“Lawyers, Gonnes and Money”

I tend to devolve.
Having a few good tents, I had to try sleeping under a poncho.
Having driven to Chapel Hill from Wake Forest I had to try riding my bike. Then I had to try walking.
So a few weeks back our webmaster, Chad, and I went skeet shooting at his house. I hadn’t fired a 12-gauge since getting the shotgun shooting merit badge at Scout camp around 14 years ago, so I think I did pretty well.
For one thing, the guns fit better these days. When I was 10 they gave a five foot gun to a four foot kid and asked why I had trouble swinging an adult 12-gauge.
At the end of the week someone wisely handed me a smaller youth 20-gauge and I was lethal. I always have been – www.unc.edu/~jderrick/target.html.
So I was hitting a clay with each blast out of Chad’s 8-shell 12-gauge and thinking I was doing almost as well as he was, and he actually does this stuff.
But I devolve.
So now I’m registered on www.muzzleloadingforum.com, trying to figure out the historically accurate flintlock weapon of the patriots at the battle of Kings Mountain, and where I can get a kit.
For folks who don’t know way too much about armaments, muzzleloaders are weapons loaded with powder and bullet through the business end of the barrel. This is slower and more labor intensive than a more modern firearm, where the nice, clean, pre-packaged cartridge is loaded in the back end of the weapon, the breech.
But that gets dull.
I’ve gotten more than 50 views on the forum and two replies in just 16 hours. That’s a lot better than many spam comments on my blog or on the NC Press Photographer’s website. Mostly just hawking drugs.
Cruising over the forum, there are segments for contemporary muzzleloaders firing modern bullets used for hunting (they get a longer season), discussions of Civil War weapons that used small explosive caps to set of the weapon, advice on Revolutionary War flintlocks, reenacting and equipment….
And there’s a section for pre-flintlock weapons – matchlock, wheellock, arquebuse, snaphaunce, caliver, hand cannon… and “handgonne.”
This one’s so obscure it’s not even in the massive dictionary in The Star’s library.
And I devolve.
Wikipedia.org, a free, reader-edited online encyclopedia, says it’s the first form of handheld, portable firearm, developed before we even knew how to spell “gun,” around 1300 somewhere between Europe and China. Nobody can really decide where. Basically a small cannon, on a stick. Like a Popsicle.
Handgonnes.com says I can have one for $100. Shipping included.
“So, are you ordering one?” asked Jeff, chief photographer at The Star.
“Right now they’re out of stock,” said John.
“That popular, huh?”
I showed him the website.
“Uhh, that looks dangerous. Be sure to let your Mother read that.”
So I called my Dad to see what he thinks because I’ve mentioned gonnes and money so far, but that Warren Zevon song was “Lawyers, Guns and Money” so I need to fit an attorney in here somehow.
“I think that stuff’s fascinating,” he said.
For more about handgonnes, John and his Dad, check out John’s blog at jderrickstar.blogspot.com.