As collectors know, fine firearms can be a solid investment, but, at times, firearms themselves become a commodity. In post-World War II Germany, the country’s currency had devalued rapidly, and a barter economy replaced traditional money.
Cigarettes, scarce on the civilian market but readily available in the PXs (Post Exchanges) of occupying G.I.s, became a currency of sorts. German citizens would trade household valuables for cigarettes and then trade the cigarettes for food and other essentials on the black market. These household items included firearms, some made specifically for trade, which became known as “cigarette Mausers.” Many of these bartered rifles came back to the states in the duffle bags of returning soldiers.
In collecting circles, the terms “cigarette rifle” and “guild rifle” are often confused. The most agreed-upon definition is that a guild rifle is one that was built pre-World War I or during the interwar period (1919-1939) by small craft gunsmiths using a commercial (or military contract overrun) action, barrel and stock. These rifles are clearly marked by their makers. Not all guild rifles are Mausers, as some were built on actions sourced from the 1888 Commission Rifle or even the Steyr M95 straight-pull.
A cigarette rifle was constructed post-World War II using a military-surplus action and usually is not marked with its gunsmith’s name. The rifle pictured falls into this category. The quality of cigarette rifles varies from crude to nearing pre-war commercial quality. This rifle lies somewhere in between those two extremes. It is assembled from a mixture of parts.
The action started life as a World War I-era Gewehr 98. Though most of its original markings have been removed or are obscured by the scope mount, several Prussian imperial proofs remain. The straight bolt handle has been reworked into a turned-down, spatulated “butterknife” design. The original single trigger has been replaced by a double-set mechanism with the original military trigger guard modified to accommodate it. The action has a pair of offset World War I-era claw mount scope bases, but, as is the case with many of these rifles, its rings and optic are missing.
The barrel is from a Karabiner 98k that was manufactured in 1942 by Mauser and was left at its original 600 mm length. Its tangent rear sight and base have been removed and replaced by a two-leaf folding sight, and its banded front sight replaced by an extended and checkered ramp.
The original Gewehr 98 stock and its metal buttplate were retained. The rear sling swivel and bolt disassembly disk have been removed and plugged, and a dished cheekpiece has been grafted into the buttstock. The fore-end is shortened and tapered into a schnabel tip, with a slight remnant of the grasping grooves remaining. Narrow, sporting-type sling swivels have been added to the stock and barrel. The rifle’s overall appearance approximates the style of a pre-war Mauser commercial Type B sporter.
This rifle appears to be in its original, as-built state, though cigarette rifles are often found with an additional step of “customization” that occurred once they arrived in the United States—such as receiver-mounted peep sights or more modern American scope mounts, stock embellishments and rubber recoil pads. Before firing any Mauser sporter rebuilt in Europe from a military rifle, it is advised to have a gunsmith inspect the gun to confirm its chambering.
This rifle, in fair condition, is valued at $450. While cigarette rifles have little collector value, the better-made ones offer an affordable pre- war-style Mauser rifle for the hunter or shooter.
The single shot that killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s last week upended decades of the gun control debate.
As high-profile shootings piled up, activists said the solution lay in background checks and bans on semi-automatic AR-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and 3D-printed firearms.
But authorities said the shot that killed Mr. Kirk came from a Mauser bolt-action rifle chambered in .30-06 caliber — a classic hunting gun and the type of weapon that had previously been immune from the gun control debate.
“As usual, the Democrats wasted no time before weaponizing the assassination of Second Amendment advocate Charlie Kirk to promote their unconstitutional gun-grabbing agenda,” said Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America. “But the murder weapon is a sporterized, Mauser Gewehr 98 — a bolt-action rifle first manufactured in Germany over a hundred years ago in 1898. So, when Democrats call for ‘assault weapons’ bans, every gun owner must realize that means grandpa’s old hunting rifle too.”
Bolt-action rifles load each round one at a time by manually working the bolt.
The rifles usually at the core of the gun debate are magazine-fed semi-automatic guns, in which the firearm itself automatically brings a new round into the chamber after each trigger pull — though, like a bolt-action, each trigger pull fires only a single round.
