Would that bamboo cannon really have stopped the Gorn?
Semi-auto versions of the BAR are easy and around 4 grand for the total package; check in Shotgun News - they always have a big ad.
(One on .30-06 is on my wish list)
Full auto aren’t that much tougher. And the same ad that sells the semis also has conversion kits but you will need someone SERIOUSLY skilled in both machine work and paper work to make the alterations.
For the replica Thompson – depends on which one.
Same here!
Is it true that at Little Big Horn Custers men were not just outnumbered but the Indians actually had better firearms?
Thank you for the kind words, everyone! The last 18 months or so have been extraordinarily hectic but it’s nice to be back. 
Depends - is it an original Brown Bess or a reproduction? If it’s an original then keep it, they’re quite valuable - moreso if they haven’t come out of Nepal.
To some extent, yes. Custer’s men had Model 1873 Trapdoor Springfield carbine rifles - a single-shot breechloader in .45/55calibre. The .45/55 cartridge is good at putting targets down (even in blackpowder loading) but the carbines didn’t have cleaning rods so if the guns jammed (due to fouling, brass swelling, or whatever) you were buggered as there was no easy way to clear the jam short of hoping there was a convenient stick nearby that was long enough and not too bendy.
For handguns, the troopers were mostly carrying Colt Peacemakers in .45 Long Colt calibre - a great cartridge, but the gun had to be unloaded and reloaded one round at a time through a loading gate at the rear of the cylinder. Not really an issue on a shooting range or in a short gunfight, but a huge problem when a not insignificant number of armed and (understandably) pissed-off Indians are bearing down on you.
The Cavalry only had about 100 rounds each for their rifles, and 24 for their revolvers. A small number of the cavalry guys had privately purchased guns - Custer had a couple of Webley Royal Irish Constabulary revolvers (not an improvement over the Peacemaker) but basically 100 rounds isn’t a lot of ammo when you’re spectacularly outnumbered as they were/
From what I understand most of the Indians had traditional weapons, and of the guns present (there were a lot), most of those were muzzleloading shotguns, trade muskets, or Civil War-surplus Springfield and Enfield muskets. However, something like 200 or so of the Indians had Winchester and Henry lever-action rifles, which had a high rate of fire, were easy to reload on horseback, and while the .44 Henry round was not as powerful as a .45/55 round, you still wouldn’t want to get hit by one - and a .44-40 round (used in the Winchester Model 1873 rifle) would definitely ensure someone on the receiving end had a very bad day.
Basically, the 7th cavalry were hopelessly outnumbered - if they’d all had Winchester Model 1873s and perhaps Smith & Wesson Third Model Schofield revolvers some of them might have got away, but having said that - there’s a reason a comparable instance where a tiny number of Europeans armed with single-shot rifles beat off a superior force of Natives has such a prominent place in military history - because they won despite the staggering odds against it happening.
Wasnt that model 1873 trapdoor Springfield just a civil war gun that they rebuilt with a trapdoor? Basically at the end of the civil War the army had all these Springfields and instead of buying new guns, they went cheap and just decided to upgrade them to use rimfire ammunition so they just rebuilt them. Is that right?
Sort of. Around that time the major powers (particularly the British Empire and the Americans) found themselves with a heap of now embarrassingly obsolete muzzleloading muskets and technology that had moved on to cartridge firing technology.
The most cost effective solution was indeed to convert those muzzleloaders to breechloading centrefire rifles. The British went with the Snider-Enfield (designed by an American) while the Americans opted for the Trapdoor Springfield.
Neither was really brilliant, but they both worked very well in situations where you had a lot of people with guns shooting at people who had spears and cowhide shields. The Snider was definitely the better of the two, though - less prone to jamming and fouling (especially when paired with drawn brass cartridges); they were still floating around in various parts of the Empire in second-line or reserve/police service as late as the Edwardian era.
While the first generation of Snider-Enfields and Trapdoor rifles (the Model 1866) were indeed literal conversions of muzzleloading arms, later iterations were manufactured from scratch to be cartridge-firers - but still mechanically the same as the percussion arms they replaced.
Do you own a Maxim-Tokarev?
I have a pistol, U.S. issue, about .60 caliber, percussion cap, curved wooden stock. About how old might it be?
Would a civil war musket still be safe to shoot or would the metal crack?
