On 1 Oct 2003 08:28:34 -0700, (lisieux) wrote:

Mmm, with two triggers and hand-polished walnut stocks for full
Victorian authenticity when on a drive for some beaten Mau Mau. Only
when the season's open, mind.

My Great Uncle Charlie prefered to go Mau Mauing with a .600 Nitro
Express hammer gun. Whether it was ethical or not depends on one's
perspective on franchised colonial wars. The slug was the size of an
old gas stove and if that missed the culprit, the noise would surely
kill the blighter.

I think this is where the old Webley RIC .577 pistols came in: when
facing down the rabid hordes of Fenians waving sheets of recycled
Chartist propaganda and stoked high on IRB hallucinogens, you needed
the kind of high-momentum stopping power on savage, uncivilised
nervous systems that worked with the .455 on hoped-up Zulu impis and
45 ACP on gibbering Phillipino tribesmen. Indeed, I think there
might be an arithmetical progression in terms of the relationship
between colonial enforcement and the pistol calibre required to subdue
the restless natives responding to the imposition of imperialist
oppression like cricket, district health officers and increased
Vickers dividends at their expense.

One can either hit the bloody target or one can't. Of course that is just a
civilian perspective.

It took until 1956 before the Treasury would allow squaddies even a
semi-automatic version.

Can't blame everything on Suez.

It worked for Eden.

Gavin Bailey


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