Guns – The ExhaustNotes Blog

New Jersey State Police Museum

By Joe Berk

Here’s something different: A visit to the New Jersey State Police Museum in West Trenton, New Jersey.

A statue of a New Jersey State Trooper on the Museum grounds.

I’d seen references to the NJSP Museum on Facebook and elsewhere, and being back in New Jersey a short while ago, Susie and I found ourselves casting about for things to do. Ordinarily, our visits to the Garden State include the same stops: Lunch at the Shrimp Box in Point Pleasant (awesome seafood), every once in a while a visit to Bahr’s in the Highlands (another spot for awesome food), maybe a trip to Asbury Park (think Bruce Springsteen and Danny Devito), a few of the Soprano’s filming locations, the Rutgers University campus, the Old Mill in Deans, New Hope (just across the Delaware River), and a few of our other standard stops. This time we wanted to explore a bit more, and I put the New Jersey State Police Museum on the list. I knew that it had a couple of vintage motorcycles, and I figured it would probably have a few firearms on display. Guns and motorcycles fit the ExhaustNotes theme.

The New Jersey State Police is a paramilitary, well-disciplined, and impressive organization. I’d call it a STRAC outfit (in Army slang, STRAC is an acronym derived from skilled, tough, and ready around the clock). One thing I’ve never seen is an out-of-shape NJ State Trooper.

A statue of Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf near the NJSP Museum entrance.

New Jersey State Troopers are the Marines and Green Berets of the police world. That didn’t happen accidentally: The guy who formed the NJ State Police a century ago was none other than Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf. Not the guy who led US troops during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 (that H. Normal Schwarzkopf was his son), but the original. Colonel Schwarzkopf was a US Military Academy graduate, and when he formed the NJ State Police, his vision was a military organization with the same look as that instilled at West Point. I’d say he succeeded.

Trooper Ralph Dowgin gracing The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles.

I touched on the NJ State Police when I wrote The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles. The cover photo shows Captain Ralph Dowgin on a 1934 Harley-Davidson. Captain Dowgin went on to command Troop D, the NJSP branch that patrolled the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway. We also wrote about Jerry Dowgin, Captain Dowgin’s son and a friend of mine who owned a 1966 Honda 305 Scrambler (a bike featured here and in a Motorcycle Classics magazine story).

Getting to the NJSP Museum was relatively easy, although the location was tucked away on the NJSP Headquarters grounds. We just plugged the name into Waze, and after meandering through a bunch of small streets in West Trenton, we were at a manned gate. The location is essentially a military compound. The nice young lady at the gate called ahead to confirm the Museum was open (it was), and then she raised the gate. We followed her instructions and the map she gave to us, and we were there. We were the only visitors, so we had the place to ourselves.

The NJ State Police guns story is an interesting one.

When the New Jersey State Police organization started in 1921, their first duty weapon was the Colt double-action revolver (a six shooter) chambered in .38 Special. This very handgun you see here was issued to Colonel Schwarzkopf.

Four cylinders full of .38 Special ammo, for a total load of 30 rounds carried by each Trooper. Reloads had to have been painstakingly slow back in the day. I remember seeing these ammo carriers on State Troopers when I was a kid. With their Glock sidearms today, the gun itself and one additional magazine exceeds all the rounds seen above.

Another .38 Special Colt revolver on display. Troopers have been assigned sequential badge numbers from the very beginning, with Trooper No. 1 being H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

Back in the day, the NJ State Police also issued the .38 Smith and Wesson Combat Masterpiece to their Troopers, which was a 6-shot revolver with adjustable sights. This one has a 6-inch barrel. I’ve owned a few of the Smith and Wesson revolvers; they are good guns.

The Smith and Wesson Combat Masterpiece. These are beautiful revolvers.

Colt released a commemorative version of the NJSP revolver, cased and finished in high polish blue. — Colt released a commemorative NJSP revolver, with high polish blue and the NJSP emblem. Commemorative guns, for the most part, don’t appreciate at the same rate the basic (i.e., non-commemorative) guns. I’ve owned a few commemorative guns, but not this model.

