The perfect gun

Every now and then I see a gun--online or in popular culture--that make me want to collect guns.  I don't love guns, and even though I've shot a few guns in my life, I'm not 100% convinced of their sporting value.  But as objects d'art, I'm all for guns.  They are, after all, incredibly powerful design objects.  As tools of death, guns command a certain level of attention from everyone that sees them--the same way a car accident keeps rubberneckers focused on the wreck and not the road.  Seeing a gun means seeing a threat.  Before you can even appreciate it aesthetically, it is registering as 'danger' in your animal subconscious.  This is why guns are always interesting to look at.  

On top of this primal--initial reaction, a gun can also trigger any number of secondary reactions in our brains, simply depending on the way it looks.  Just about anyone who sees a gun can place it somewhere in their mental library.  For example--you probably know that revolvers are for cowboys, shotguns are for farmers, rifles are for hunters, uzi's are for gangsters... etc.

This knowledge we have is vague, but present, and allows us to preload a biography and narrative around a gun before we actually know anything about it.  When I, for example, see AK-47's I think of Russia and the Middle-East, insurgencies, the cold war, the desert, and terrorism.  Any odd memory I have surrounding AK-47's contextualizes it

On top of these memory-based associations--these embedded narratives--the physical design of the gun, which carries its own personality, also defines the way we react to it.  Guns can have human traits.  They can be skinny or chubby, clumsy or sophisticated, old or young.  They can look aggressive, normal, or even reserved-looking.

A chubby, awkward gun.  This is a George Costanza

average-looking gun.  Balanced, no ornamentation or
exaggerated forms/features.  This is a Honda civic

neutral-looking gun.  This is a politically-correct gun--the
"passive voice" of machine guns.  'Surgical' and 'abstract'
come to mind

The point is that a gun is a powerful physical object, physically and mentally.  When we see them, we're awed by their presence, and the mental associations--both conscious and subconscious--build stories around them.

   

One gun that I've really grown to love for its design and the 'mental narrative' it holds is the Mauser P08, a gun more commonly known as the luger.  

This was a handgun first produced at the beginning of the 20th century, and used by Germans forces in WWI and WWII.  I think the first time I actually saw this gun was in the Tintin comics I read as a kid.  The bad guys who kept Tintin up tied up in the cargo ship carried guns that looked a lot like lugers.  I always liked the design--even then.  It looked mean.

Mean, but impartial--I can't say exactly what it is about this gun.  It's an incredibly sleek design.  The gun is skinny and minimal--the greyhound of handguns.  It's lines and design speak to its intention.  With an exposed barrel, the gun looks more like a bullet syringe: designed to kill people with cold, surgical, german precision.  

And I thought the luger was it--the best looking gun I'd ever seen.  That was until came across the artillery luger.  It features a longer barrel, which gives it an extremely elegant, raked-out look.  This particular version is the Persian artillery luger, a rare version made by the german arms manufacturer Mauser for the Persian shah, when Iran was still Persia.  According to a site I found:

The most recent Shah of Iran, the last of the Pahlavi Dynasty, ruled from 1925 until the abdication in 1979. This family attempted to modernize Iran, and following WWI and the great depression--was an emerging powerhouse in the world. The influence and technology of the Germans were sought as the Persians aligned themselves with the Germans.

Well the Persians definitely got their money's worth.  It's the single greatest gun I've ever seen.  

Funny too, since in a way, this gun reminds me of Tintin also.  The Tintin books where he travels in the Middle East--I can picture the 'bad guys,' or a gruff-looking Captain Haddock carrying an artillery luger.  This book--for example--which I read as a kid, would be the perfect setting for this gun:

Haddock's probably holding an artillery Luger in this picture