Free Republic

Early on a Sunday morning in June, a tractor-trailer backed into the rear parking lot of the Navy Arms warehouse north of Martinsburg, W.V. Inside the truck’s shipping container were four huge wooden crates containing a long-forgotten batch of British No. 4 Lee-Enfield rifles with a unique history. Two green, military-style chests, each brimming with plastic-wrapped bolts, accompanied the wooden containers. Inside the warehouse sat cardboard boxes filled with newly made No. 4 rifle magazines, waiting for their recipients to be offloaded. Valmore Forgett, III, president and CEO of Navy Arms, had shepherded these guns from their storage spot in...

Years later, at age 24, I had forgotten all this. I stood in a field on a farm in the middle of nowhere and held a gun for the first time. It was a weathered Soviet rifle, manufactured in 1942, and it was heavy. I couldn’t believe I was about to press this rusty, old thing against my shoulder, let alone pull the trigger. The sound was unlike anything I’d ever heard. The concussive blast shook every molecule of my body, and more importantly, changed my whole perspective.