Here's my Colt Woodsman. I posted it over on WWIIF years ago My uncle bought this one new in 1938 and my cousin gave it to me after he passed away since he knew how much I liked it. I shot it a couple of times with my father when I was little. I just found the Franzite grips on ebay. They fit perfectly with no grinding required for the safety. I don't know when they were made but they were in the original packaging and marked $4.50. Of course I kept the original wooden grips. Patton with his Woodsman. His had a six inch target barrel Ernest Hemingway on the Woodsman: Although largely recognized as a big-game hunter with a penchant for big-bore rifles, Ernest Hemingway also held certain small-bore chamberings in high esteem. In particular, he favored the .22 Long Rifle, for which he once claimed boldly, “… standing in one corner of a boxing ring with a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, shooting a bullet weighing only 40 grains and with a striking energy of 51 foot pounds at 25 feet from the muzzle, I will guarantee to kill either Gene Tunney or Joe Louis before they get to me from the opposite corner.” It was certainly strange indeed that the old master used this macabre scenario to illustrate his implicit faith in the .22 caliber, but he obviously wanted to emphasize his point. Hemingway followed with this admonition, “The rifle and the pistol are still the equalizer when one man is more of a man than another, and if … he is really smart … he will get a permit to carry one and then drop around to Abercrombie & Fitch (New York gun shop) and buy himself a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, Woodsman model, with a five-inch barrel and a box of shells. This is the smallest caliber pistol cartridge made; but it is also one of the most accurate and easy to hit with, since the pistol has no recoil.”
Isn't the Woodsman the favoured weapon of the "Mob" hitman ? At least according to my watching of American Cop shows
The .22LR is a favorite of mine. It is cheap, easy to shoot, and does not require hearing protection. When I was a boy, we could buy a box of 500 for a couple of dollars and shoot for hours at a time. . We sighted over iron sights at targets 100 yds away, with a spotter using binoculars to give a shot by shot account of our accuracy. We couldn't afford scopes. I would not necessarily want it as my primary means of self defense, but in my previous line of work I have seen a good many people killed by that size bullet. It is also good to acclimate children to firearm use, since it has no recoil to speak of and won't render you hard of hearing. Its a good plinker.
That matches the stories I've heard about 1950s and 60s mob executions. .22s with hollow points to the head.
I'm not sure what stories you've heard, but I'm something of a student of organized crime and from everything I've read of the midcentury Mob the .22 was definitely not the favored weapon. Joseph Pistone, the real Donnie Brasco, was undercover in the 70s and later and said that the .22 was preferred, but that is a phenomenon of recent decades and doesn't reflect midcentury preferences. Run through the big contracts of the midcentury: Anastasia, Little Augie Carfano and Janice Drake, Bugsy Siegel, the Shelton Brothers, the Two Tonys, Roger Touhy. Not one of them was killed with a .22. Probably the most common Mob assassination gun from the 20s right through the early 60s was that old standby the medium caliber revolver, usually a .38. That makes sense, as they were so common and popular generally. Anastasia was killed with a .38 and a .32, Carfano and Drake the same. Sometimes a .45 was used, as in Carl Shelton's case; I think Jimmy Fratianno used a pair of .38 automatics to kill the two Tonys. (The other gunman in the backseat froze and Fratianno had to do all the shooting.) Longarms were sometimes used too. Shotguns were by far the most popular Mob longarm, and seem to have been especially favored by the Chicago, Cleveland, and Dallas chapters. Touhy was killed with a shotgun. Bernie Shelton was killed with a .351 Winchester, a favorite weapon of Buster Wortman's outfit. Bugsy Siegel was killed with a .30 carbine, Army issue. Submachine guns had been popular during Prohibition, but were only seldom used after 1945, presumably because a) they tended to be too random and hard to control, and b) they were tightly controlled by the Feds and hard to get hold of. Youngstown gangster Sandy Naples and his trick Mary Ann Vrancic were killed in a crossfire from a shotgun and an M3 submachine gun.
That account sounds very much like my childhood Jeff. Iron sights and hundreds of rounds is a great way to learn marksmanship and is just plain fun. Actually, most of us had a single shot .22 and .410. That was done very deliberately by the Dad's. Much safer and it taught you to make that first shot count before you went on to a bigger, more complex weapon. I still lament the loss of my little .22 pump action. Had to be my favourite gun ever and it was later stolen.
My dad would bring home bags full of burned out light bulbs from work and take me to shoot at them at a sandpit near home with a bolt action .22. Great memories. By the way, we would go there in his 1946 Jeep and I clearly remember him showing me how he had to put it into 4 wheel drive with one lever and low range with the other lever of the transfer case to get through the sand even though I was only six or seven years old.
