A Brief History On June 13, 1944, during the Battle of Villers-Bocage, German tank ace Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann proved what could be accomplished by proper use of a superior weapon system when he directed his Tiger I tank against British armor (armour for you Brits), destroying an amazing 2 anti-tank guns, 15 armored personnel carriers, and 14 tanks! Only a week after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, the battle was an attempt by the British to break out of the Normandy beachhead and advance on the city of Caen. Digging Deeper A member of the dreaded SS (Schutzstaffel), Wittmann…
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A Brief History On June 12, 1775, British General Thomas Gage declared martial law in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Gage offered amnesty and a pardon to all rebels that would lay down their arms, except Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were deemed traitors that would be hanged if captured. The American Revolution had already had a de facto beginning by this point, with the Boston Massacre (1770), the burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island (a British customs schooner, 1772), the Boston Tea Party (1773), and the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Fearing an outright…
A Brief History On June 7, 1962, a right wing French Nationalist terror group, the Organisation Armée Secrète, usually referred to as the OAS, set fire to and burned the library at the University of Algiers in Algeria, destroying half a million books. Calling themselves “counter-terrorists”, “self-defense groups” or simply “the resistance,” the aim of these French nationalists was to prevent the independence of Algeria, forcing the country to remain part of France. Usually we think of terrorist groups as rebels or an independence movement, but in this case the group was trying to keep “France” as they saw it…
A Brief History On May 28, 1830, US President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, a law allowing the President to negotiate with tribes still located in the Southern United States to be moved West of the Mississippi River. This act and the actions that followed were tantamount to a genocide of Southeastern Native American people, leading to the infamous “Trail of Tears” migration of the Cherokee people in which as many as half of the 16,000+ relocated Cherokee died enroute to reservations in the West. (Note: The Native Americans so relocated took their African American slaves along with…
A Brief History In 1902, the English politician and game shooting enthusiast Mark Hanbury Beaufoy (1854–1922) wrote some much-quoted verses on gun safety, including the following: “If a sportsman true you’d be Listen carefully to me: Never, never, let your gun Pointed be at anyone…” Like Beaufoy, protecting myself and those I care about is what first interested me about firearms. Given my goal of being more safe in more situations, it would be ironic—and even stupid—of me to not take gun safety incredibly seriously. Regardless of what led to your involvement with firearms, whether you came from a similar…