More information on the Colt NJSP 75th Anniversary commemorative revolver. We previously visited the Colt Custom Shop; you can read about that here.

In those early days, the NJ State Police also used 1903A1 Springfield rifles. I have a 1903A1 in near perfect condition and I’ve written about shooting cast and jacketed bullets in it, and the rifle’s complex rear sight. They are nice rifles and they are collectible. Truth be told, though, I can shoot tighter groups with my 91/30 Mosin Nagant.

A NJSP 1903A1 Springfield. The 1903A1 has the 1903’s more complex right sight and the so-called “scant” stock. I was surprised to see this. You don’t encounter to many 1903A1 rifles.

Later in their history, the NJ State Police used Ruger .357 Magnum double-action, stainless steel revolvers.

Ruger revolvers used by the NJ State Police, in both 4-inch and 6-inch barreled versions.

During the 1980s, many police departments made the switch from revolvers to 9mm semi-automatic handguns. Not all choices worked well for the NJ State Police. One firearm, the H&K 9mm squeeze cocker, was particularly troublesome. The NJSP experienced numerous accidental discharges. Sometime after that, the NJSP went to SIG handguns. That didn’t work out, either. When the NJ State Police made the switch to SIGs, the handguns had reliability issues, and when SIG couldn’t fix the problems, the NJ State Police sued SIG. It seemed like the NJSP couldn’t catch a break in their quest to adopt a 9mm handgun. Ultimately, the NJSP went with Glock 9mm handguns. That worked out well.

A Glock up top, and several SIG handguns. The SIG at the bottom of this photo is chambered in .45 ACP.

Another SIG handgun in the NJ State Police Museum.

Good intentions, but bad results. It’s unfortunate. I believe that SIG makes the finest 9mm handgun in the world. But I don’t carry one for a living (like the New Jersey State Troopers do).

The 9mm Glock currently carried by New Jersey State Troopers.

The firearms exhibits also displayed other long guns used by the New Jersey State Police.

A .45 ACP Thompson submachine gun the NJSP used decades ago, and an M16. A submachine gun can fire in the fully automatic mode (like a machine gun). The “submachine gun” designation typically means the gun uses a pistol cartridge.

An exhibit displaying a sampling of confiscated weapons. New Jersey police agencies typically confiscate between 7,000 and 10,000 guns annually. All are delivered to the NJSP Ballistics Unit for destruction.

The New Jersey State Police also have a rich tradition using motorcycles, although they no longer use motorcycles for patrol duties. The NJSP has a few modern Harleys, but these are used for ceremonial functions only. In the early days, the NJSP used motorcycles year round, and in New Jersey, the winters can get cold, wet, snowy, and icy. Back in the day, the NJSP used tire chains when it snowed. That’s hard to imagine.

Mittens used for cold weather riding. Those guys were tough. Unless they are electrically-heated, mittens like these don’t keep your hands warm for long.

New Jersey State Trooper Justin Dintino, a motor officer who went on to become the 10th leader of the New Jersey State Troopers. Colonel Dintino graduated from the NJSP Academy two years after I was born.

Trooper E. Paul Sjostrom with his Harley-Davidson police motorcycle in 1925. Back then, the NJSP had 40 Harleys, 40 horses, 20 cars, and a single truck to patrol the entire state of New Jersey.

A more recent Harley police motorcycle. As mentioned above, the NJSP no longer uses motorcycles for patrol duties.

A macro shot of the tank and engine on the NJSP Harley.

Distinctive colors and a distinctive emblem.

A 1948 Harley Panhead used by the NJ State Police. It had a hand shift and a foot clutch.

The tombstone taillight Harleys used in 1948.

The Harley siren used back in the 1940s and 1950s was activated by pivoting the entire siren such that it was friction driven by the rear tire. I used to have a similar siren on my Schwinn bicycle, which drove our neighbors nuts.

