Hinckley's Gun in Reagan Assassination Attempt - - -

J

Johnny Guest

Moderator in Memoriam
(I'm kind of torn over whether to post this in Handguns--General or here. The participants herein tend to be a leeetle more academic, though;) )

In a History Channel feature the other night on "Guns that made History," or some such title, they said that Hinckley tried for Reagan with same type revolver as Sirhan used on Robert Kennedy--An Iver-Johnson Cadet .22.

It is my recollection that Hinckley used a Rohm RG-14, a 3" bbl .22. Anyone here have any specific memory or references?

Best regards,
Johnny
 
Good question. I know they made a mistake in saying that the pistol used to kill Franz Ferdinand in 1914 was a 1900 Browning, when the guns (there were four used by the plotters) were actually Browning 1910's in .380. They also once did a Bonnie and Clyde story and pictured SKS and AK rifles!! B&C were very advanced for their day, it seems.

Jim
 
Correct. It was reported in the press as such and I confirmed it on (of all places) the Violence Policy Center's web site. In spite of the source, I have no reason to doubt the fact.

www.vpc.org/studies/wgun810330.htm

"Mis-history Channel" is wrong again. I often wonder how many errors they make that I don't catch. I know much of their pre-WWII combat films are phoney, and even their WWII stuff is often unrelated to the place or subject. In a recent show, they portrayed a Nazi leader being driven out of Germany in a car en route to Argentina. The car was an American jeep, with British civilian license plates!

I call this garbage the "find me" school of historical films. The director says

"Find me film of soldiers with guns!"

"Find me film of some cars on roads!"

"Find me film of some guy that looks like a dictator!"

"Find me film of a battleship shooting guns!"

Never mind that the soldiers are the wrong war, maybe the wrong century. Never mind that the cars are the wrong era, the wrong make or the wrong type, and that the road is in the wrong country. Never mind that the "dictator" is from a movie. Never mind that there were no battleships involved and that the narrator has just said that the two fleets never came within hundreds of miles of one another.

No one cares; the TV people all are historically illiterate anyway, and prefer it that way.

Jim



Jim
 
The shame of it is - - -

- - - History Channel has, in the past, had some extremely well-done stuff presented. I've seen a lot of film there that I had never seen elsewhere - - -I remember the original episodes of "Victory at Sea," "Airpower," and "Twentieth Century," and watched them religiously. HC has done some excellent research in the old archives. Lately, however, they have REALLY been messing up on some pretty well-documented topics. Disappointing.

Best,
Johnny
 
I used to love the history channel, but I have caught several mistakes when they have done stories on things that I happen to be knowledgeable on. Once they tainted their credibility like that, I decided that I wasn’t so crazy about it anymore. When I catch multiple mistakes like that from one source, I can’t help but wonder how many things they have claimed in the past that I accepted but were wrong. I have also noticed things that make me think some of their newer stories have fallen prey to the whole “revisionist history” thing.
 
Hinkley's Gun & etc.

I can't count the American Civil War movies I have seen where the soldiers were using trap door Springfields and faking the ramrod bit......I used to be a Reb reenactor and we might have used Italian clones for real Springfields but we
at least used the proper looking weapons, blanks tho.
 
You certainly have history teachers using this (those who aren't just coaches filling in a slot who just read the book aloud to the class, yes there are some who do, I personally had a few). I did have a teacher in highschool who told us that the Confederates used Kudzu as camoflage. This is impossible, of course, because Kudzu didn't even exist here until well after the War Between the States.

Davis
 
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