Celebrating the wartime pleasure of getting loaded and cleaning your guns

This wartime ad from Life encourages you to get loaded on fine booze at home while cleaning your guns, to leave the roads and railways clear for Our Boys.

Life, October 16, 1944

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: ads • booze • guns • Old school • war

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Rotwang

Dueling and drooling.
niktemadur

And remember kids: Guns don’t kill people, only commies and anti-NRA America-haters do.
Oh God, I need a drink… and a gun.
- http://twitter.com/beep54orama B E Pratt
  
  Guns don’t kill people. Physics kills people!
  John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Stonewalker

While a beer or a whiskey goes nicely while cleaning your guns after a day of shooting, an easy chair does not. Work like that needs to be done outside or on a workbench, it’s very dirty!
- Brainspore
  
  Work like that needs to be done outside or on a workbench, it’s very dirty!
  
  No worries, this guy lives in 1944. I’m sure his wife-slave will take care of the mess just as soon as she finishes birthin’ that baby.
Teller

Pretty decent illustration.
Anselm

Load and get loaded!
Comedian

Throw a smoke in his hand and you’d have the inspiration for F-Troop.
- kjh
  
  He’s got his pipe in his vest pocket.
  - http://borborygmist.influxofdust.com/ Wayne Dyer
    
    Revealing he also has a vest pocket on a sweater vest. Unusual these days.
- Ipo
  
  That is a bong in the background, no?
mattatlaw

To be fair, those are flintlock pistols, what pirates used in the 1700′s. He’s polishing an antique. Not going to accidentally shoot yourself cleaning one of those. I wonder if the marketers assumed people would recognize the distinction?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Not going to accidentally shoot yourself cleaning one of those.
  
  Probably not going to shoot whatever you aim at either.
  - benenglish
    
    Tell that to the Cominazzo match shooters on the U.S. International Muzzle-Loading Team. At the championship levels, the shooters wielding pistols like those depicted in that ad generally place every shot within 2 inches of target center at 25 meters, i.e. overall group size about 4 inches across. And they can do it with real-from-the-period pieces.
    - ocker3
      
      Isn’t one of the more important elements reliably-formed shot, not just the weapon itself?
      - benenglish
        
        Sure but I don’t understand your point. Near-perfect spherical projectiles for 250-year-old smoothbore flintlock pistols are not hard to buy or make.
      - Spriggan_Prime
        
        Sure it is, but its been fairly reliably done since 1782:
        
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_tower
        
        physics is wonderful.
  - http://www.mikeb302000.blogspot.com/ Mikeb302000
    
    Not unless one’s loaded. I admit it’s less likely with one of these than with your modern 9 mm, but the eternal truth prevails – do not mix guns with alcohol.
    - Spriggan_Prime
      
      True dat, the gun oil and cordite makes the alcohol taste terrible.
- Clevername
  
  It happens occasionally. Blackpowder doesn’t deteriorate over time if kept dry and old flintlocks were commonly stored loaded with the hammer down because loading them took so long. Always assume a gun is loaded!
http://twitter.com/MrAaronSwainEsq Aaron Swain

That reminds me: I need to get my bottle of bourbon re-velveted.
LogrusZed

Just remember to have Andy Williams on speed-dial.

/is that an old-people reference, or do people still get that?
- Donald Petersen
  
  Pretty old, but knowing what speed-dial is is pretty danged late-20th-century.
http://twitter.com/johncfarrier John Farrier

No, no, no, no, no. Guns and alcohol do not mix.

Attitudes toward gun safety in America have improved drastically over the past fifty years. This sort of scene would freak out modern gunnies.
- Donald Petersen
  
  Which scene? The one where he’s cleaning his gun with no beverage in sight? Or the one where he’s enjoying his drink with no guns in sight? Though the “two jobs” involve the same easy chair and the same Santorum-vest, there’s no indication that both jobs should be performed simultaneously.
  
  And do modern gunnies actually call themselves “gunnies”? Whatever happened to the term “shootist”? ;^)
  - robuluz
    
    Santorum-vest
    
    Eeeewwwww!
  - http://twitter.com/johncfarrier John Farrier
    
    Well, true. Unless that’s a five-foot tall cocktail glass in the lower scene.
    
