A Clarification and Mini-Discussion:
In 1921, Some five hundred Tommy Guns were sold to an Irish man named George Gordon Rorke, who turned out to be a supplier and smuggler for the Irish Sinn Fein Rebellion going on in Great Britain at the same time. This caused a scandal for Auto-Ordnance and helped to form the popular image of rebels and criminals holding a Tommy Gun. Very few guns actually made it to Ireland to be used by rebels after American officials pounced on the smugglers, but the scandal persisted all the same.
This situation isn’t interesting so much for the gun’s very limited use in Ireland as much as it is for how Auto-Ordnance handled the situation. Marcellus Thompson, in particular, in the matter of a year went from investigating business opportunities of selling to the Irish to denying Auto-Ordnance had anything to do with the smuggling (Helmer 1969). It really does make one wonder if Auto-Ordnance had any inkling that the gun might find its way into the wrong hands. After all:
They sold the gun to citizens openly, cheaply, and without much actual enforcement of making sure criminals didn’t get their hands on them. What happened with the Irish Rebels may at first seem like a tragedy for Auto-Ordnance that caused their image to be tarnished without them knowing that Irish Americans might give the guns to Irish Rebels—but, in all honesty, the mistake they made there isn’t all that different from the mistake they made in opening the Tommy Gun to the public. Perhaps they can be in some part forgiven just because the gun was so new and unheard of in power—and to be fair they likely had no idea how the world would react, or that it would react so strongly and in such varied ways.
