Leave it to me, an unrepentant lover of all things African, to find the one and only classic English double rifle among the hundreds of exhibitors at the NRA Annual Meetings here in Pittsburgh. The gun is a Holland & Holland “Royal” that belonged to a colorful Englishman-cum-elephant hunter named Fletcher Jamieson. The present owner, Logan B. Reed of the Pennsylvania Gun Collectors Assn., was graciously allowing NRA members to shoulder this great old classic and look over the very same V-notch sights that old Fletcher once aimed at mighty tuskers in the Zambezi Valley.
And that’s the thing about rifles like this .500/450 Nitro Express that was made in 1902— history. What else can you hold and cradle, admire and cherish that physically connects you to a bygone era? Clothes fall apart, boots rot, books mildew.
That’s what NRA members are seeing in spades, from a collection of Newton rifles to a display of Browning machineguns. It’s not all “new and improved” in the world of firearms.
--By Cameron Hopkins
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