Default investigator handgun and creating murder hobos

[svensson]

An ad from Harper's Weekly about 1925 or so...

Note at the bottom that the purveyor is in New York City!

[svensson]

21 hours ago, EricW said:

If there was a major outbreak of criminality someone would have rung the church bell out sounded an electric fire siren (invented in 1869). Local police and citizens militia would respond in minutes.

Remember 1920s was only 55 years after the end of the US civil war, plenty of expert military experienced survivors had personal memories of having to defend their town and homes from raiders. Anyone who thinks someone in their seventies is too old to pick up a gun never saw my grandpa shoot. 

The response time would be less than today. And nobody would care if some dodgy strangers ended up dead.

The Civil War? Phhht! The Great War consumed an entire generation of young men just EIGHTEEN MONTHS before 1920, destroying the sanity and hardening the hearts of men all over the world, not just the US. By 1920, the Civil War and to some extent the Indian Wars were just a warm fuzzy glow in the American memory, talked about over brandies in rocking chairs while old men told lies to their grandchildren. Meanwhile said grandson's older brother, who'd been at the Somme, thank you very much, knew precisely what a line of bullshit grandpa was feeding young Bertie.

Let's put the Great War in context, shall we?

It was the first industrialized war. Sure the Crimea, the US Civil War, and the Boer Wars were the harbingers, but War One was a war purposely designed to murder every male between the ages of 15 and 50 in entire cities in just one afternoon's work. NOBODY came out of the trenches of that conflict with their innocence or idealism intact.

Now, the data is very muddled on this next point, but it is estimated that the murder rate in the US was over 100% greater per capita in between 1920-1930 than it was between 1870-1880, at the height of the cattle drives and 'gunfighter era' of US history. As I say, that is only a 'guess-timate' because of several factors: the reliability of news reporting was greater in the 20s than the 70s, for example. Crime statistics were only just starting to be kept scientifically by both Scotland Yard and the US FBI in the 20s. But the level of violence in society was noted and commented on at all levels of society all around the Western world. Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Russia all commented that they lived in more violent era than previously for various reasons, so this isn't just a US phenomenon.

My point here is that the decades immediately following War One were ones where violence was the one of the top three means solve inter-personal problems. It's the era of gangsters, IRA bombers, anarchists and Bolsheviks trying to bring down governments, etc. and so on.

Some might see my comments here as disrespectful to veterans or those suffering with mental health issues. They are not. They are my observations based on my own life experience as a combat veteran with PTSD and other mental health diagnoses. I took a 'long walk in the woods' in Central and South America in the mid-80s, the Reagan era of US 'gunboat diplomacy', so I've had over three decades to come to terms with my experiences. Furthermore, I live near a major cluster of US military bases of all services and a retirement region for many veterans. My comments here aren't criticisms, but rather observations. There are a lot of men between 25-45 years of age in my area who are 'wound up a little tight'.

[klecser]

2 hours ago, svensson said:

Some might see my comments here as disrespectful to veterans or those suffering with mental health issues. 

I don't get this from your posts. But I also think it noteworthy that neither veteran experiences nor PTSD are monoliths. So, I will always respect your perspective as a person who fits both of those categories. But I will always also listen to a full breadth of opinions and data on both of those. I appreciate your perspective of having a realistic view of history. History is initially often written by the people in power, or the ones who "win" conflicts.

Edited May 6, 2021 by klecser

[Joe Kenobi]

2 hours ago, svensson said:

Now, the data is very muddled on this next point, but it is estimated that the murder rate in the US was over 100% greater per capita in between 1920-1930 than it was between 1870-1880, at the height of the cattle drives and 'gunfighter era' of US history. As I say, that is only a 'guess-timate' because of several factors: the reliability of news reporting was greater in the 20s than the 70s, for example. Crime statistics were only just starting to be kept scientifically by both Scotland Yard and the US FBI in the 20s. But the level of violence in society was noted and commented on at all levels of society all around the Western world. Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Russia all commented that they lived in more violent era than previously for various reasons, so this isn't just a US phenomenon.

I will also point out--not to undermine your point, but as a counterpoint to soften it--there is a documented perception of increased crime counter to underlying crime statistics that is often driven by improved communication, technology, and media coverage. I have not done my homework on changes between the 1870s and 1920s, but I have seen studies showing this change in perception with the dawn of the television, then the dawn of the internet and social media. It wouldn't surprise me to learn some (not all) of the increased perception of violence in society was actually driven by improved news communication, not just changes in the true underlying statistics.

