"Texas Ranger's Picnic Gun" ? ? ?
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Why "pinic"? What would make it that? Is that something like your Sunday best or something? I'm not getting it.[?] 0 -
I think it's supposed to be a "BBQ" not picnic gun.
The seller is a PA yankee.0 -
must be very old, been a long time since a rwnger carried a 38 even to a BBQ, must less a "PICNIC" 0 -
EXCUSE ME THAT IS RANGER NOT RWNGER (beat you to it hahaha) 0 -
It's purdy, I'll say that much.
Maybe Yogi Bear found it in a picnic basket, therefore it is a picnic gun?0 -
quote:Originally posted by sheepdip
I think it's supposed to be a "BBQ" not picnic gun.
The seller is a PA yankee.
Is that why it looks...charred..?[;)]0 -
The Ranger story begins many years ago. In 1823, the Father of Texas, Stephen F. Austin realized the need for a body of men to protect his fledgling colony, the land settlement effort that marked the beginning of Texas' development.
On August 5, 1823, on the back of a proclamation issued by Land Commissioner Baron de Bastrop, Austin wrote that he would "...employ ten men...to act as rangers for the common defense...the wages I will give said ten men is fifteen dollars a month payable in property..."
These men, not soldiers, not even militia, "ranged" the area of Austin's colony, protecting settlers from Indians. When no threat seemed evident, the men returned to their families and land.
Despite Austin's plan to pay a group of Rangers, the defense effort continued primarily on a voluntary basis.
By 1835, as the movement for Texas independence was about to boil over, a council of local government representatives created a "Corps of Rangers" to protect the frontier from Indians. These Rangers would be paid $1.25 a day and could elect their own officers. They furnished their own arms, mounts, and equipment.
When Texas declared its independence from Mexico, some Rangers took part in the fighting, though most served as scouts.
In 1846, within a year of Texas' admission as the 28th state of the Union, the United States and Mexico were at war. Walker joined one of several Ranger companies that were mustered into federal service to function as scouts.
The Rangers fought with such ferocity in the war that they came to be called "Los Diablos Tejanos"--the Texas Devils. The luck Walker had after Mier did not hold. He was killed in the fighting.
For the next decade after the Mexican War, the Rangers existed primarily as volunteer companies, raised when the need arose and disbanded when their work was done.
During the Civil War, with thousands of Texans off fighting with the Confederate Army, frontier protection was afforded by a "Regiment of Rangers." Even it eventually became part of the Confederate Army.
The backbone of home front security was still the volunteer "ranging" company, whose members operated on the "legal authority" of the pistols they carried on their hips or the rifle swinging in their saddle boot.
After the war, the Legislature passed a bill creating three companies of Texas Rangers, but a bill to provide funding failed. Financial support for state law enforcement in the early 1870s was sporadic. For all practical purposes, there were no Texas Rangers for nearly a decade after the war.
During this time, law enforcement was handled by a highly political and roundly hated organization known as the State Police. Texas, like other Southern states, was in the throes of reconstruction and any authority, civil or military, was distrusted. The force eventually was disbanded.
Unfortunately, the problems that had made some kind of statewide police force necessary in the first place had not disappeared along with the State Police. But Texas was changing. The military, led by war-seasoned veterans of the Union Army, was methodically ridding Texas of its Indian problem.
The law authorized four Ranger companies of a maximum of 20 men each. The career of Company "B" Captain W. J. McDonald, and a book written about him, added much to the Ranger legend, including two of its most famous sayings.
The often cited "One Riot, One Ranger" appears to be based on several statements attributed to Captain McDonald by Albert Bigelow Paine in his classic book, Captain Bill McDonald: Texas Ranger. When sent to Dallas to prevent a scheduled prize-fight, McDonald supposedly was greeted at the train station by the city's anxious mayor, who asked: "Where are the others?"
To that, McDonald is said to have replied, "Hell! ain't I enough? There's only one prize-fight!"
And on the title page of Paine's 1909 book on McDonald are 19 words labeled as Captain McDonald's creed: "No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that's in the right and keeps on a-comin." Those words have evolved into the Ranger creed.
During the first two decades of the Twentieth Century, Rangers found themselves up against men in the wrong as always, but some of the law enforcement problems these officers confronted were as new as the century itself.
Since the days of the Mexican War, Rangers had occasional work to do along the long, meandering Rio Grande, but the emphasis on the river increased in 1910 with the outbreak of revolution in Mexico. Generally easy to ford, the Rio Grande had never been much more than a symbolic boundary. Some of the violence associated with the political upheaval in Mexico crossed the river into Texas.
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/director_staff/texas_rangers/0 -
The story goes that in Texas it was customary to strap on your fanciest pistol for friendly BBQs and other get-togethers where a little target shooting might take place. So really fancy guns with engraving and custom stocks are sometimes called "BBQ Guns" and I think that's what the seller meant.
To go with the dressed-up revolvers they would often have fancy belt and holster rigs, too. The point to be a little flashy and show off to your friends.
Here's my BBQ gun:
And the fancy leather: (I hadn't finished polishing the stocks and setting the medallions when this shot was taken.)0
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