Kentucky's State Gun?

Okay, so Utah has taken the nation once more where no state has gone before: they're now the first to designate an official state gun.

The state gun of Utah is now the Browning M1911 semiautomatic pistol, and Governor Gary Herbert is defending this groundbreaking move from anti-gun critics. "It's about honoring John Moses Browning and paying tribute to the man as an innovator and entrepreneur and someone who has given a lot to the state of Utah," he said. And according to the TPM story linked to above, the Utah State Senate insisted that language be added to the bill that states that the designation in no way condones violence.

I've always seen a lot of similarities between the great state of Utah and our glorious commonwealth. Both have histories speckled with intrigue, exploration, and freethinking in the finest sense of American frontiersman tradition. So it probably won't be too long before somebody in Kentucky legislature decides to join our colleagues to the West and get on the gun tip.

I have some modest propopals here.


The Kentucky Long Rifle would be the most obvious choice, seeing as it was Daniel Boone's favorite rifle. He nicknamed his "Tick-licker", stemming from boasts of his shooting accuracy, hyperbolically stated to be so great that he could shoot a tick off a deer. The Long Rifle has a ridiculously long barrel by modern standards - sometimes more than four feet - and displays very attractively.


However, there's also the popular concept of the Kentucky Dueling Pistol. Without making a specific nod to any single manufacturer, Kentucky could simply appoint the "dueling pistol" to be its official state firearm represented by an image of a pair of them in a velour-lined case.


On the other hand, the Thompson machine gun, or "Tommy Gun", was invented by Kentuckian John Taliaferro Thompson, and a historical nod to him might be analogous to what the folks in Utah did. However, there would be an inevitable outcry from people saying that the gun's association with gangsterism would set the wrong tone.

But in the final analysis, I believe it would be most fitting to honor Kentucky artist J.T. Dockery, who recently celebrated a gallery exhibit of his graphic novel Spud Crazy, by nominating the official Kentucky weapon to be the Spud Gun.

Either that or the Love Gun.

The Southgate House

Newport's Southgate House is a historic old edifice that is currently home to a rock club that has a strong reputation for being one of the region's best.

It also has something of a reputation of being haunted, but this is not so strong and not so well-founded. Reports on the web are sketchy and among people I've made inquiries to in person, most are of a highly anecdotal type: "Dude, a friend of mine said he saw a beer bottle fall over by itself", and so forth. If someone has some
seriously detailed and verifiable reports of paranormal hauntings, I'd love to hear them.

According to the bar's website, the Southgate House story is drenched with historical goodies: built in 1814, it has hosted Abraham Lincoln, John Taliaferro Thompson (he was born here, in fact) and troops of General Sherman's soldiers on their way to fight in the Texan War for Independence.

You can find the Southgate House at 24 East 3rd street, Newport, KY.

John Taliaferro Thompson

The "Tommy Gun", or Thompson Machine Gun, was invented by a Kentuckian: John T. Thompson, who attended Indiana University in Bloomington before going on to a military career. The Thompson gun was popular among everyone - soldiers, civilians, police and criminals - because of its compactness, portability, large .45 caliber, and extremely high rate of automatic fire. Although rendered somewhat unrealistically in many Hollywood films, the Coen Brothers classic Miller's Crossing does a great job of demonstrating the characteristics of how the Thompson gun operates.

In 1904, President Roosevelt and his Chief of Army Ordnance William Crozier gave Thompson, along with Major Louis Anatole LaGarde of the Medical Corps, the mission to scientifically investigate which caliber guns performed the best. At the Nelson Morris Company Union Stockyards in Chicago, Thompson and LaGarde tested several types of handguns and ammo by firing them into human cadavers and live cattle. Cows that took too long to die after being shot were put down by a hammer blow to the head.

The Thompson-LaGarde Cadaver Tests of 1904 are today regarded as barbaric and completely unscientific. In fact, according to this site, Thompson and LaGarde fudged the data to give the desired result to their superiors.

Thompson's submachine gun was greatly popular with gangsters in the 20s and 30s, known in the underworld as a "chopper" or "Chicago Typewriter". The gun became standard issue for the U.S. Army in World War II.