J.M. Davis Arms & Historical Museum — Attraction in Claremore

This was not my first visit to the museum but it was worth it all the same. If you enjoy the history of firearms this is the museum for you. The collection is huge and one thing that makes it so interesting is it focus on civilian firearms. Yes, there are military firearms in the collection but I would guess that less then 150 of those are on display. The vast majority of firearms on display are civilian target and hunting models from flintlocks to modern semi-automatic repeaters. About the only thing I could complain about is that the information plates are fairly bare-bones with generally make, model, type, caliber, and year of manufacture. The collection is laid out logically however and you can follow it such that you essentially get a history of sporting arms going back several hundred years. I did not notice any glaring errors on any of the displays and I am fairly conversant with firearms although not a gun geek by any means. There is a also a pretty decent section in the museum on railroad history. One of the most interesting section is the outlaw section where they have displayed some of the weapons used by famous criminals of the 20's and 30's and an interesting display of used hangman's nooses. Admission is free although they do accept donations and there is a small gift shop that is mostly full of Route 66 gear and not gun museum stuff. This museum is well worth the 2 hours or so it...

As a young boy I used to visit Mr. Davis at the Mason Hotel often. My grandfather owned the Chrysler/ Plymouth dealership just a couple of doors way from the Mason Hotel. I could spend hours with Mr. Davis, setting in one of the old green colored leather chairs in the lobby, discussing his hobby of collecting guns.

I had asked Mr. Davis what he was most proud of in his collection. Right away he responded that it would be his collection of the world's smallest working guns, they were wired onto a piece of wood and hung above the door of his personal room at the hotel. He told me about a time that a hotel ‘guest’ tried to steal his small gun collection but he caught him before he checked out of the hotel. Since his death I have never seen that piece of plywood contain his favorites, nor the vast amount of presentation guns he was so proud of.

I think the beginning of the 'museum' was a mess and probably a bunch of guns grew legs and walked away. Today it is diluted/polluted with guns Mr. Davis would have never put into his collection such as the captured junk guns from the Tulsa...

I've been to the JM Davis Gun Museum many times over the years. I'm from Dallas, and yet I'm willing to make the 250+ mile drive because the museum is worth it! I've even made my own schematic of the museum. Trivia question: how many display cases are there? (Answer: almost 700, although some of the numbers are missing). I once asked the Museum Director if anyone has ever tried to break into the museum, and she said, "No", although she said that the son of one of the employees got in at night one time and couldn't disable the alarm system. She also said that having the Claremore Police Department one block away probably helped.She also said that the Fire Marshal had told her the greatest danger was a fire, since the museum doesn't have a sprinkler system. Probably the biggest collection of guns, public or private, in the US. While the National Cowboy Museum in OKC has a much smaller and fancier collection, this one is...