What did your grandparents pack for personal protection in the Golden Era?

[AeroDillo]

I know for a fact that my grandparents and great grandparents had firearms. In fact, some of them are living in the safe back in Austin.

BUT -

I do not believe that they actually 'carried' on a daily basis. Most of them kept a rifle or a shotgun (or quite possibly an ax handle) in their vehicle, but I doubt many made a habit of carrying a firearm on their person. Why? Handguns cost money, for one thing, and most of my relations were poor dirt farmers. Besides - anything a pistol could do, a Winchester rifle or a break-over shotgun could probably do just as well. Their concern was on protecting themselves and their stock from snakes and four-legged pests rather than the two-legged breed. No need to give up food or medicine or something important for something as limited and redundant as a handgun.

Plus, from what I understand from my maternal grandfather - since deceased, sadly - his way of thinking said most men who carried pistols were either running from trouble or liable to start some. Not that he was anti-gun. He wasn't. Not by a long shot.

Just that handguns weren't especially practical in his neck of the woods.

 

[PADDY]

Well, speaking of Ma & Pa...

...they were my grandparents (still are of course, just sadly aren't walking the same earth as I am for now).

They were married in the early 20's, and I must get their photos up sometime, as they are a good looking couple and so different to the image I have of them in later life.

They had a cat called TOATS, who by all accounts was as good as any guard dog.

So, they packed Toats as personal protection in the Golden Era I guess!!

They also, during WWII, billeted a company of soldiers for a number of years in their outhouses in County Down!! Now that is protection!!

 

[Erik]

I'm a few months late, but I found myself searching the site for just this topic. I was invovled in a lunch time discussion and thought, correctly, it might be covered here.

"Thoughts?"

Vintage firearms represent some of the industries best efforts, period. Manufacturing may have improved, but not design and efficiency, per se.

You'll be well served by a vintage M1911A1, P-35 (High Power), or revolver chambered in .38 Special or greater. You may or may not want to consider upgrading the sights on the pistols, a note worthy area of industry improvement. (Collectable guns, as a rule, are best left in original condition - a factor if your handgun has collector value and if you care about that.)

I'd carry those in more modern leather holsters, though. Modern makers just might be in a position to correctly claim they are at the hight of the craft, ever. But you may have the best of both worlds: vintage styling crafted on demand.

Erik - Daily carrier, well dressed or otherwise, who encourages others to lawfully do so.

 

[Fatdutchman]

I believe the high point in firearms manufacturing quality was in the late 19th-early 20th century. Absolutely fantastic workmanship. Tight fitting, perfect inletting, flawless finishes. Guns made today just don't compare. Even military Mauser rifles can be perfectly inletted, smooth, and beautifully finished.

Gunmakers are in the process of regaining the precision in manufacturing over the real low point in the 70's and 80's, but they're still not quite up to the 1890's!

 

[oddlots]

I've actually had this discussion with my grandfather before, and it appears that his family (his parents and grandparents included) were always "well-prepared"!

My grandfather is half-Italian and half-British, and came from Italy either as an infant or in utero. His father (as far as I can tell, he's not a fan of discussing the Italian side for various reasons that I have yet to fully discern), was a shopkeeper who kept a weighted billy club (actually a sawed-off cue stick), a 12ga "short barrel" shot gun, and brass knuckles under the register. Other members were also a fan of scatter guns, with SEVERAL of the "unusually" short shotguns remaining in my Grandfather's house to this day.

Later, the family procured a pearl-handled .25 that he also still owns. I believe that was an "every day" gun for one of the women of the family who I've heard kept it concealed in her muff. A chrome-handled pistol is also floating around, though I'm not sure who carried it. Both are tiny, beautiful pieces that have a great patina that speak of their age.

Other blackjacks, sticks, and various "improvised" items were around when I was a kid, with quite a history surrounding them (most were 50+ years old at the time). Rumor has it, one uncle, who fell out of contact with our family, held the company of another "family" in the big city. Despite whatever he might have packed in the Golden Era, it couldn't trump what the other gentleman was carrying one fateful day.

After being adopted by an old American family (two elderly sisters and a brother, never married no children), my Grandfather and his siblings found new things, more suitable to protecting themselves from the copperheads and various four-legged varmin that they encountered in their new life on the farm. Several of these are included in the collection of 12ga. shotguns he still has.

Through the years, proactive self-protection is one trait that has remained consistent in our family. My father carries a concealed .38 on a regular basis and my step-mother received a beautiful little pocket-gun for Christmas from Dad.

 

[Gideon Ashe]

Well my Grandfathers, both maternal & paternal were different types of persons.
Both were from the European land mass, both were Jews.
One a practising and Orthodox, somewhat religious man.
The other a hell raising fire-breathing proto-type of person that became an agressive Zionist in later years who would spit in the Devil's eye and kick him in the nuts when he tried to wipe the spittle away.