Harleys rode with the NJSP from the very beginning. This is a 1921 NJSP Harley.

A closer photo of the 1921 Harley’s V-Twin engine.

One of the NJSP Museum’s exhibits was a wanted poster for a particular person. That wanted poster is for Joanne Chesimard, who is a fugitive being sheltered by Cuba. Chesimard participated in the murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in May 1973. The murder occurred very near where my family lived. Another NJ State Trooper had pulled over a car driven by Clark Squire (Chesimard was also in the car). Foerster arrived in a backup patrol car. A gun battle ensued, Foerster was murdered, and Squire escaped into the woods just to the east of our home.

Squire remained at large, hiding in the woods, for several days. We thought he had escaped from the area, but police officers continued the search. Squire finally surrendered to a local police officer. We believed that if the NJ State Police had found him, Squire would not have been brought in alive (and that would have been okay with everyone I knew).

Squire, Chesimard, and a third person were convicted of murdering Foerster and sentenced to life in prison. Chesimard subsequently escaped and found her way to Cuba, where she lives in freedom to this day (sheltered by a Cuban government that refuses to extradite her to the United States). Incredibly, when Barack Obama wanted to recognize the Castro regime and lift sanctions on Cuba, returning Chesimard to serve out her sentence was not part of the deal. She remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted List to this day.

In yet another disappointment related to this Foerster murder, Squire was recently released on parole (50 years into what should have been a life sentence). I know. It’s not right.

To get back to the main topic of this blog, if you ever find yourself in New Jersey you might want to spend a few hours visiting the New Jersey State Police Museum in West Trenton. It’s free, it’s a great museum, and it’s an opportunity to learn a lot about one of the most elite police organizations in America. We enjoyed it. You will, too.

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Coming up…more good stuff!

We’ve got a bunch of cool stuff coming your way in the next few weeks.

I’m working on a detailed tutorial on how to time a revolver…it’s my beloved Model 60. It seems the more things go south on that old war horse, the more I love it. This time, the revolver went out of time (that means it’s firing with the chambers misaligned with the barrel), and the way to correct that is by fitting a new hand. That’s the piece you see in the big photo above, showing the well-worn 60-year-old original hand on the left and a new one on the right (the hand is the part that advances the cylinder for each shot). Good times. Did I mention I love that gun?

I’ll be on a bunch of secret missions in the next few months. I’m visiting Janus Motorcycles in the next few weeks and I’m going to ride their new Halcyon 450. You may remember I rode with the Janus guys in Baja three years ago (wow, those three years went by quickly). The Janus trip was a hoot and I was blown away by the quality of these small motorcycles.

I’ll be in Gettysburg soon…four score and seven years ago, and you know the rest. Gettysburg was the turning point, and the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. I’m looking forward to the photo ops, and you’ll see the Nikon’s output right here.

And another: Hershey, Pennsylvania…an entire town blanketed in the aroma of good chocolate, streetlights that look like Hershey kisses, calories galore, and tasty treats. That will be a sweet ride!

Folks love listicles. There are a dozen or so reasons why a Timex is as good as a Rolex. That one will generate a few comments, and we’ll be bringing them to you here.

How about the Indianapolis Motor Speedway? You’ll see it right here on ExNotes. Good stuff. Yep, we’ll be there, too.

Bill’s Bike Barn…yet another vintage moto museum. Never heard of it? Well, you will!

More gun stuff? Absolutely. Fine walnut and blue steel. I’ve got a cool story about the most beautiful stock I’ve ever seen on an absolutely incredible .257 Weatherby Magnum Ruger No. 1.

Look for a follow up on the Shoei helmet Gresh wears these days…it’s in the mix, too.

A road trip to New Mexico, and that means a visit with Joe 1 (or is he Joe 2?) and another video or two. Gresh has a bunch of motorcycles. Maybe I’ll borrow one and he and I will go for a ride. Who knows?

