A Double-Barrel (Vanished) Curiosity

(This post has been updated to reflect the fact that someone, presumably Hirst, has figured out that it is impossible to have an over-and-under single-barrel shotgun. The column has been changed online, Hirst apparently having recalled that it was a Winchester he used to tote for personal protection. The absurd claim that small children take AK-47s into the classroom remains, at least for the moment, as originally published.)

WHAT A remarkable America awaited David Hirst when he moved to there in the 1980s. According to his account of US “gun culture”

1/ Children take AK-47’s to school for show-and-tell, and teachers are more or less fine with this

2/ US cops offer guidance in how best to shoot troublesome neighbours

3/ Savvy, gun-smart American friends equipped him with a shotgun for personal defence

4/ That shotgun was a weapon the like of which no gunsmith has ever seen. On the one hand, according to Hirst, it was “an over and under”, meaning it had two barrels. In the same breath, he describes it as “single-barrelled pump-action killing machine”

5/ He was beaten up not, just by a thug but by a top-shelf Aryan Nations thug.

Oh, and one final curiosity. Early in his column, Hirst recalls being threatened with a pistol in a Carlton pub by career criminal and Pentridge hunger-striker Christopher Dale Flannery.  This happened in 1981, according to Hirst, which is very odd because Flannery had been behind bars since late in 1980, awaiting trial for the murder of bent lawyer Roger Wilson. He remained in custody until his acquittal in October of the following year, which still did not leave Flannery much time to be sporting small arms in an Elgin Street waterhole better known for artsy regulars like playwright Jack Hibberd. As Flannery left court he was immediately arrested and spirited off to Sydney to face another murder charge.

Hirst is an SBS documentarian, so it would be wrong to doubt a word he says. Wrong, but very hard not to.

UPDATE: Hirst's reference to a double-barrel shotgun with but a single barrel has been removed and the column re-written. It now reads, "A friend delivered a Winchester shotgun capable of killing close up or at a good distance."

Shouldn't Fairfax also be posting a little advisory that the text has been corrected?

UPDATE II: In a further bit of tinkering, Hirst's column is now graced by a note announcing it has been amended to correct "an incorrect description of a weapon". That is not the classroom AK-47, evidently, which remains in the copy. Readers wishing to see the improbable original will find Hirst's handiwork sealed in the aspic of ink on paper copies of The Age.

UPDATE III: A Fairfax insider writes: "Some of us hoping the redundancies will persuade editors who publish this crap to get out and get lost."