Saba Max (paternal) was a tailor from Kiev, (the names of the countries changed weekly) who was forcibly moved to the Pale of Settlement, and took his pregnant wife and small son, and went quietly.
He was missing an ear, four fingers on his left hand and the tip of his nose.(a parting gift of the Cossocks sent by the Tzar.)

He worked hard, lived in a niggardly manner and saved enough money to send Wife Rebecca and Son Julius to America, via Germany, to England, to Canada to New York-America. The younger boy had died of some illness.

He in turn emigrated to New York, in 1880 lived in hovels, worked as a slave would not, and raised eleven children, which he fed without governmental assistance, until he died of an unknown illness in 1905, He was buried a pauper. My eldest brother and I had him and our Grandmother re-interred and buried in honor in 1983.
He never had or would ever consider having any form of weapon. He simply endured. Shame. Embarrassment. destitution, sickness, the grinding unrelenting daily epoch of feeding a family, while raising them as decent and god fearing individuals. He endured. Stoically.

[B]Saba(grandfather) Yaakov=Jakob[/B], aka: German Jake. Was a foul mouth(in five different languages), swearing, hard drinking, always in trouble, in your face, kick ass sawed off bantam rooster who came to the Golden Land in 1895, with a pregnant girlfriend, three stolen MariaThreasasThalers, a S&W Russian .44 with the barrel cut off and the Tzars men hot on his ass. He immeadiately had a (GASP!!) civil marriage performed, and joined the U.S.Army as a farrier at Fort Totten, NY. He worked as a civilian, learned English, drank and gambeled and fought with his Irish co-workers, and fathered another child. He saved enough money to have a real Wedding, and made my maternal Savtah(Grandmother)Channa=Hannah, an honorable woman.
He went to war with the U.S.Cavalry in Cuba in the Spanish American War as a farrier and blacksmith(he had Popeye forearms) and to the Mexican Border in the chase of Pancho Villa. He was shot through the chest by an American soldier in a drunken brawl in Silverton(?), Arizona, and came home to his wife. He carried his guns, the S&WRussian .44, and a 7.65 Luger acquired in Cuba with a six inch barrel, and an issued .45LC double action Army revolver with a barrel he cropped yet again, every day of his life, Sullivan Law or not. He said and I remember it quite clearly, "If the Tzar comes, I kill that Scheisskoph".

He became a house painter and lived a rather boring life except his interest and activity in Zionist politics of the early thirties and the war years, when he was an interperter for the Department of State, in interrogations of POW's. He raised seven children, four of them very religious, and of the others?; one of whom was my Blues singing Honky-tonk piano playing Mom

My Abba(father) carried the issue Colt .45 New Service revolver he carried as a court bailiff . He was not a fan of weapons but was a very serious and very proper man, who would not think of not learning how use what someone paid good money for,

I have the S&W Russian and the Colt. They will go to my Grandchildren.(the one who has displayed an interest)
The Luger went to another child who lost it in a card game.
The ladies of my family did not carry any hardware. Their cooking was all the protection they needed. Sadly, not a meal any of them ever cooked was edible.

 

[Feng_Li]

The ladies of my family did not carry any hardware. Their cooking was all the protection they needed. Sadly, not a meal any of them ever cooked was edible.

I do believe that is the funniest thing I have read today! lol

 

[5thprofession47]

My grandmoher would carry a hat pin for emergency use. A common item easily overlooked until it was pressed into action.


BTW, The OSS issued these to their operatives. They are lapel knives. The sheath was sewn into the lapel of a garment and the small blades could be tucked away for emergency use.

Here's a pic:

 

[Twitch]

Those knives have been directly copied in plastic for hideaway which obviously do not show up on metal detectors.

 

[carebear]

Those knives have been directly copied in plastic for hideaway which obviously do not show up on metal detectors.

Knives have existed in non-metallic versions for decades, it's hardly a big deal.

Remember, prior to 2001 you could carry pocket knives with <3" blades on aircraft perfectly legally. A much more effective weapon than the boxcutters actually used on 9/11.

Prior to about 1963 there were no metal detectors at all and you could carry a loaded gun onto an aircraft legally.

The problem isn't the tools, then as now, it's the people.

 

[Mid-fogey]

Grandpa packed...

...a double barreled A.H. Fox shotgun. It sat in a crook behind the front door for years. Back in the day there was no calling for help in the country -- you took care of yourself. Mr Fox dealt loudly with unwanted guests.

 

[5thprofession47]

Those knives have been directly copied in plastic for hideaway which obviously do not show up on metal detectors.

I have the copy you speak of.