"Larry Case: The Lever Gun Rides Again"

Above, yours truly with the Winchester 94. Photo by Larry Lucier.

Not until 2019, I had not owned a lever-action rifle. I had wanted to get one for some time, preferably a Winchester 94 in .30-30.

As luck would have it, I found a pre-1964 Winchester 94 in .30-30 made in 1962 for sale at an Albuquerque gun store. I put it on layaway as I was about to take a cruise. I picked it up when I got back to Albuquerque after the cruise.

Since then, it seems like everyone else is wanting to buy a lever gun. Old favorites and newly introduced models are being snatched up.

That's where an article in The Register-Herald by Larry Case comes in. It is titled, "Larry Case: The Lever Gun Rides Again".  

It starts with:

Maybe you remember Lucas McCain. He was the lead character (played by actor Chuck Connors) on the popular western TV show “The Rifleman” which aired from 1958 to 1963. The Rifleman portrayed Lucas and his son Mark and their adventures on a ranch near the small town of North Fork, New Mexico, Territory in the 1880s. Besides solving all the problems around him in each 30-minute episode weekly, Mr. McCain was also an incredible hand with a lever action rifle (hence the name of the program). Perhaps you remember the opening of the show which showed Lucas McCain firing his lever gun lighting fast as he walked down the street in town (more on this later).

We sat and watched this, kids and adults alike, and fell more in love with the lever action rifle. The fast-handling lever action rifle has held the imagination of American shooters and hunters for over a hundred years now, primarily for two reasons in my not-so-humble opinion.

One is the western motion picture industry almost always portrayed the cowboys blazing away with a lever action rifle (usually a Winchester). The actors, both good guys and bad, had a sixgun on their side, usually a Colt Single Action Army model, and for a rifle it was a lever gun.

The next reason they became so popular is for many years before deer hunters thought all rifles had to be topped with a telescopic sight, the lever action rifle, usually a Winchester model 1894, reigned supreme as the nation’s deer rifle.

To read the full article, go here.