And more rides on my effervescent and exciting Enfield, one of the best bargains in biking (we’ll have a listicle coming up bargain bikes, too). Now that the left-leaning evil time suck (i.e., Facebook) is in the rear view mirror, I have lots more time. I’m doing what the Good Lord intended, and that’s riding my motorcycle and writing about it.

Stay tuned.

Listicles, popups, and give a friend a click

A couple of years ago good buddy Joe Gresh told me he was going to do a listicle for the blog. My first thoughts were that a listicle was somehow gonad related, and if he was going to do one for the blog, he was really into the whole ExNotes thing. Nope, it had nothing to do with parts south, Gresh explained. Listicle is a mashup of “list” and “article.” It’s an article that contains a list, and Gresh had it on good authority from a magazine industry contact that listicles get lots of hits on the Internet. So Gresh wrote one and it did. Wow, I should do listicles, too, I thought. And I did.

Now, truth be told, hits are nice but what we really like is when you, our readers, click on the popup ads in our blogs. That’s how we get paid. Every time you click on an ad, we get paid. If the popup ads annoy you, click on them and the advertiser has to pay. And some of that money goes to us. See how cool this is?

Anyway, back to the listicle topic. We’ve done a bunch and we’re going to do more. I tried to capture them all (maybe I missed one or two), but here’s the list. Of listicles, that is. Yes, we are offering on the blog today a listicle of listicles.

Guns and Ammo Listicles

Getting into Reloading – The ExhaustNotes Blog
Reloading Part I: Equipment and Components – The ExhaustNotes Blog
Mini 14 Accuracy – The ExhaustNotes Blog
Seven Mini 14 Accuracy Tips – The ExhaustNotes Blog
Five Favorite Handguns – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Motorcycle Listicles

General Listicles

What Do You Have In Your Project Bank? – The ExhaustNotes Blog
What’s On Your Shelf? – The ExhaustNotes Blog
The Short List: 5 Reasons You Should Buy a Jeep YJ – The ExhaustNotes Blog

So there you have it. Our list of listicles. We hope you enjoy them. And don’t forget to click on the popup advertisements wherever they appear. You’ll be slimmer and more attractive, you’ll shoot straighter, and it will make you a better rider.

Happy New Year from the staff at ExhaustNotes.us! Our best wishes for a healthy and happy New Year to you.

The Rimfire Series: ¡Siluetas Metálicas!

Metallic Silhouette Origins

The sport of metallic silhouette shooting came to us from Mexico, where it started roughly 80 years ago as a part of a culture of rural village celebrations. They used live animals in those days tethered to a stake, which made it a lot harder to hit them because after the first shot the animals tended to take evasive action. I guess it was considered politically correct in those earlier times because the match would be immediately followed by a rip-roaring barbeque (at which, of course, chicken, pig, turkey, and ram were on the menu).

I learned all of this from a world-class metallic silhouette shooter named Jose Porras in the 1970s. Jose used to drive up from Mexico to shoot with us at Fort Bliss when I first got into the metallic silhouette game. He was the guy to beat, and I never did. I didn’t care. I just liked hearing his stories about the old days and the origins of the sport.

Metallic Silhouette Targets and Distances

I had last shot in a metallic silhouette match about 45 years ago. By then, the sport had morphed into shooting at metallic silhouettes, like you see in the photo at the top of this blog. There were chickens at 50 meters, pigs at 100 meters, turkeys at 150 meters, and rams at 200 meters (this was for the handgun competition). All of the silhouettes were life-sized. For high power rifle (which we always shot with a scope back then) the targets were the same, but they were located at 200 meters (chickens), 300 meters (pigs), 385 meters (turkeys), and 500 meters (rams). Those are long distances, and all of the rifle shooting was offhand (no slings or shooting jackets). You could shoot from a sitting position in the handgun matches, but the rifle competition was all a stand up affair. It was challenging, and that’s what made it interesting. The winner usually connected with only about half the targets, and you either hit them or you didn’t.

