Saturday, June 02, 2012

Annie Oakley

VIDEO
A short interview with Dan Hunt, great, great nephew of Annie Oakley about one of her rifles. Created by the Annie Oakley Center Foundation, Inc., this gun can be viewed at the Garst Museum in Greenville, Ohio.

2 comments:

~~Robert said...

Well, it turns out her carbine was not a Rossi 92, but a real Winchester 92, made in 1892. Hers was special order, with part octagonal barrel, bright metal furniture, and the most beautiful full figured fine grained stock. My Rossi has a plain unknown hardwood stock, but, is mechanically identical.

I think she shot better than I do, however. Maybe it is that custom stock.

~~Robert

~~Robert said...

Whoops! Senior moment. I forgot to mention that her grandnephew in the video displaying Annie Oakley's Winchester 92 referred to it as a "smoothbore" in error. A smoothbore is either a shotgun, or an old fashioned musket, as in early 19th century and earlier. It was neither, of course, and had a fully rifled barrel. All Winchester 92s were so configured; and, they would not have been as accurate otherwise.

The Winchester 92 has been cloned by a number of companies. The original design was by John Moses Browning, the second Winchester lever action designed by him. Later, he designed the Winchester 1894 (or '94), which became the most popular deer rifle ever, in its run from 1894 through 2007. He also designed the high powered Winchester 1895, and various shotguns for Winchester, as well as semi-automatic handguns for Colt, FN, and Browning Arms. The basic designs were emulated in over 95% of all semi-automatic pistols ever since. Included was Browning's 1911 .45 ACP caliber Colt pistol, issued by the U.S. military until 1985, and beyond.