Automatic rifles, or machine guns, fire continuously until the magazine or belt is empty. They are already heavily restricted under U.S. law.
The ammunition used to kill Mr. Kirk, .30-06, is considered a high-powered cartridge, meaning it can deliver a more powerful punch at a longer range.
The AR-style rifles that have dominated the gun debate in recent years generally use what’s known as an intermediate cartridge, which is a balance between high-power ammunition and lower-powered ammo generally used in handguns.
Using a bolt-action rifle is a rarity in high-profile shooting crimes, though Lee Harvey Oswald used a bolt-action 6.5 mm Carcano rifle to assassinate President Kennedy in November 1963.
According to data compiled by The Smoking Gun website, a bolt-action rifle was present in only five of the 263 deadliest shootings in U.S. history and was almost always a secondary weapon, often never used. So-called assault weapons were used in 71 shootings, with AR-15-style rifles the choice in about half of those.
Mr. Kirk was talking about mass shootings during one of his signature “Prove Me Wrong” events at Utah Valley University on Wednesday when he was fatally shot.
Law enforcement recovered the bolt-action rifle that they say was used in the shooting from the woods near the school campus. It was wrapped in a towel.
A spent round was in the chamber and shell casings left beside the gun were etched with messages. Among the messages were “Hey fascist, catch!” and “If you read this you are gay, LMAO.”
On Friday, police arrested Tyler Robinson, 22, of Utah, in connection with the shooting death.
Mr. Robinson had confessed to a family friend, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said. The friend contacted the Washington County, Utah, Sheriff’s Office.
Guns quickly became a focal point for many on the left in the wake of the slaying.
Some commenters online suggested a sort of justice in Mr. Kirk’s death, given his vehement opposition to gun control.
A clip of Mr. Kirk talking about the tradeoffs of gun control made the rounds: “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
Members of Congress called for a renewed debate on restrictions.
“Pass some gun laws!” shouted Rep. Jahana Hayes, Connecticut Democrat, after the House held a moment of silence and prayer for Mr. Kirk.
Rep. George Latimer, New York Democrat, later told reporters outside the chamber, “Does it take shooting a conservative to start to realize the gun scourge? I hope they realize it.”
Second Amendment Foundation Founder Alan Gottlieb said Mr. Kirk’s shooting upends much of the rhetoric surrounding guns.
“Democrats treat all guns like they are ’assault weapons’ and want to ban them. Guns don’t have brains to hate with or fingers to pull their own triggers. Attacking gun ownership will not solve any problems,” Mr. Gottlieb said.
Originally published by Kerry Picket at The Washington Times.
Modern folks living in Jerusalem, Hiroshima, Bastogne, Volgograd, or Rome likely don’t believe anything of consequence ever happened in their neck of the woods. Familiarity might not necessarily breed contempt, but it does reliably foment apathy. It’s tough to get excited about the history of a place with which you feel you are so intimately familiar.
Sam Ragland is buried right down the road from where I live. His story is both poignant and horrible.
I admit to harboring a bit of that myself. I live in the suburbs of a tiny little town in north central Mississippi. My community is little more than a crossroads, so the suburbs reference is a subjective assessment at best. Suffice to say, I do like my solitude.
It was the pastoral aspect of the place that first sold me on it. My little corner of heaven is quiet. When it isn’t, I made it that way.
Then I bumped into a sweet lady in my medical clinic who had grown up hereabouts. She related a most fascinating local tale that reached all the way back to the American Civil War. Her story was poignant, gripping, disturbing, and sad all in comparable measure. It also unfolded underneath my very feet.
This nondescript gravel road doesn’t look like much. However, a great deal of pathos was spilled in this place.
That brief discussion sparked a quest for the details. This deep into the Information Age, those details were readily ascertained. All that was required was a determined detective with a serviceable Internet connection. The lion’s share of what you are about to read took place within two miles of where I sit typing these words.