Thanks, Martini Enfield!
Pictures – I want pictures! Also check to see if its smoothbore or rifled. Us martial and secondary handguns (single shots) are a favorite of mine. ASSUMING IT ISN’T REPRO it could be a converted flinter from the Rev War era to something slightly pre-1860.
Depends on the gun. One of my regular hunting pieces is from 1797 and it works fine although I did make a replacement frizzen for it and I had the barrel x-rayed once. But through the mid 1970s you saw more originals at Civil War events and N-SSA shoots than you did repros; they were cheaper and shot better. And last I knew all international muzzle-loading competition was still with originals all the way back to matchlocks to keep things fair - most countries treating a modern black powder gun the same way they treat modern guns of any type. So I would have it checked by someone who really knows front-stuffers but I would say yeah – probably fine.
No. Leaving aside the fact machine-guns are illegal in Australia (even to have a welded up one that doesn’t work still requires a hard-to-get licence in most states), they only made a few Maxim-Tokarevs (about 3,500 or so, according to Wikipedia) and I’ve never seen a real one, even in a museum.
Assuming it’s not a reproduction then you’re likely looking at something around the late 1830s or 1840s; maybe early 1850s - that’s without seeing it or knowing the markings on it or anything.
After the 1850s most military service handguns were cap & ball revolvers until the last quarter of the century when cartridge firing guns came in, with many of the cap & ball models converted to centrefire cartridge.
As kopek says, it really depends on the condition, how it’s been stored/maintained, and so on. My general advice is “don’t fire them”, but lots of people do - guns are generally pretty well made and as long as it has been looked after there’s no reason a Civil War era musket wouldn’t still be functioning properly today.
You’re probably better off getting a modern reproduction for shooting, though - they’re made on modern machinery to modern tolerances, and if it the gun barrel blows up or something you haven’t destroyed an irreplaceable antique.
Any ideas if firearms like theKalthoff Repeater could have become regular issue (if not general issue)
Were there instances of some firearms becoming successful because of corrupt government officials?
No - far too fidlly, complicated and expensive to make, far too much to go wrong with it in the field.
Revolving rifles were around in the late 1500s but it still took the development of percussion caps to make revolving arms practical on a large scale.
The closest I can think of off the top of my head was the Ross Rifle, but I don’t believe that was the result of outright corruption - more “the inventor had a lot of political influence and well-placed friends”. Also, “successful” may not be the best term for the Ross, despite being adopted by the Canadian military.
I can think of examples of a few guns which became successful despite government officials saying “Nope, absolutely not interested in this obviously very good idea” - the Lewis Gunis probably the best example of this.
Well, playing Lucifer’s Barrister there was the Ferguson Rifle. And if the Major himself hadn’t gotten killed it may have been released in larger numbers. But it was indeed accepted and issued and funky as heck.
Not as funky as the Puckle. But that was never adopted.
(I owned a repro Ferguson for a few years and a buddy made several Puckles. You have GOT to visit the States some day. I’ll buy the ammo if you buy the beers after we’re done.)
What guns, either current or not, are or have been or were, basically the same gun even after several decades?
For example, isnt the colt .45 basically the same one created around 1900?
There are a squillion variants of the Colt Peacemaker in production today - pretty much every single-action handgun on the market today that isn’t a deliberate reproduction of something like the Remington 1858 New Model Army or the Smith & Wesson Schofield is basically a Colt Peacemaker derivative.
The Colt M1911 is another one - pretty much every handgun manufacturer in existence makes an M1911 pistol.
Pretty much all bolt-action hunting rifles nowadays are based on the Mauser 98 action, and up until just after WWII pretty much every bolt-action military rifle outside the British Empire and the Soviet Union was some variant of the Mauser.
Historically, the Lee-Enfield rifles all used the same action (different sights and furniture, thought) and in a modern sense there are countless variants of the AK-47 that are all basically the same thing. Similarly, there are a seemingly infinite number of AR-15 variants; it’s like the M1911 of the rifle world.
And those are just a few examples off the top of my head - if I went through my research library I could easily find quite a few more.
I’ll have to take you up on that offer next time I’m stateside with some time up my sleeve 
I’ve visited the US a few times and a couple of years back I went to The Gun Store in Las Vegas and got to play with all sorts of cool toys. 