Boomsticks: Gratuitous Gun Pr0n No. 15

A special post for the politicians in The Great White North and elsewhere who think they can wave a magic wand and make guns go away.

The two guns in the picture below are interesting: Guess which one was made at Smith & Wesson's Massachussetts factory by skilled craftsmen using advanced machine tools in 1928 and which was made by a village blacksmith using hammers, files, and saws somewhere in SE Asia in the 1930s:


EDIT: For those who want to get in on the detective work:

I purchased the upper firearm from a gentleman whose father had been in the China-Burma-India theater during WWII. He had retrieved it, and its holster, from a Japanese junior officer who, in war story parlance, "didn't need it anymore." The weapon is chambered in .38 S&W and is obviously a copy of the I-frame Regulation Police shown with it. Cost was $125, or, as my gunsmith put it, "five dollars for the holster, twenty dollars for the gun, and a hundred for the story."

Further pictures, including detailed closeups, can be viewed and much head-scratching about the weapon's origins can be read (and participated in) at The High Road.