Post by edwin on Feb 16, 2016 18:01:08 GMT
John Christopher's Death of grass (No Blade of Grass) has the characters hook up with Pirie whose rifle brought them across England as the world dissolved. However, when it was written I don't believe there needed to be confrontation in his gun shop.They could simply have bought a number of shotguns and ammunition. Made me think of the state of firearms in the UK then.
When the book was written there were few restrictions on the purchase and ownership of shotguns. The Post office would sell you a shotgun licence in the 1950s and gun sellers had no problems about selling the firearms themselves. I used to buy the Magazine Exchange and Martand there were many adverts for shotguns in it. For example, I remember a bored out .303 Lee-Enfield that fired 410 cartridges for £7 10 shillings. I never had that much!
This hadn't occurred to me before and shooting clubs were very lax about their rifles and ammunition. A friend of my brothers accumulated a lot of .22 and his club once asked him if he would mind selling some back to them. A friend of mine and his father had Martini action BSA target rifles which I envied (of course)but they did let us try them.
Shooting galleries still existed. They mostly used short .22s with pump action rifles and were fun to fire but it was a lot of money a go for me at a fun fair so was a rare treat. Oddly you still do not need a Firearms certificate if you operate a shooting gallery with low powered ammunition even today.
And then there were the assorted souvenir weapons from the War that a lot of people still had and the Officer Training Corps ranges and armouries attached to various schools that had Bren, Sten and Lee-Enfields along with ammunition. My school even had at least one Vickers machine gun and three inch mortars but not sure if these were ever fired.
Finally, in the fifties were millions of ex-servicemen trained in and used to firearms. A new PA novel set in those times could be as bloogy as any modern American EMP story.
When the book was written there were few restrictions on the purchase and ownership of shotguns. The Post office would sell you a shotgun licence in the 1950s and gun sellers had no problems about selling the firearms themselves. I used to buy the Magazine Exchange and Martand there were many adverts for shotguns in it. For example, I remember a bored out .303 Lee-Enfield that fired 410 cartridges for £7 10 shillings. I never had that much!
This hadn't occurred to me before and shooting clubs were very lax about their rifles and ammunition. A friend of my brothers accumulated a lot of .22 and his club once asked him if he would mind selling some back to them. A friend of mine and his father had Martini action BSA target rifles which I envied (of course)but they did let us try them.
Shooting galleries still existed. They mostly used short .22s with pump action rifles and were fun to fire but it was a lot of money a go for me at a fun fair so was a rare treat. Oddly you still do not need a Firearms certificate if you operate a shooting gallery with low powered ammunition even today.
And then there were the assorted souvenir weapons from the War that a lot of people still had and the Officer Training Corps ranges and armouries attached to various schools that had Bren, Sten and Lee-Enfields along with ammunition. My school even had at least one Vickers machine gun and three inch mortars but not sure if these were ever fired.
Finally, in the fifties were millions of ex-servicemen trained in and used to firearms. A new PA novel set in those times could be as bloogy as any modern American EMP story.