    Many of the firearms enthusiasts that I know do indeed refer to themselves as gunnies.
Marktech

I don’t have any antique pistols to polish; but looking on the bright side, my whisky hasn’t been velveted for extra smoothness either.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=22616674 Denis Burba

Judging by the helmet on the mantel he is an antique weapons/armor collector. I know it’s difficult to understand how someone can have a drink and enjoy their hobby, but just close your eyes for a second and replace the flintlock pistol with StarWars action figures (or whatever else you deem socially acceptable for people to enjoy).
- nachoproblem
  
  One night I was sitting in bed reading, and my apartment neighbors blew a hole in my wall right above me with a Star Wars action figure. Oh, no, I guess it was a gun.
  
  Well… but luckily that is a flintlock rather than a Glock 9mm, which means it’s rather more work to prime it and then blow a hole in your neighbor’s wall.
  - shay simmons
    
    It means that it’s highly unlikely the thing will be loaded at any time.
John Stephens

Those are dueling pistols, alright. ”Pistols for two, bourbon for one.”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

So, back in WWII, we were be expected to sacrifice luxuries like weekend travel to help out the war effort?

That Roosevelt really WAS a commie. A real freedom-lover would insist everyone go shopping, buy new cars, and tear around the countryside wasting gas just put the fear of capitalism in our enemies.
TooGoodToCheck

Despite two minutes of searching, I never found out what it meant for a whiskey to be “velveted”. I did, however, run across this charming factlet in wikipedia:

Schenley’s Black Velvet DeLuxe was the only liquor available to submarine officers at Midway in World War II, where it was held in low regard and known as “Schenley’s Black Death.”
- James B
  
  I always enjoyed photo in the SRL book, “Pranks”, where someone re-painted a Black Velvet billboard featuring Telly Savalas They changed “feel the velvet baby” to “feel the pain baby”.
Brainspore

Those may be antique flintlock pistols, but somehow I doubt this guy is going to limit himself to just one shot.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  This picture is the plot of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
http://twitter.com/jameshightower James Hightower

Ad Exec: “We’re trying to justify telling men to drink alone at home… It’s patriotic. We need an illo… Get that Rockwell guy on the horn!”

Assistant: “We don’t have the budget for a Norman Rockwell.”

Exec: “Darn. Find someone who paints like Rockwell. Get a homey scene with an easy chair. Gotta get a chair. See if he has one already painted, we’ve got a deadline…”

I think you guys are putting in far more thought in to analyzing this ad than the Mad Men put into creating it. That painting was found in the art dept via index cards that read “Dad, hobbies, easy chair.” Man’s enjoying his weekend doing Manly things, I say. Lounging. Drinking. Polishing his Symbols of European Military and Cultural Dominance… Wait, which side is he on?
Petzl

I can’t tell: is that cotton wadding or a small foothill of cocaine next to the second pistol. Say hello to my little friend.
Cowicide

No one did it better than Hunter S. Thompson…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNEImAIM4L4
Mister44

While I am not saying it is good safety to drink and play with guns – it is a LOT harder to accidentally load and shoot a black powder flint lock than a modern semi-auto or revolver.
pjcamp

And while you’re at it, stick that nasty pipe upside down in your pocket.
robuluz

I’d like to make the pleasant task of resting even pleasanter! Give me an Imperial Manhattan!
http://profile.yahoo.com/ADHF7WJVUMIKMMFHKIDWT3S4XA Roy Skaggs

Alternate caption: ” If the Lord God Jehovah holds me in half the esteem I hold myself, he’ll let me plug a Kraut with this before the war’s over. Section 8 indeed…”
Preston Sturges

OK, so if he’s polishing a couple antiques, why does he have a bore brush on the table?

Also the brush is probably way to small for those flintlock hand cannons.
tw1515tw

I’ll give you my whiskey when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!
markbellis

If there’s no flints in the locks and no powder in the pans, then they are not likely to discharge even if loaded. Since there’s only an oil can, brush and cotton wool in sight, he’s probably just cleaning and oiling them – they might just be contemporary reproductions that couldn’t be fired.
WinstonSmith2012

“Too old to go to war and some black market booze. Life is sweat.”
Ryan Lenethen

I love ambiguous marking terms, particularly old ones. They practically even put it in air quotes. Velveted indeed!
Pedantic Douchebag

I can think of at least three other “jobs” one might “handle” from such an…easy… chair. Ahem.