I’ve never been a firearms guy. In fact, I may be the only person who ever grew up in South Dakota and lived there through high school without once firing a gun at a bird. Still, you gotta love Utah: Utah becomes first in U.S. to designate official state gun.
Utah has become the first U.S. state to name an official firearm, placing an automatic pistol on a list of designated symbols, right along with the honeybee and the cutthroat trout.
Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed the bill into law this week, designating the Browning model M1911 automatic pistol as the official state firearm.
The M1911 is a hundred years old this year, but is still being manufactured in Ogden, Utah. This is what it looks like:
A Democratic legislator objected to the state gun on the ground that it is “divisive.” Why? “For obvious reasons.” Not sure what that means–maybe there are a lot of Smith & Wesson fans in Utah, too. Utah apparently is big on symbols: they already had honored the honey bee, the Dutch oven, Spanish sweet onion, the sugar beet, the elk and the cutthroat trout. So Utah was due for an official state gun.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.