John,

Thanks for showing. This is a very interestiong article. I womder how many (if any) watermen lost their lives when the gun broke looseL The article stated this about a gun shot on land: "the entire gun jumped back more than 10 feet because of the amount of black powder it was loaded with."

I remember seeing an old flatboat with a gimble mounted punt that had been used in South Louisiana. It looked like a gunboat with a long barrel cannon.

Outlawing punt guns made sense in that they were only used by market hunters. However, that certainly didn't completely stop market hunting in the US.