The Output of 1911. —At a recent hearing before a committee of the House of Representatives at Washington, a representative of the gun-making industry reported that in the year 1911 ten American manufacturing concerns turned out the following:
| 391,875 | shot-guns, |
| 666,643 | rifles, and |
| 580,042 | revolvers. |
There are 66 factories producing firearms and ammunition, employing $39,377,000 of invested capital and 15,000 employees.
The sole and dominant thought of many gunmakers is to make the very deadliest guns that human skill can invent, sell them as fast as possible, and declare dividends on their stock. The Remington, Winchester, Marlin, Stevens and Union Companies are engaged in a mad race to see who can turn out the deadliest guns, and the most of them. On the market to-day there are five pump-guns, that fire six shots each, in about six seconds, without removal from the shoulder, by the quick sliding of a sleeve under the barrel, that ejects the empty shell and inserts a loaded one. There are two automatics that fire five shots each in five seconds or less, by five pulls on the trigger! The autoloading gun is reloaded and cocked again wholly by its own recoil. Now, if these are not machine guns, what are they?
In view of the great scarcity of feathered game, and the number of deadly machine guns already on the market, the production of the last and deadliest automatic gun (by the Winchester Arms Company), already in great demand, is a crime against wild life, no less.
Every human action is a matter of taste and individual honor.
It is natural for the duck-butchers of Currituck to love the automatic shot-guns as they do, because they kill the most ducks per flock. With two of them in his boat, holding ten shots, one expert duck-killer can,—and sometimes actually does, so it is said,—get every duck out of a flock, up to seven or eight.
It is natural for an awkward and blundering wing-shot to love the deadliest gun, in order that he may make as good a bag as an expert shot can make with a double-barreled gun. It is natural for the hunter who does not care a rap about the extermination of species to love the gun that will enable him to kill up to the bag limit, every time he takes the field. It is natural for men who don't think, or who think in circles, to say "so long as I observe the lawful bag limit, what difference does it make what kind of a gun I use?"
It is natural for the Remington, and Winchester, and Marlin gun-makers to say, as they do, "Enforce the laws! Shorten the open seasons! Reduce the bag limit, and then it won't matter what guns are used! But,—DON'T touch autoloading guns! Don't hamper Inventive Genius!"
Is it not high time for American sportsmen to cease taking their moral principles and their codes of ethics from the gun-makers?