Musings of a History Buff

The guns of the Barrow gang and their nemesis Frank Hamer’s posse

By Ellis Knox

Being a shooting enthusiast or better known in the liberal press as a gun nut. I could not resist the draw of some of the articles I read researching the Barrow gang and Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger who hunted them down. Clyde Barrow had a favorite, the best automatic rifle ever built, the Browning automatic rifle or the B-A-R. The BAR was kept a secret during WWI and the Army was so protective of it, they did not issue it to the troops sent to France. The Army feared it might fall into German hands and be copied. The American troops were forced to use a much inferior French machine gun. However, it was widely issued in WWII. Barrow got his first BAR by robbing the National Guard Armory in Beaumont. He robbed other armories, to get the weapon and Thompson machine guns. He, as did Frank Hamer, found the .45 round, used in the 1911 pistol and the Thompson, would not penetrate the double skin, steel body of a Ford V-8. The BAR could fire fully automatic or semi-auto, and fired a .301906 armor piecing round.

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