Souvenirs of Death

This short film shows a bunch of boys playing with a real, loaded pistol when playing war. One of the boys even deliberately inserts a full magazine into the pistol before playing with it. I was a kid in the 1960s. One of my favorite shows was "Combat". I and everyone I played with knew the difference between a real gun and a toy. Some of us had real guns in our homes. Most of us had bb and or pellet guns. We also had real hunting and bowie knives. When we played "Combat" we didn't use real guns or real knives, even though the TV show "Combat" had lots of scenes where knives and daggers were used to kill. A toddler might not know what a gun can do, but it's far fetched to show boys who are about 10 or 11 loading a full magazine into a pistol and running around playing war with it. On a technical level, I noticed that though the magazine was inserted by one of the boys, he didn't rack the slide to chamber a round. Therefore, the gun wouldn't have gone off when the trigger was pulled. If you want to use a pistol for self defense, you should carry it with a round chambered and if it has a safety, train yourself to thumb the safety off before shooting. Your other hand may not be available to rack the slide if you haven't already chambered a round.

Pretty dry story of a handgun that comes back from Europe after WW II. The narrator tells the story of how the guns come back to the US, and end up in the hands of the children, playing outside. And there's Barbara Billingsly, mom Cleaver in "Leave it to Beaver", as the dis-approving mom. It's all pretty droll. with a message from J. Edgar at the very end, warning of the perils of bringing these wartime weapons back to the U.S. It's a filler between films on Turner Classic Movies. Skip this one... about as interesting as belly button lint. Directed by Ed Cahn.

I first saw this short film in the mid-1960s on WPIX-Channel 11 in New York, and it had a profound effect on me. I was always respectful of guns, to the degree that I had any contact with them (which was not at all), but this movie really woke me up as a kid to the dangers of irresponsible gun ownership. Seeing it again in the twenty-first century, it still packs a wallop, although obviously the issues have changed as gun ownership -- far beyond the ranks of nostalgia-laden veterans -- has exploded in most parts of the United States.

Anyone who collects World War Two military equipment (especially German) knows that our GIs were avid trophy hunters. Even today, some 70 plus years later, veteran "bring backs" turn up at gun shows and estate sales across the country. I saw this short film several years ago and I recall the pistol in question was a 1914 Mauser. But at the film's end there is an FBI message about the dangers of all war trophy guns and they showed an MP-40 sub machinegun.

The title Souvenirs Of Death refers to a German Luger pistol which with the voice of John Nesbitt in this Passing Parade short narrates its life since it left the cold dead hands of a German officer on the field of battle in Europe. Two war souvenirs were extremely popular post World War II among GIs returning home, Japanese Samurai swords and Luger pistols from the Germans.

If the man who took the pistol off the dead German had really wanted to make the weapon safe then it seems that one would remove a firing pin. His young son finds the weapon, finds the ammunition for same (why in the world would you keep that) and the first tragedy of that weapon in civilian life occurs.

Nesbitt narrates how the weapon passes through several owners and even goes across country before it ends up in a final resting place so to speak. We even get J. Edgar Hoover warning about how these souvenirs are becoming popular in the underworld.

I can tell you the National Rifle Association will not approve of this short subject.