Just hitting the targets didn’t count. You had to hit them with enough energy to knock them over. In the rifle competition, that alone ruled out the light cartridges. And you couldn’t use magnums, either, because those cartridges would damage the targets. Nope, in the rifle game, it was a Goldilocks affair. The energy had to be just right. 7mm Mauser, 7mm-08, .308, and .30 06 were the favorites back then.

In the handgun competition, everyone either used a magnum cartridge (.44 Magnum was popular), .45 Colt loaded to the max, or a custom wildcat (I’ll say more about that below). .45 ACP, .38 Special, and the standards of the day didn’t have enough energy to knock the targets over, and their rainbow-like trajectories meant there wasn’t enough adjustment in the sights. 9mm? Fuhgeddaboutit. The 9mm was woefully anemic for this game.

Metallic Silhouette Handguns

In the International Handgun Metallic Silhouette Association (IHMSA) national championships in 1976 in El Paso, I tied for 5th place and then lost a shootoff. I was out of the money in 6th, but I was still pretty pleased because I was using a bone-stock Smith and Wesson Model 27 .357 Magnum with my cast bullet reloads, while all of the guys who did better than me were shooting custom XP-100 Remingtons. The XP-100 was a single-shot pistol based on a rifle action, and in those days, guys would have them custom barreled in 30×223. The 30×223 was a wildcat based on the 5.56 NATO cartridge blown out to take a .30 caliber rifle bullet. It ultimately became known as the 300 Blackout cartridge. Jose used one of these 30×223 custom handguns for culling coyotes on his estate in Mexico during the week and for winning matches in El Paso on the weekends. He was really, really good. I imagine the coyotes hated him.

.22 Rifle Metallic Silhouette Shooting

Well, to make a long story slightly less long, I had been wanting to get back into metallic silhouette shooting for the last four and a half decades, and one day a year or so ago I did. I broke the suction between my butt and the seat in front of this computer and I shot in the .22-caliber metallic silhouette rifle match at the West End Gun Club. I shot my Browning .22 A-bolt (a relatively rare and semi-collectible rifle).

I didn’t know it when I went out there, but they shoot two classes: One with scopes, and the other with open sights. The open sight targets are roughly four times the size of the scope targets, and for whatever reason, on the rams the targets for the scoped guns are set back an additional 10 yards (for the other three animals, the distances are the same). At all distances, though, the targets for the scoped guns are really, really small. Take a look.

With apologies for the lack of focus, here’s a zoomed-in shot of the turkeys. The iron sight turkey targets are on the left; the scoped-rifle turkeys are on the right…

Like I said, the scoped-rifle targets are really tiny. You can see that in the photo above. They were maybe two inches tall. Shooting at these things offhand was a challenge, but I had a blast out there. There were four guys shooting scoped rifles (I was one of them) and 14 guys (and gals) shooting iron-sighted rifles (mostly lever guns; all with expensive aftermarket aperture sights). It was a good crowd…mostly older guys (my age and up) with a few folks in their 20s and 30s. Everybody was friendly.

I could have started this blog by telling you I came in fourth in the scoped class and let it go at that, but the fact is I had the lowest score in the scoped class. I only got 14 out of 60 silhouettes, the next guy got 18, another guy got 20, and the highest guy got 22. It’s a tough game. I’m pretty happy with what I did, though. I had only zeroed my rifle at 50 yards (where I got about half the chickens). I got about a third of the pigs I shot at (these were the 65-yard targets, and every shot at them when I connected was at the low edge of the target). I only got one each of the rams and the turkeys (the turkeys are always the toughest), but like I said, I wasn’t zeroed and those were just lucky hits. Next time I’ll do better (and there will be a next time). This was all shooting offhand at teeny, tiny targets. I’d like to try the open sight class next time, too, just because the targets were a lot bigger. It all was a lot of fun.

