! I have a photo of him doing it at some State Fair, I'll dig it out tonight.

Or Ad Topperwein, a promotional shooter for Winchester, I think kit was, who fired a newly-introduced semi-auto rifle in .22LR at children's wooden play blocks, 2 inch cubes, hand-thrown into the air, one at a time. He shot 8 hours a day, for days on end, hitting all but 9 out of 72,000+ blocks, took a rest, and went on to clear 100,000 blocks! I have a picture of him sitting atop the mountain of blocks he "drilled".

jaroslav