It was the summer of 1864, and the fight was going badly for the Confederacy. After some promising initial gains, the tide had turned the previous summer at Gettysburg. Defeat at Vicksburg around the same time had sealed the deal. By any reasonable metric, the war was lost. However, there yet remained quite a lot of bloody dying to be done before the details were fully resolved.
The Battle of Gettysburg marked the turning point of the American Civil War.
By this time, war had fully engulfed the American Deep South. General Grant was moving toward my hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, with murderous intent. Now three years into this bitter conflict, everyone knew what that entailed.
In addition to the inevitable wanton pillaging to be found in any war, Grant had a reputation for burning county courthouses as he came upon them. There was little to be gained from this incendiary practice either tactically or strategically.
However, such conflagrations did reliably destroy the land and marriage records. This kept the gentry, most of whom were off fighting with their Rebel units, from reliably verifying land ownership and familial connections. In a renegade country already ravaged by total war, this practice injected just a little bit more madness.
The Player
Colonel Samuel Evan Ragland was born in Halifax County, Virginia, in 1811, a mere 35 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. At some point, he made his way south to Mississippi with a few relatives, ultimately procuring a nice piece of bottom land outside the small town of Delay.
This is rich, fertile dirt, the product of millennia of topsoil deposition from areas upstream via the nearby Yocona River. The same stuff reliably produces bountiful crops of soybeans, corn, and cotton to this very day.
This is Colonel Sam Ragland. He was a hard man who lived during some particularly hard times.
The Wife
Along the way, Sam Ragland married Elizabeth Hobson, and they established a home. As was often the case with landowners during this time at this place, that home included a number of African slaves. Prior to the invention of ubiquitous farm machines, agriculture on an industrial scale seemed otherwise impractical. However, for these sins, the Ragland family would soon pay most dearly.
When the first shots rang out at Fort Sumter, Sam Ragland was already fifty years old. Given the abysmal state of infant mortality, life expectancy for a man was only 39 years at this sordid time. The argument could be made that Sam Ragland might have been better off sitting this one out. However, despite the flawed nature of his cause, Ragland was nonetheless a patriot. By 1864, he was a full Colonel in Pemberton’s Confederate cavalry.
This is apparently all that remains of the Ragland estate today.
Deployed as he was sowing chaos alongside John C. Pemberton, Ragland still got sporadic news from home. When he heard that Grant was moving on Oxford, he took his leave and moved with all dispatch back to Lafayette County.
Arriving in the nick of time, he loaded all the land records from the courthouse up in a wagon and trundled them off to his rural home some dozen miles to the east. There, he secured the documents in his root cellar while the Oxford Square and its associated courthouse were predictably incinerated.
Greed, the Infernal Engine
In due time, this war, like all others, finally ground to its gory terminus. With Lee’s capitulation at Appomattox, Sam Ragland, now 54 and haggard from years of campaigning, returned home to his wife.
The Rebels had been soundly beaten, and the victors dictated the terms. That meant that the Ragland family slaves were now rightfully free. They subsequently set themselves up nearby in an awkward, unequal world, trying to redefine themselves amidst social and cultural convulsions simply without precedent.
The surrender at Appomattox Courthouse saw the end of America’s bloodiest war.
Throughout it all, Ragland retained custody of those county records. The courthouse was now a charred, empty lot, and the beaten South lacked the resources to rebuild. The fact that these records were there was hardly a secret. Anyone who cared knew this. However, at some point, the story morphed into legend, with disastrous results.
Word somehow got around that, in addition to the real estate documents, Sam Ragland had also stashed away a small fortune he had somehow brought back from the war. The details were fuzzy. However, nobody had anything, and money meant hope. To a modest group of recently emancipated slaves, that temptation became too great to resist.
The Crime
The specific details have been lost to time. What is known for certain is that this group of freed slaves approached the Ragland property via stealth, intending to liberate the swag purported to be secured within.
