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Excerpt: How Canadians helped create the NRA

After the Civil War, the U.S. looked to Canada — a nation of marksmen — for help in training the newly formed National Rifle Association, writes A.J. Somerset in an excerpt from his book Arms: The Culture and Credo of the Gun.

12 min read
rifle-match-1916

An international rifle match involving Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and “imperials” in June 1916. The development of the rifle changed warfare and heralded the decline of cavalry.


America’s formative years coincided with a remarkable revolution in firepower, and that revolution propelled American expansion as the young nation gobbled up its frontier and pursued the genocide of its native peoples and its wars against Britain and Spain for control of the American continent.

No less significantly, this revolution in firepower began just in time for the United States to turn on itself in the Civil War. At the beginning of the 19th century, the infantryman’s weapon was still the flintlock musket, a clumsy and inaccurate weapon that had been in service for two centuries and was little different from the matchlocks, wheel locks, snaplocks and snaphaunces that had served for the two centuries previous. But in scarcely 25 years, the rifle replaced the musket and transformed warfare.

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