"The Cyclists Friend" - No Lady or Gentleman should be without one.

 

When I was a young lad, many of my friends owned air guns, including myself, which we often took out with us. We would often go down to the canal to shoot with our air pistols and rifles. On one occasion, I spoke to a lad who had a .410 shotgun with him. Shooting and poaching rabbits with nets, dogs, and ferrets, was very popular in the North of England in the 1960s.

Today, Britain has some of the strictest gun laws in the world and there have even been calls for air weapons to be licensed. Yet, before 1920, there were very few restrictions on gun ownership in Britain. You could buy a revolver and cartridges at a gunsmith, local hardware store, pub, or by mail order, with no questions asked. Many British magazines carried adverts for a product known as the 'The Cyclist's Friend' or 'The Traveller's Friend', which was not a puncture outfit or waterproof cape, but a revolver that could be easily concealed in a pocket or a handbag. 

A revolver produced by the Staffordshire firm of T.W. Carryer and Co Ltd, which they called, 'The Cyclist's Friend', sold for 12 shillings and was marketed with the logo, "Fear no tramp" and "No lady or gentleman should be without one." Women Cyclists were thought to be particularly vulnerable to attacks from robbers and vagrants or vicious dogs, as they cycled along England's rural roads. 

The arms manufacturer Colt, claimed that British sales of their Pocket Revolver, the Colt .32, had risen into the 'thousands' between its introduction in 1893 and 1901. The Colt .45, which was said to have tamed the Wild West of America, was also very popular. Yet gun crime, was extremely rare, and calls for tighter gun control was usually dismissed as unnecessary.

In spite of the lax gun laws in Britain, before the Firearms Act of 1920, most people didn't own a gun or feel it necessary to buy one. What seems to have tipped the scales in favour of tighter gun control in Britain, is the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the number of former servicemen who had fought in WWI, who had taken weapons home with them as souvenirs. This seems to have worried the establishment.