This piece traces the direct line from a bamboo tube lashed to a spear in 10th century China to every firearm in existence. That's a hell of a lineage to think about at the cleaning table.

That transition from bamboo tube to metal barrel is where the fire lance stops being a fancy torch and starts being a gun.

That one sentence does more work than most firearms history books manage in a chapter. Everything we argue about today — barrel steel, chamber pressure, projectile fit — starts right there with some Jin dynasty engineer figuring out that bamboo splits and iron doesn't.

Once the fire went off, it "completely spews the rear pellet wad forth, and the sound is like a bomb that can be heard for five hundred or more paces." — History of Song, 1259

A snug-fitting projectile driven by expanding gas. That's a bullet. 1259. The next time someone at the counter wants to argue about what makes a firearm a firearm, that definition has been settled for about 765 years.

This is not sufficient for a mere hundred men, let alone a thousand, to use against an attack by the ... barbarians. — Li Zengbo, Song official, 1257

Supply chain problems during a siege — some things don't change. That frustration reads like every armorer's pre-match inventory complaint, just with slightly higher stakes than a club championship.

What's the oldest firearm or piece of shooting equipment you've personally handled — and did knowing its history change how you thought about it?

Read the full article in The Handbook → | By The Boise Gun Club Team