On this day 80 years ago, America’s first official Public Enemy Number One John Dillinger was shot to death by FBI agents as he exited the Biograph Theater in Chicago after seeing the Clark Gable gangster film Manhattan Melodrama. At FBI headquarters in Virginia there is a collection of firearms that were captured from the real Dillinger gang (that also includes Dillinger’s death mask as well as the hat, clothes, sunglasses and cigar he had when he died). And there’s more to it than that as the FBI laboratory’s reference firearms collection houses nearly every gun ever made (numbering 7,000 in total), more than 15,000 types of ammunition, and accessories like suppressors and muzzle attachments. Some unusual items include a pistol hidden in the cut out pages of an early edition of Gone With The Wind as well as a submachine gun hidden in a guitar case. The gun collection was created in 1933, a year after the FBI launched the Technical Crime Laboratory, a forerunner to today’s FBI Lab. Their mission was to apply a scientific standard to criminal investigations by comparing evidence against reference collections of known samples. Although some of the items are museum quality, this collection is ever-expanding and hands-on as examiners study, take apart, reassemble, and test weapons to support their investigations.
A Collection of firearms that were captured from the real Dillinger gang
