Omar’s Pistols Headed Home
Cue the “That Belongs in a Museum” memes, authorities have managed to recover and return dozens of rare collectible guns– some priceless– to the institutions from where they were stolen.
The pieces all went mission in the 1970s, back when security was lax in most public museums, and all that was needed was a big screwdriver and a flashlight to pull off a low-risk burglary.
In all, some 50 items, some dating to the French and Indian War, were returned to 17 institutions located in five states.
Among the more interesting items recovered were:
- An 1847 Mississippi rifle stolen from Beauvoir in Biloxi, Mississippi.
- World War II battlefield pickup pistols– a Luger and a Walther PPK– once owned by General Omar Bradley, stolen from the U.S. Army War College in 1979.
- Assorted 19th-century flintlock rifles stolen from Pennsylvania museums.
- An early Colt Whitneyville Walker revolver, valued at $1 million, stolen from the Connecticut State Library.
- 18th-century English and Scottish pistols stolen from the Valley Forge Historical Society Museum.
- A Volcanic pistol stolen from Pennsylvania’s Hershey Story Museum.
- A rifle from the Daniel Boone Homestead in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania.
A huge Colt Whitneyville Walker revolver (bottom row with CT tag) was taken back to its home state. A powder horn (center right) dating to the French and Indian War was stolen from a Belchertown, Massachusetts, museum in the 1970s. The Walker PPK and Luger in the top right corner had been donated by Gen. Omar Bradley to the Army War College in Carlise, Pennsylvania. An exceedingly rare Volcanic pistol stolen from the Hershey Museum is to the bottom right. (Photo: FBI)
More in my column at Guns.com.
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