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Sun column ping

Old fashioned piece-nik
By Howie Carr | Sunday, July 1, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

I wonder what Whitey Bulger misses most about his old life on the lam in Santa Monica — his gal pal, that nice young man to whom he presented a beard trimmer, or ... his arsenal.

My bet is on the weapons. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, a gun moll is only a gun moll, but a good pistol is a piece.

The feds included photos of Whitey’s weapons cache in their document dump two weeks ago, but they didn’t explain the ins and outs of his collection. So I went to a gun-loving friend of mine, Larry the Loner, and asked him to analyze Whitey’s arsenal.

First of all, Bulger owned hardly anything modern, not much of the lightweight polymer stuff you see nowadays. Whitey was mostly into old-fashioned gangster gats — wheel guns (revolvers, many .38s and .357s, which don’t jam, always a plus on a hit).

Perhaps Whitey’s most intriguing gun is what appears to be a Ruger 22/45, equipped with a silencer. A silencer! Most of his other weapons are powerful, good for shooting through the door at cops trying to get into Unit 303.

The .22 with the silencer, though, is designed for sneaking up behind somebody and silently capping him in the head. Assassinations, in other words. The Israeli Mossad has been known to use such weapons. I asked one of Whitey’s former associates his theory about the silencer-equipped .22.

“In his situation as a fugitive most of the guns would be for defense,” the wiseguy said. “But you always need something for offense, too.”

Check out the AR-15 pistol, basically a chopped-down semi-automatic M-16. Each clip holds 30 rounds of high-powered copper-jacketed rifle ammunition.

Larry the Loner’s verdict: “Good for bank jobs, small massacres and going out in a hail of bullets if you’re also planning on taking out a few guys along with you.”

An added attraction of the AR-15 pistol: It can be controlled with one hand. In other words, perfect for a movie shootout. Top o’ the world, Ma! Top o’ the world!

Other interesting pieces: two short Mossberg 12-gauge shotguns with pistol grips — “underrated,” said Larry. At least six Springfield Armory 1911-type .45s, which retail for more than $1,000 each. These may have had nostalgic value for the octogenarian serial killer. It was the standard U.S. Army handgun when Whitey served in the Air Force in the early 1950s, when he wasn’t in the stockade on rape charges.

He also had a two-shot .22 High Standard Derringer with an ivory grip, so small he could have hidden it in the palm of his hand. And a tiny .22 caliber revolver made by North American Arms, which Whitey stashed in a hollowed-out book next to the USMC tome, “Jarhead.”

Whitey also owned a lot of “snap caps.” Those are fake bullets designed to soften the hammer fall of guns that are fired without ammo — “dry-fired,” as they say. This way he could keep the equalizer in his hand and occasionally pull the trigger without blowing yet another hole in the apartment wall.

But he didn’t just own guns. He had knives, but not the high-quality brands like Cold Steel and Spyderco and Ka-Bar. He bought his daggers off the shelf. But Whitey did own one rather exotic dirk — a push knife. It’s basically a set of brass knuckles with a blade attached. Good only for punching the knife through a victim’s sternum to his heart, or through his skull.

“Not recommended for peeling carrots,” noted Larry the Loner.

Added Whitey’s wiseguy associate: “He always had at least one of those. He loved knives, used to buy them in those knife stores in Times Square. Knife people are nuts, you know. They’re so crazy they can’t get gun permits, that’s why they get into knives.”

Oh, and one final accessory — an old-style pineapple hand grenade. Only it was one of those fake ones that are sold at novelty stores and are really cigarette lighters or are mounted on a plaque with the caption, “Complaint Dept. In Case of Problem Customer, Pull Pin.”

That Whitey, what a card.
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