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Stephen Hunter has a beautiful piece in today's Washington Post about U.S. Repeating Arms' decision to stop manufacturing Winchester rifles. In addition to being an unusually deft film critic, Hunter's a certified gun nut, perhaps the only guy in America who can parse Colin Farrell films as expertly as that famous photo of Elian Gonzales being confronted by a fed.

Here's an excerpt:

How light it is, how quick to the shoulder, how pointable! It begs to come to the eye. It swiftly finds what's called the natural point of aim, the perfect equipoise between its own grace and its shooter's talent. There, it wants to be fired. It's knobless and trim yet hardly streamlined. It hails proudly from the pre-streamlined world. No ergonomic study went into its design, only the sound trial and error of Yankee genius that finally found the ideal form.

It's weirdly squarish, yet like other classic guns, it boasts an orchestration of lines of unusual harmony, which somehow seem to soothe the eye. The Colt Peacemaker revolver, the Tommy gun and the Luger have the same effect; all are instantly known and knowable. They have a design charisma that transcends their actual usage in the real world.