AMERICAN GUN
By Chirs Kyle
(with William Doyle)
William Morrow
264 pages
The history of American as told through the invention and
use of ten firearms. Written by Seal
Team 3 Chief Chris Kyle and completed a little while before his tragic death in
Feb. 2013. Each chapter, while focusing
on a particular firearm, also relates stories of famous American personalities
and their associations with the gun.
He begins with the American Long Rifle and its role in the
American Revolution, pointing out even at the dawn of our country, our military
leaders realized the potential of individual sharpshooters in any given combat
encounter. Kyle’s story of these early
marksmen is fascination. From there he
jumps into the tragic Civil War and the battle between the states; this time
highlighting the advent of the Spencer Repeater and how it could possibly have
shortened this national holocaust had it been allowed to reach the battlefields
sooner then the third year of the conflict. It is not at all surprising to see
that even in the midst of this dark period when the Union
was threatened that career minded soldiers played politics with the country’s
future at stake.
With chapter three, Kyle’s story turns westward and the
expansion movement following the Civil War.
He does so by exploring the evolution of the Colt Single Action Army
Revolver; AKA Colt .45. From the early
Navy Colts employed by Civil War vets, we see the Colt come into its own with
the early Texas Rangers and Captain Samuel Walker’s trip to Connecticut to confer with Samuel Colt in
the development of the Walker Colt; instrumental in helping the Rangers finally
be able to hold their own against the fierce Comanche raiders. As the handgun continued to make its impact
on the western migration, it also lent itself to frontier legends ending with
the most famous shoot-out of them all, the Gunfight at the OK Corral.
In chapter four, the Winchester
1873 Rifle takes center stage as yet another noteworthy gun that would take its
place in the taming of the frontier. The
slaughter of the American Bison would ultimately end the Native American Tribes
control of the prairie and open the vast grasslands to pioneers and
settlers. Ironically this same rifle was
instrumental in the Indians final, major victory against the encroaching hordes
as it was the primary weapon employed by the Lakota Sioux and their allies in
the massacre of General George Custer and his 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big
Horn in on June 25th, 1876.
Next comes the M1903 Springfield rifle which was actually
based on a German weapon, the Mauser, which was used by the Spanish with deadly
efficiency against Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the Spanish American
War. At the end of that conflict, military
officials had the idea of copying the German rifle, making improvements and
thus the Springfield Armory was given the commission. It delivered the M1903 that would go on to
stop the Germans in Belleau Woods when used by skilled Marine marksmen. It continued to see service through World War
II and Korea
and remains a favorite even today amongst outdoorsmen.
As a pulp fan, we really appreciated chapter six’s story of
the M1911 handgun, better known in pulp thrillers by its popular nickname, the
Colt .45 automatic. One can clearly
imagine the Shadow or Spider blasting away with these magnificent, powerful
pistols.
Kyle not only relates the gun’s history but retells the
amazing story of Sgt. Alvin York who used his with unerring accuracy to capture
132 German soldiers during World War One.
Although the U.S. Army has since moved on to the lighter-weight 9mm
Beretta as its official sidearm, gun experts, military officers and police
personnel still prefer the M1911 for its reliability and stopping power.
With chapter seven, Kyle goes gangland as he relates the
bloody background of the Thompson
Submachine Gun made notorious by mobsters and G-Men alike during the
days of prohibition. It later traveled
to the front in World War Two and was put to effective use by American
GIs. Staying with this conflict, he then
devotes chapter eight to the most popular rifle of the war, the M1 Garand. This is the one gun in this book that the
reviewer was personally familiar with, having learned to shoot it while in basic
training in 1965. Though no expert by
any means, my own memories of the rifle included how easy it fired and stripped
down to be cleaned and maintained.
And finally AMERICAN GUN wraps up its final two chapters
with one on the quintessential police handgun of the 50s through 70s, the .38
Special Police Revolver and the Vietnam
warhorse, the M16 rifle. In regards to
the pistol, he relates the events of the attempted assassination of President
Harry Truman on 1st Nov. 1950, by two Puerto Rican
revolutionist. Having never heard of
this incident, we were both surprised and amazed at how close to succeeding
these two killers came.
Although never having personally handled the M16, we were
surrounded by them during our own tour of duty in Vietnam and Kyle’s report of their
initial successes and then long string of mechanical failures were also
familiar to us. In the end it was a
weapon rushed into development to meet the army’s needs only to have its
weaknesses discovered in the crucible of combat. It would later be modified into the more effective
model M4.
The book features a truly insightful epilogue by Kyle on the
role of guns in any society and how these specific makes were a large part of
American history. He defends his own
perspective of them being mere tools to be employed, for good or evil, by those
men and women who wield them; nothing more and nothing less. What is poignant is his widow’s own final
Afterword and the story of Ryan Job, a Navy Seal blinded during a firefight in
Ramamdi and his ultimate passing. It
left me in tears.
Today, more than ever, Americans are divided about the role
of guns in our society and we realize many will ignore this book as another
gun-lover’s fanatical world view. That is their right. But if you are a true, unbiased student of
history, with at least an ounce of the respect for all the men and women who
have served, and continue to serve, in both our military and law enforcement,
then AMERICAN GUN will have something to say to you as it did so to this
reviewer….in a most profound way.
