#Assassination

Gun collections can be a fun way to explore different types and aspects of firearms. The interwebs are full of images of people’s firearms collections lined up at their feet (why they insist on keeping their feet in the picture is beyond me), and they range from a random assortment to a more focused aspect of firearms. One type of gun collection is called “cloning,” in which a collector sets out to recreate a historical firearm as it would’ve been assembled in the given time era, which is typically seen with guns from any military conflict. Today, we bring you a more unique style of firearm cloning, in the form of Doug B’s clones of assassination guns.

Pen guns are unusual creatures in the menagerie of firearms designs. And no, that’s not a reference to the horror show “PEN-15” rifle assembled by TFB TV’s James “Questionably Frequent Phallic Jokes” Reeves with his motley crew of Mailroom series viewers and Discord members. Actual pen guns are firearms that are considered to be disguised to look like innocuous simple tubes like writing pens, hence the name. They are classified in the “Any Other Weapon”, or AOW category under the NFA (National Firearms Act of 1934) along with other such oddities like knife guns or umbrella guns. They are understandably uncommon, and most regular people who have production versions, like TFB’s own Nick C with his Braverman Stinger, consider them to just be “range toy” novelties. However, pen guns have a fascinating deeper history rooted in espionage, intrigue, and assassination.

In March of 1963, a man named Lee Harvey Oswald purchased an M38 Carcano rifle and some quantity of ammunition from Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago. Oswald would later use this rifle and ammunition (or so the official narrative goes) to assassinate the then- President of the United States John F. Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

The very public shooting of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, made headlines yesterday. The shooting was a politically motivated attack associated with the Syrian conflict and the city of Aleppo in particular. The gunman was an off-duty Turkish police officer, who apparently used his service sidearm in the shooting.