The cellar where the records were kept has been referred to as a vault, but the specifics are sorely lacking. Regardless, at some point during the prosecution of this enterprise, Sam Ragland discovered the burglary. Violence ensued, and Sam’s wife, Elizabeth, was killed. Sam was himself badly wounded, and the murderers fled empty-handed into the nearby swamps.
Elizabeth Ragland perished in what was essentially a burglary gone bad.
Old West Law
Understand, this was a different time. One could not just dial 911 and expect Law Enforcement to descend upon a crime scene to make things right. In Mississippi, in the first year following the Civil War, there was very little remaining in the way of recognized infrastructure. If justice were to be found, it would have to be done informally.
Lynchings weren’t exactly commonplace in the early years of the American experiment, but they weren’t just crazy rare, either. They also weren’t confined to the Deep South. This sordid image was shot in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1920. (Photo/Public domain)
Now both heartbroken and enraged, Sam Ragland bound his wounds and called upon his neighbors. Together they formed a posse and struck out into the nearby swamps in pursuit of Elizabeth’s killers.
These were hard men who had only recently fought a long and bitter war against a determined enemy. They rounded up the culprits in short order. Disinclined to avail themselves of whatever vestigial judicial apparatus might even exist in this place at this time, Ragland and company simply strung the captured miscreants up from some local trees. Once the bodies ceased their twitching, the vigilantes unceremoniously disposed of them in the nearby Yocona River.
The Aftermath
Sam Ragland buried his wife in the family plot and, in due time, moved on from the sordid events of 1866. He later remarried and fathered another son. The identity of the murderers has been irretrievably lost.
This is the Ragland family plot as it appears today. It remains quite well-maintained.
Family Cemetary
There is a small, well-maintained family cemetery right down the road from where we live. My wife and I walk together every day I’m not at work, and the weather is nice, so we resolved to do some exploring. What we found was a veritable goldmine of local history liberally intermixed with pathos.
Elizabeth Ragland was 52 years old when she was killed. Her vengeful husband, Sam, ultimately passed in 1894 at the ripe age of 83. There was no readily discernible evidence to be found in the plot of his second wife or subsequent child, though there were ample demised Raglands in attendance.
The Ragland family cemetery is liberally populated with Confederate veterans.
Per the headstones, RJ Ragland, presumably a brother or cousin, served in Company D, 3rd Regiment of the Mississippi Cavalry. He died in 1883 at the age of 60.
Evan Ragland, likely the first son of Sam and Elizabeth, was born in 1838, served in the 4th Mississippi Cavalry, and died in 1917 at 78. Their graves remain well-maintained to this day. One George Marshall Lynch had a particularly poignant story.
Life was hard in rural 19th-century America.GM Lynch, whoever he was, outlived two sequential wives named Martha.
George Lynch married Miss Martha Ragland, who died in 1869 at age 25. He then wed Martha Adams, a local lady some fifteen years younger than he. She subsequently succumbed in 1909 at age fifty. George tragically outlived both of his cherished Marthas. All of this heartbreak you could see quietly etched into these old humble stones.
Ruminations
Cemeteries tell stories, and this was a great one. Right down the road from where I raised my kids, some 158 years ago there was committed a crime most heinous. A woman perished, and her husband was subsequently thrown into a feral rage. The perpetrators were duly apprehended and strung up with minimal fanfare, their cooling corpses disposed of like those of animals.
Such frontier justice was a most brutal thing indeed. All remaining then endeavored to get on with their lives. Sam Ragland’s liberation of the land records back in 1864 is the only reason land ownership in Lafayette County, Mississippi, can be tracked back to the days before the American Civil War today.
I found one particularly curious headstone in the Ragland family plot. This young man only lived for eight days, but he had a most fascinating name. Astronomical infant mortality is what most contributed to the abysmal life expectancies of this era.
The American Deep South is the best place in the world to live. I have traveled the planet as a soldier and do not make such a lofty claim glibly. However, there was once a most horrible darkness in this place. Stark evidence of this fact can be found in a well-maintained family plot at the end of a gravel track just west of County Road 445, right down from Oxford, Mississippi. Sometimes the most amazing things do happen right in your backyard.
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