I think that the young lady was referring to anti-aircraft guns; which, from my experience doing searches, are often referred to as "air guns".Originally Posted by cinedux
Reminds me when I was looking at the history of George IV. He's particularly interesting because he was an airgun fan. His collection of airguns in the Windsor Castle collection is very interesting. I could only find a single mention of his actually shooting airguns, which was during an evening party and the description has people all but running for their lives.
Note: a small selection of George IV's airguns can be seen in Sporting Guns of Windsor by Blackmore. A must have for any proper airgun reference library. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007124737
One avenue of researching that was particularly interesting was the many caricature cards in which he was featured. One I found intriguing shows the Regent and his wife looking out of their castle and off to the side is a sign "Warning - Spring Guns". Which spurred me on to find out what the heck spring guns would be in this context. Turns out that at that time it was perfectly legal to set up deadly booby traps on ones own property to deter poachers and trespassers; one version of which is a firearm set to fire with a trip wire, i.e., a spring gun.
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