Amendment to Internal Revenue Code

Accordingly, conferences were set up, through the insistence of the N.R.A. Gun Collector committee and the newly appointed Gun Collector staffman, C. Meade Patterson, to solve some of these perplexities. The result was an amendment to the code which exempted arms “not firing fixed metallic ammunition.” This at one stroke simply and conclusively exempted the whole sweep of collector arms. As Patterson said in an address before the Wisconsin Gun Collectors Association that year, “So now all you collectors don’t have to hide away your shoulder stocked Dragoon Colts.”
While Meade charitably made it appear that the members were in possession of vast hordes of stocked Dragoons, I knew positively that the effort of the majesty of Congress in revising that bill had been in favor of perhaps five or ten collectors in the country who owned the surviving few genuine stocked Dragoon Colts, and the slightly larger group which owned the Army 1860 fluted cylinder pistols with stocks. I felt this was unfair, and that a vastly larger number of collectors and shooters should realize some benefit from the work of the N.R.A. and accordingly strengthened my resolve to build percussion guns at that moment. With the advent of the Fluted Stocked Army the mission was complete.

Curiously, the N.R.A. made possible the sale of these guns but at the same time restricts its membership from having any knowledge of them. The sale of replica arms is forbidden by the executive committees of this organization, which purports to represent the interests of the shooters of America. Advertising of replicas is rejected. A complete censorship of anything relevant to replicas in the pages of the Association’s journal, The American Rifleman, contrasts most strangely with the plastering of pages of the other gun magazines which the replica makers do by advertising and which the gun writers do out of the interest in the subject, by feature articles. Gradually the details of the replicas, how to tell them from the real guns, etc., emerge as a body of literature builds up in the other firearms magazines. But the great body of the shooting public, allegedly the 450,000 members of the N.R.A., remain in ignorance of these facts. The N.R.A. management seems content to deprive them of the opportunity for learning how to avoid getting stung, all the while crying out that replicas are a menace to the gun collector fraternity.
Actually, the sentiment is hardly uniform within the N.R.A. on these things, but minor powerful cliques can control major aspects of policy. It is evident that is the case here. The dangers of ignorance are not too great; most of the N.R.A. members are readers of one or more of the competitive journals and perhaps on the pages of the several other gun magazines they will find that information they miss on the pages of the N.R.A. journal.
Meanwhile, the production of replica arms continues. Fabricants include other Belgian and Italian contractors for several different American sales outlets. One of the biggest general firms is Dixie Gun Works of Union City, Tennessee. Owned by Turner Kirkland, Dixie sports one of the most diversified lists of muzzle gun parts to be found. Major components for almost every percussion and flint gun ever made can be duplicated or modified from existing items in Kirkland’s great stock. His “Dixie” squirrel and Kentucky rifles are great favorites, and the call for a really deluxe arm has caused him to add a fancy silver engraved Kentucky of Liege make selling for hundreds of dollars.
In this he is but returning to the fold, for Liege was the source of an astonishing number of so-called “Kentucky rifles” sold here in the 1860’s and later. Duplicating the American patterns exactly, the Liege

FUSILS A CHARGER PAR LA BOUCHE a 1 et 2 coups.

Belgian firm making Centennial revolvers and pistols for Chicago’s Centennial Arms Corp. also fabricates variety of singleshot muzzle-loading guns originally destined for African trade. Muskets are crude but shootable, are made of composite of old and new parts.

hand-made fabricants supplied the wants of the nation moving westWard as industry founded on the growth of the Civil War turned to machine work in mass production. Today, some few of this nation which in recreation and hobbies delights on looking backward to the post-Civil War West, again turn to Liege to supply rifles and pistols of the same type that fought the Civil War.

Noted painter, William Harnett, in 1890 portrayed Model 1860 Army Colt, themed nostalgia of “they don’t make them like they used to” which lasted until now, when they do!