America has a gun problem. No other country on earth has anywhere near as many gun deaths per capita as we do. Australia banned guns after a mass shooting in 1996, and they have had one mass shooting in the past 26 years. Many Americans worship guns (see “organ of muskets” above), and mass shootings are a daily occurrence.

George Washington started the Armory for the Revolutionary War, and it continued making guns until 1968. The Armory did an excellent job preserving its history, and their extensive collection covers the evolution of guns in exceptional detail. Smith (of Smith & Wesson) and his father worked here, as did William Ruger. The Colt factory was another of the precision gun manufacturers in the Connecticut River Valley, and the town of Coltsville will likely open as a new national historical park someday soon.

On this visit, I also learned that most of the ammunition for at least the Civil War was produced by women and children, and that the work was extremely dangerous. 178 women and girls were killed when the Allegheny Arsenal in Pittsburgh exploded in 1862, due to sparks from iron horseshoes & iron wheels on a flinty cobblestone road covered with sawdust and gunpowder. Actually, the lawn in the center is contaminated with lead, so kids shouldn’t play on it (like I did when I first visited decades ago).