They Were Classics

When Smith & Wessons Came With A Ring Rod, Screwdriver
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Remember these things? Dave looks back to the 1970s when
he purchased his first magnum revolver, a Model 19 6-inch.
Inside the box was a ring rod, cleaning mop and brush,
and a small screwdriver.

Call me a hopeless romantic, or maybe just hopeless, but the sad fact about me is that I was careless enough to lose at least two classic Smith & Wesson fluted-handle screwdrivers and a ring rod, which came along with my 2 ½-inch Model 19 more than 35 years ago.

I still have a single screwdriver — the other two are probably so long gone only the ghost of my younger self knows what happened to them — and two of the rods, one which came with my 6-inch Model 19 and the other accompanied my 6-inch Model 57, have seen a lot of Hoppe’s No. 9 and many boxes and bags worth of cleaning patches. I have bore mops with both of those ring rods and a well-used bronze brush — from one of my .357s — still remains in my gear. The brush and one of the rods are somewhat the worse for wear, but all are still functional.

They remind me of a time when I could open a box with a handgun inside and also find the accessories necessary to adjust the rear sight, and then clean up the sidearm after a range session. It was a long time ago.

Both ring rods are for 6-inch guns. If I recall correctly, the rod which came with my snubbie was for a 4-inch barrel. Sure wish I could find it now.

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Dave has managed to keep only one classic S&W screwdriver
with the fluted handle, but he still has two of the rods. He had
to replace the bronze brush a while back.

The S&W screwdriver is something of an icon. Measuring just over 3 1/8 inches, it features a blue-black steel shaft and a fluted aluminum handle. The effect was a handsome two-tone tool which easily fits in a pocket, and that’s probably how I lost at least one of them.

I recently looked online and found a vintage rod with brush and screwdriver for $50, or best offer. My nostalgia has a pretty tight budget, so the little kit probably went to someone else.

Originally, the whole kit came in a plastic bag, as I recall. Each handgun came wrapped in Smith’s equally classic heavy paper. I still have the paper for my older Model 19 and the original boxes for three of the four S&W wheelguns in my safe.

These accessories were entirely functional and remain so. The screwdriver recently went along to the range for a sight readjustment on a couple of my S&W sixguns, but I was extremely careful to make sure it came home with me.

I recently washed both mops to clean out literally years of gun oil and residue. The mops are probably irreparably stained — both were originally white — but maybe a big of bleach might work some magic this summer after another scrub and an air dry in direct sunlight.

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Believe it or not, the cleaning gear which used to come in
the Smith & Wesson box for free now fetches at least $50 online!

Why Bother?

Sure, I can find replacement mops and new bristle brushes to fit both the .38/.357-caliber and my .41 Magnum bores. That’s not the point. There is just something about original equipment when I’m scrubbing out my barrels and then cleaning them up.

My late uncle had an 8 3/8-inch Model 53 S&W gifted to him for Christmas when I was 14 or 15 years old. It was an impressive cannon, with two cylinders, one for standard .22 Long Rifle and the other chambered for the warp-speed .22 Remington Jet, based on the .357 Magnum case necked down to .22-caliber. My aunt bought it for him, with some help from my dad.

The .22 Jet cylinder came with six inserts designed to hold standard long rifle rimfires. In all, it was an impressive package, but I cannot recall if that long-barreled sixgun came with an appropriately-sized cleaning rod and .22-caliber brush and mop. I know he sold the revolver years ago at a gun show for a sum I would have eagerly scraped together had I known he wanted to be rid of it. He my aunt had no children of their own, but the gun would have become an heirloom, anyway.

Built on the K-frame, my uncle sometimes carried it while elk hunting, in a belt holster. He was a deadly shot with it, I know for a fact.

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Dave’s Model 19 has retained its accuracy for a half-century,
with full house .357 Magnum loads. Maintaining a quality
handgun with the cleaning gear from the box has kept
this sixgun popping!

Maybe the old ring rods and accompanying accessories simply take me back to a time long before “instant background checks” and other such nonsense, which haven’t seemed to reduce criminal misuse of firearms. Perhaps I want too much.

My original S&W cleaning rods will be there in the boxes when my revolvers are packaged up for the last time. Hopefully, whoever gets those guns when I no longer need them will appreciate the fact I tried to pass on more than a shootin’ iron. These rods were and remain among the best little cleaning tools anyone could own. If you have one or more, take good care of it.

Hunter Education

The conviction last month of Hunter Biden on three felony counts involving the purchase of a handgun came with a handful of lessons which went right over most people’s heads, especially at the White House and among the presidential press corps.

Item #1: Existing gun control laws work, and we do not need any more. We just need to enforce the ones we have — regardless of whether anyone considers them constitutional or otherwise — even when the suspect is the president’s son.

Item #2: To hear how Hunter’s attorneys want everyone to believe they’re fighting this battle over their client’s Second Amendment rights is gut-bustingly hilarious. It is also ironic that the son of a president whose entire career has been devoted to pushing every kind of gun control winds up on the wrong side of one of those gun laws is a perfect example of karma.

Item #3: Hunter Biden’s troubles center on the fact he lied on a Form 4473. As my pal Alan Gottlieb at the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms observed, “Joe Biden has been stretching the truth or telling outright falsehoods his entire career. In Hunter’s case, it appears the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

On a far more serious note, CCRKBA released the following statement after Hunter’s conviction: “At some point, President Biden must reflect on his half-century of gun control extremism and acknowledge that none of the laws he championed prevented his son from illegally buying a gun and being convicted of the crime in a Delaware courtroom. Meanwhile, millions of American citizens who have committed no crimes are nevertheless penalized daily by the laws and regulations the president and his anti-run-rights allies have supported in the misguided belief they have the moral high ground. Today proved otherwise.”

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The Second Amendment has filed a federal lawsuit
challenging the prohibition on carrying legal firearms
into post office facilities.

Anybody who has ever had to stop, turn around and walk away from a post office because you were legally armed should appreciate the federal lawsuit recently filed by the Second Amendment Foundation in U.S. District Court in Fort Worth, Texas.

The eight-page complaint alleges the ban on firearms carry inside postal facilities is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment because there is no historical evidence such bans were in place at the time of the founding and ratification of the Constitution.

SAF is joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition and two private citizens, Gavin Pate and George Mandry, both Texas residents. They are represented by attorneys R. Brent Cooper and S. Hunter Walton at Cooper & Scully, P.C. in Dallas, and David H. Thompson and Peter A. Patterson at Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C.

The lone defendant is Attorney General Merrick Garland.

“Current federal law bars the ‘knowing possession’ of firearms in federal facilities, which includes post offices,” SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said. “Millions of legally armed private citizens, whose daily routines may include visits to post offices to pick up or drop off mail, are directly impacted by this infringement. There is no well-established, representative historical analog to justify this regulation, which violates the Second Amendment.”

Now, here’s the rub. This is a civil lawsuit, and it could drag on for a couple of years, perhaps longer. Filing it was just the start of “Round 1.” There will be a response from Garland, a response to his response, then a hearing date will be set, there may be a continuance, and at some point, way over the horizon, there might be a hearing. Then comes the appeal process, which could take a year on its own. Only then would it be submitted to the Supreme Court for review.

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