A fascinating find was brought in to the Small Arms Factory Museum among the most recent items surrendered during the 2018 gun amnesty.
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Museum secretary Kerry Guerin said there had been a much smaller response to the amnesty held in the second half of 2018 than the previous one, during which the museum received 80 weapons.
There were just four items surrendered but several of them intrigued the Small Arms Factory Museum crew.
One was a homemade pistol, clearly made to order. What set it apart from other pistols was its method of chambering bullets. It has a ballbearing on its side which you have to manually press in to allow the next round to swivel around into position.
“It’s very unusual,” Mr Guerin said.
“It’s very hard to pick [its age], perhaps around the Second World War.
“The workmanship is very good. They did what they could with what they had.”
Another item handed in was a hammerless Smith & Wesson pistol dating from the early 1900’s.
The American model was nicknamed the ‘Lemon Squeezer’ and had an internal hammer and an external grip safety. It was marketed as the ‘Safety Hammerless’.
A very early Slazenger rifle was delivered to the museum as part of the amnesty.
It was a home-coming in a sense, as the Small Arms Factory was its place of manufacture. The .22 bolt action rifle was a “very, very early” edition of the rifle, which was produced in December 1945.
“Very, very early,” Mr Guerin said. “It’s serial number is 451.
“It may have been sold directly from the factory. We’re working on [verifying] that.”
There are only known to be five of these early rifles still in existence, two of which are in the hands of the Small Arms Factory Museum.
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