The club also has a centerfire lever gun silhouette match, and I’m thinking I’ll try that, too. Those distances go out to about 140 yards, it’s all open sights, and it’s all lever guns. They told me they mostly shoot .357 Magnum (a handgun cartridge) and .30 30 for the centerfire metallic silhouette competition. The bug has bitten and I am enjoying being back in the game.

Good times, folks. Life is good.

More Tales of the Gun stories are here!

Motorcycles and milsurps…

Zombies. No matter how many times you hit them, they won’t go down…goofy targets, to be sure, but lots of fun.

No motorcycle rides today…just a fun day at the range with some of my motorcycle and shooting buddies, and the milsurp rifles.

We get together every month or so to do this, and sometimes we let a few too many months slide by. That was the case this time; it had probably been 3 or 4 months since we last had one of our informal matches. We ordinarily have around 10 shooters show up. This one was on short notice but we still had 5 of us get together. It’s grand fun and we always have a great Mexican lunch following the match. There’s something about having a rifle match (informal or otherwise) with firearms that are 70 to 110 years old. It’s cool.

About this match business…it’s relaxed as hell, as you can probably tell from the targets, and it really isn’t a competition. It’s just a bunch of guys with a common interest getting together to have fun. Most of the time we don’t even bother to score the targets. The company and the conversation are the best parts; we really don’t care about declaring a winner. We have some interesting firearms, too.

Duane and his German K98 Mauser. Duane rides an RX3 and an Indian. The rifle is a Nazi-proof-marked World War II weapon, which makes it about 70 years old.

Willie and his US M1 Carbine. Willie also brought along a German Mauser (it’s to his right). Willie rides an RX3 and a TT250. The M1 is a World War II weapon.

My Russian Mosin-Nagant. The Mosin-Nagant was designed in the early 1890s. This particular one was built in 1942, and most likely saw service in World War II. It’s very accurate.

Here’s a short video of Duane firing his World War II K98 Mauser…

You might wonder…why a gun article on a motorcycle blog?

Well, there are a couple of reasons. The first is that I’m always amazed at how many riders are also into shooting. The two interests seem to go hand in hand. And then there’s another aspect: The companies that manufactured both firearms and motorcycles. There are more than a few manufacturers who have done that.

You guys and gals into vintage bikes certainly know of BSA. The BSA initials stand for Birmingham Small Arms, and if you look closely at the emblem on older BSAs, you’ll see it’s a set of three stacked rifles…

A 1939 BSA M20. Note the stacked rifle logo on the engine.

Royal Enfield is another company with a military lineage. Enfield was originally a British company (their motorcycles are manufactured in India today). Take another look at Rick’s Lee Enfield rifle up above. Yep, there’s a connection.

Hey, how about Benelli? That was an Italian motorcycle company (Benelli motorcycles are now made in China), but they also have a line of shotguns. Benelli made pistols for a while, too. I have a Benelli 9mm handgun.

Iver Johnson is yet another company with a dual lineage. They made motorcycles a century ago, and they are still manufacturing firearms.

I don’t know that Harley ever made guns, but they manufactured munitions components until very recently. I know about that because I used to work for a company in that industry.

I’m sure there are more companies than just the few I’ve listed here, and I’m going to research this a bit more. I don’t think it’s just coincidence that more than a few manufacturers decided to make both bikes and guns. Motorcycles and firearms are two products with something in common: They have a special feel to them, an appeal that reaches into our souls. They are more than just mashed-up machined metal mechanisms. There’s a commonality, a similarity, and maybe a sympatico between motorcycles and firearms, one that attracts both manufacturers and riders. We see it right here on the ExhaustNotes blog (every time we post a firearms-related piece, our hits go through the roof). I’ll post a more in-depth blog on this motorcycle/firearm connection down the road. It’s a fascinating topic. Maybe there’s a book in it!

Want to read more Tales of the Gun? Just click here!