Jerry Lee - Gun Digest 2014

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32ND ANNUAL

I ts our pleasure to announce that Tom Caceci is the recipient of the 32nd Annual John T. Amber Literary Award. The award is presented in recognition of his excellent story, The Hillsville Courthouse Tragedy, which was published in last years 67th Edition of Gun Digest. Toms detailed account told of a gun battle that took place in a courtroom in the southwest Virginia town of Hillsville, in 1912, following a guilty verdict in a murder trial. The shootout took the lives of a judge, a sheriff, an attorney, and a member of the jury and was a national news story at the time.

Tom Caceci has been involved in hunting, shooting, and gun collecting for more than 50 years. Hes a native of New York City, and, in his teenage years (long before the restrictive laws of today), New York was home to many fine gun shops where Tom spent his Saturday afternoons, whenever he could. This included the greatest one of all, the famous Gun Room at the original Abercrombie & Fitch department store, where an awe-struck 14-year-old wasnt allowed to touch anything, but could dream of someday owning and using one of the gorgeous guns on display.

We asked Tom to tell us about himself and his interest in firearms.

I like to combine my interest in history and my fascination with the technical aspects of firearms development to write about famous guns and historical events. My collecting interests include Webley revolvers and Lee-Enfield rifles, and Im also fascinated by guns of the transitional era between muzzleloaders and guns using fixed ammunition.

The major historical events of the years between 1875 and 1939 the close of the American frontier, the ascendance of the United States to the status of a major world power, and tensions in Europe that led to major wars all were accompanied by revolutionary changes in firearms technology. Those events were the testing ground for new ideas and new operating principles. The design challenges of the times were met by geniuses like John Moses Browning and J.D. Pedersen, and the products of their workshops were used by good men and bad, for both good and for evil. Firearms and their use are threads woven into the fabric of our nation. I hope my writing on historical subjects helps to convey some sense of connection between prior times and our own.

In 2010, I put my love of history and of larger-than-life characters together with my passion for African hunting, to produce a piece in the 2011 Gun Digest about an H&H double rifle President Roosevelt took on his famous 1909 safari, T.R.s Big (Fire) Stick.

In southwest Virginia, the story of the Hillsville courthouse tragedy is well known, and, so, it was a natural subject for me to write about, with its drama, colorful characters, pathos and, of course, the classic guns used in the event.

Tom bought his first hunting license at the age of 13 and has been as active as he could be in the field ever since, having hunted large and small game on four continents so far, much of it using traditional blackpowder rifles. He took a fine warthog in Namibia with a T/C .54 a couple of years ago.

Tom is a Benefactor Member of the NRA, first becoming a member of the organization nearly half a century ago. He obtained his first NRA Instructor certification, in 1968, and is currently certified in several shooting disciplines. As an active member of a local shooting club, he has provided many hours of instruction to new shooters and hunters over the 26 years hes lived in southwest Virginia, where he is also a Master Hunter Education Instructor with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries Outdoors Education program. Tom is also a Charter Member of the Professional Outdoors Media Association, and he has a website devoted to hunting, shooting, and gun collecting in Virginias New River Valley.

Tom served in the United States Air Force, from 1969 to 1975, including a year in Vietnam. Following military service, he attended graduate school at Georgetown University, and today he is a professor of Basic Sciences at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. Before moving to Virginia, in 1987, he spent five years teaching at Texas A&Ms veterinary school. Tom says his work in veterinary education has allowed him to write articles that draw on a knowledge of animal structure and physiology, as it applies to large and small game.

Tom Caceci

The late Dan Shideler recruited Tom to be a Contributing Editor for the Standard Catalog of Firearms, in 2007, to do a piece on an interesting offshoot of firearms technology, the humane killer used by veterinarians. When Dan took over Gun Digest, Tom continued to write for him. For a couple years he covered the SHOT Show, reporting on new developments in air guns. In addition to Gun Digest and the Standard Catalog, Tom has long been a writer for Magnum, the most widely circulated hunting and shooting publication in South Africa, and for African Outfitter and Safari& Hunting Magazine.

We asked Tom about his future writing plans. He said, Ive been a teacher pretty much my entire adult life. Writing for popular publications about the things I love is a way of continuing to teach, even as I wind down my working career. Young people are the future of the shooting sports, and I want to do whatever I can to give them a sense of history, as well as passing on the importance of firearms, shooting, and hunting as part of the mainstream of American life.

Congratulations Tom Caceci, recipient of the John T. Amber Literary Award! Well deserved!

W elcome to the 68th Edition of the Worlds Greatest Gun Book! Once again weve assembled a group of some of the best writers in the field to share their knowledge and opinions on firearms and their uses. Among the bylines are many that are familiar to regular readers of this publication, and, as always, we like to introduce a few new writers.

Jim Wilson is new to Gun Digest, but his name is probably a familiar one to most readers. In this edition he explores the concept of the back-up gun and the idea that, if you need to carry a gun, you probably need to carry two. Wilson is currently seen in the pages of