If an XXV has "exclusive merit"--then show me the proof of same, and I will concede that it wasn't just a marketing ploy for Mr. Churchill.
Anyone reading Larry Brown's "exclusive merit" mantra
ad nauseam in this discussion might assume Churchill actually claimed "exclusive merit" for the XXV. But there is no evidence for this. I know of only one time the phrase was used for the XXV,
and not by Mr. Churchill. Here is the original source of Larry's fixation:
...most gunmakers of any consequence came to offering the 25-in. barreled guns with Churchill ribs. The XXV, in short, established a new orthodoxy in shotguns, and now that the controversy has died down, it competes on equal terms with other guns for the favour of shooting men.
Nevertheless, there was one thing that was spurious in all this, and that was the implication - fostered by Churchill's use of 'XXV' as a distinctive symbol, that there was some exclusive merit in this particular barrel length.
Gough Thomas's GUN BOOK
So one gun writer only
inferred - on the scanty evidence of the 'XXV' label - that Churchill was claiming "some exclusive merit"
for the barrel length.
But I'm sure Larry will explain, at length, why he felt that phrase "exclusive merit" was worth repeating more than a dozen times in this thread.
