8 SEPTEMBER 2019 AMERICAN RIFLEMAN
THE KEEFE REPORT
maglula Ltd.
10/22 LULA
p/n LU30Bloader and unloader set
for
Ruger’s 10/22 .22LR
factory magsWorld’s best selling
magazine loaders!Over thirty professional pistol & rifle
mag loaders - Made in IsraelAsk your local dealerSince 2001maglula.com® ®
®BX-1, 5, 10
BX-15 & BX-Trademarks are held by their respective owners.loaderunloaderPMR-30 LULA
.22WMR magazine
loader & unloaderp/n LU34BNew!
®- Painless loading & unloading.
- Fits in the palm of your hand.
- Durable & lightweight.
- Works like a champ!
TMKel-TecM
y start as an NRA employee
came nearly 30 years ago as
a weekends-only curatorial
assistant at the NRA National Firearms
Museum in Washington, D.C. It was
a slightly more than minimum-wage
job—which was ne as I had two other
jobs at the time—and it marginally
beat my previous pay rate as a museum
volunteer. Frankly, the job was far more
janitorial than curatorial, but it gave
me a chance to look at each and every
gun—and their descriptions—on dis-
play in the old museum. Glass cleaner
bottle and paper towels in hand, in no
time I knew a lot more about guns than
I had previously.
That museum in the former NRA
headquarters at 1600 Rhode Island
Ave., which is a hotel now, was at
Scott Circle, just a few blocks from the
White House. Many NRA members tak-
ing a trip to the nation’s capital would
stop by while in town. When NRA
moved its headquarters to Fairfax,
Va., in the 1990s, then opened a new
and expanded NRA National Firearms
Museum, it was no longer mere blocks
from major tourist destinations, but
the new museum is quite an impres-
sive facility. Instead of guns on burlap
behind glass (that I didn’t have to
clean anymore) with yellowing note-
cards, it is far more modern and inter-
pretive. With more than 3,000 guns
on display, it tells the story of 700
years of rearms, covering everything
from the early “handgonnes” all the
way up through guns made this year,
with emphasis on rearms, freedom
and the American experience.
It is a facility I would hope each and
every NRA member would get an oppor-
tunity to visit. While tens of thousands
of visitors go through the museum each
year—and even more go through the
NRA National Sporting Arms Museum at
Bass Pro Shops in Spring eld, Mo.—not
everyone can make it.
In discussions with the museum
staff, we decided to bring the museum
to our members in the pages of this
magazine, even if it’s only a few guns
at a time. But what to call it? I was
pulling for “National Treasures,” and
that was our working title. But that
name at NRA, especially through theMuseum and Gun Collecting Dept., is
reserved for even rarer guns judged to
be a cut above the rest by the NRA Gun
Collecting Committee. That is a cate-
gory reserved for just ve rearms—so
far—Abraham Lincoln’s Henry lever-
action (held by the Smithsonian,
americanrifleman.org/lincoln), a
pair of pistols presented to the Marquis
de Lafayette by none other than George
Washington (on display at Fort Ligonier,
americanrifleman.org/lafayette),
the cased Colt 1851 belonging to Fort
Sumpter’s Maj. Robert Anderson and
Capt. Samuel H. Walker’s Walker Colt
(both are in private collections).
No, we needed a different title,
so we settled on “From The National
Firearms Museums Collection.“ Since
my time with a broom and a spray
bottle, the NRA museum collection
and system have expanded to include
not just the facility in Fairfax, but
the NRA National Sporting Arms
Museum and the Frank M. Brownell
Museum of the Southwest at the NRA
Whittington Center in Raton, N.M.
And some of the system’s collection
travels at times, including to the
Single-Action Shooting Society’s End
of Trail each year.
This month marks the 18th anni-
versary of the most heinous terrorist
attack on the citizens of the United
States. And there are two guns cur-
rently on display in Fairfax that help
us to remember two of the brave
Americans whose lives were taken
that day. You can read about the
men—and their guns—on p. 54.Sincerely,