Why Restore A Gun

Why should you restore a gun? There’s a certain heart and soul that comes with a gun. If you take it to a collector or pawn shop they’re going to leek at ever nick, scratch, dent, rub, mar, blemish, and fingerprint and assess the condition so they can give you less money. Then they take this very same gun and put it on their rack and try to sell it to somebody else like it’s the best buy they’ll ever find. But, if you ask some of those few people who truly appreciate guns, you will see there are more than a handful of folks out there who appreciate all those imperfections. Every scratch is a story.

If you were to look at my beloved Remington 700 you would see blemishes aplenty, and I can tell you the story to go along with every one of them. When I bought that gun at a show over a decade ago it was pristine. It’s still in good shape, but there are a healthy number of pictures of animals which were harvested with that rifle in my albums. It’s my go to gun, and nothing less than a trusted companion. I couldn’t ask for more and I’d never change it.

However, reality will set in and completely attack the finish on the gun, lock, stock, and barrel. For that reason it is important to know how and where we can get our family heirlooms cared for. Just because my Remington is still in good shape doesn’t mean I don’t have some family pieces that have come close to, or passes, the 100 year mark. These are the guns we need to preserve. You can restore a gun to make it a functional user, but preservation will always be the end goal of gun restoration. 

I’ve done a fair amount of writing about guns in the past. But today I want to focus on something slightly different. You see, guns aren’t important. History is important. The tales a gun can tell are important. What it did, what it was used for, who changed it, when it was made, that’s all the important stuff. Take some of these old war-relics for example. It was forged out of necessity, tested in battle, claimed in victory, brought home in remembrance, modified and used in pride, and passed on in honor. The gun is just wood and metal, but the story told in every mark is the real treasure.

Guns really aren’t important. The second amendment wasn’t written to defend our right to keep guns. It was drafted to preserve our right to protect freedom. The Founding Fathers believed guns were inherent and didn’t focus on them, they just weren’t important enough to write about. It was the freedom they were wanting to preserve.

Yet, in modern times, people take to social media and bitch and fight about whether the people should be allowed to have pieces of wood and metal. Those who say Americans should be allowed to have them only see the guns. Those who say they should be taken from our society only see the guns. Neither side realizes the guns aren’t important and the issues they should be DISCUSSING are being utterly ignored.

So, why restore a gun? Regardless if you use a professional gunsmith or you do the job on your own, we need to keep and restore guns so they can be passed on. We need to insure the heart and soul of those who used them before us, and the deeds they did are there for future generations. We need to make sure they last forever so the mistakes and atrocities humanity have committed will be there for us to learn from. We need to do it because our long-dead Grandpaps will be rightly pissed if we let their favorite shotgun get all rusted up.