32 Gun Museums & Collections in the USA

30. Institute for Military Technology, Titusville, FL ±1000 in storage and ±1000 on display Established in 2009

 

C. Reed Knight Jr. is the President of the Knight’s Armament and Manufacturing Company that produces small arms and accessories for both the DoD (KAC) and civilians (KMC). In 2009 Knight turned his factory collection into the Institute for Military Technology (IMT) whose mandate is “Preserve Educate Motivate”. The IMT is a private collection and open to researchers and invited groups only. It has a modest online presence that shares its knowledge and expertise with the general public and there are plans to greatly increase it.

The IMT has five areas of specialty, as well as an extensive library and archive. The Hall of Armor is the combined collection of Reed Knight and IMT’s Curator, Joe McClain. It has scores of both operating and fully restored tanks, artillery and military vehicles, as well as a workshop for ongoing restoration. The Hall of U.S. Arms is dedicated to the history of American long guns, repeaters and machineguns from the flintlock era to the present time. Four hundred experimental and production American rifles are arranged on wall racks in a loose chronology, with individual labels but without any descriptive text. Fifty free-standing crew machine guns, field cannon and an unparalleled collection of volley guns and uniformed soldiers are arranged on the floor and include nineteen different Gatling guns, otherwise known as ‘Hand Cranks’. Approximately five-hundred foreign rifles, machine guns and contemporary weapons from WWI onwards are displayed in the Hall of Modern Arms, arranged by country of manufacture.

The strength of IMT collections are its fully automated weapons, including crew served machine guns, full-auto rifles and machine pistols. German H&K experimental and production machineguns are well represented. There are no handguns on display, as they are still in storage. A highlight of the IMT is the Eugene Stoner Memorial Gallery, a recreation of his office with some of his original pencil drawings on display. On the walls are over one hundred prototypes and rare production models of all his designs, including the only Stoner 63 Survival Carbine in existence. An adjacent room has the nation’s finest collection of seventy-five early AR-15, M-1 & M-2 ‘black rifles’. Almost all of IMT’s Stoner collection is from the former Colt Factory Collection, and includes a dozen immaculate cutaways. Skeletonized weapons are another strength of the IMT collection. The Knight Patent Room exhibits weapons developed for KAC.

The exhibition halls are in no-nonsense industrial buildings, with plenty of room to study the material. It is scrupulously clean and well ordered, and creates a unique atmosphere for a private firearms museum. The open horizontal rack system on the walls gives easy access for rearrangement and detailed study of the rifles. There is no written annotation of the collection, and adherence to chronology sometimes makes it difficult to follow the years-long development of rifle designs.

Knights Armament Company,
http://www.instmiltech.com/home/