[svensson]

35 minutes ago, Joe Kenobi said:

I will also point out--not to undermine your point, but as a counterpoint to soften it--there is a documented perception of increased crime counter to underlying crime statistics that is often driven by improved communication, technology, and media coverage. I have not done my homework on changes between the 1870s and 1920s, but I have seen studies showing this change in perception with the dawn of the television, then the dawn of the internet and social media. It wouldn't surprise me to learn some (not all) of the increased perception of violence in society was actually driven by improved news communication, not just changes in the true underlying statistics.

The perception of increased crime because of media information is just what I was getting at. The US is currently experience low-to-moderate crime rates across the board, but you wouldn't be able to tell that from the news or internet.

[svensson]

1 hour ago, klecser said:

I don't get this from your posts. But I also think it noteworthy that neither veteran experiences nor PTSD are monoliths. So, I will always respect your perspective as a person who fits both of those categories. But I will always also listen to a full breadth of opinions and data on both of those. I appreciate your perspective of having a realistic view of history. History is initially often written by the people in power, or the ones who "win" conflicts.

My perspective as a historian is has always been a realistic one. I don't subscribe to the myths or legends of the narrative, instead looking towards the actual statistics bolstered by first-person accounts. History may be written by the victors, but we now have more tools than ever to attain a more realistic and accurate picture, especially those events in the radio /film age.

But something I should also point out here... history may be written by the victors but it's made by people. Those people leave survivors and those survivors write their own narratives completely separate from the winner's perspective. You can get an awful lot of good balancing information by reading the testimony of the losers. I did a college paper once on 'The Mythology of Defeat' and the Jacobite 'King Over The Water', the Confederate 'Lost Cause' and the German 'Dolschstosslegende' featured prominently.

Edited May 6, 2021 by svensson

[klecser]

14 hours ago, Joe Kenobi said:

I will also point out--not to undermine your point, but as a counterpoint to soften it--there is a documented perception of increased crime counter to underlying crime statistics that is often driven by improved communication, technology, and media coverage. I have not done my homework on changes between the 1870s and 1920s, but I have seen studies showing this change in perception with the dawn of the television, then the dawn of the internet and social media. It wouldn't surprise me to learn some (not all) of the increased perception of violence in society was actually driven by improved news communication, not just changes in the true underlying statistics.

Excellent point Joe. The classic example of this is in the medical field. Increasing our detection methods for disease finds more instances of disease, but it isn't evidence that disease is spreading in the population more. Likewise, humans not knowing how to recognize a mental health challenge in the past doesn't mean that when we recognize more of it now that it just didn't exist in the past. PTSD is an example. It was called "shell shock" in WW1. And people maybe didn't explicitly identify it as a consequence of war at all in the distant past. But that doesn't mean a human empathetic response to seeing death didn't affect them in the past.

13 hours ago, svensson said:

But something I should also point out here... history may be written by the victors but it's made by people. Those people leave survivors and those survivors write their own narratives completely separate from the winner's perspective. You can get an awful lot of good balancing information by reading the testimony of the losers. I did a college paper once on 'The Mythology of Defeat' and the Jacobite 'King Over The Water', the Confederate 'Lost Cause' and the German 'Dolschstosslegende' featured prominently.

Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply that the "losers" just disappear. The Germans have done a spectacular job of leading a mutual societal response to Nazism post WW2 within their own country. They are the ones who vowed to actively try to not let it arise in their space again. It wasn't the occupying forces who did that. In the modern age, with increases in communication and much more free press, it has become much harder for the "winners" to suppress the voices of the "losers."

I think this discussion has been central to what level of realism people want to portray in Call of Cthulhu!

Edited May 7, 2021 by klecser

[The Dark]

As an aside, I have a digitized copy of Francis Bannerman's 1903 catalog, and one of the items listed for sale to anyone who'd buy them was a half-dozen Gatling guns "shooting the standard government center fire cartridge" (which would be .50-70 in this case). There were also a pair of 100-pdr Parrott rifles from the Civil War for $1250 each, with shot and shell available at $6 per round. The early 1900s were wild with surplus arms.

 

With regards to double-barrels being more common than pump shotguns, my impression is a lot of that was cost. The 1922 Sears catalog had double-barrel 12-gauge shotguns at price from $18.90 to $46.00 (with the high-end being A.H. Fox and L.C. Smith). A Winchester 1897 was $42.50, a Remington 10A was $60.92, a Remington 11A was $75.50 to $86.83 depending on options, and a Stevens 520 was $47.50. Single-barrels were even cheaper than doubles, at $8.45 to $11.40 for a 12-gauge, but didn't have the quick follow-up shot.