I would imagine that the polymer frames of modern "plastic" pistols will most likely last for the lifetimes of their possessors. That is, of course, just a guess. However, due to stress, and time, which will rob them of essential oils and cause various chemical changes, they will eventually suffer cracking and degredations that will cause them to disintegrate.

It struck me that these firearms are indicative of our modern culture in which almost nothing is built to be permanent. Our emails are stored on ephemeral media. Our books become yellow and brittle within ten years. The plastic "art" in our museums is decaying at a rapid rate. There will not likely be any bundles of letters and poems to be found from another Emily Dickenson, or ancient papyri unearthed from our culture in two thousand years.

However, today we still have the golden straws from which the Sumerian elite sipped beer 5,000 years ago. We have the Rosetta Stone; countless ancient clay tablets in strange languages; 500 year old, vintage books that were printed on non-acid paper. And we have steel firearms, some of which have been preserved from the earliest examples.

Perhaps the answer to a culture with no permanent medium is the stainless steel gun. Long after the Glocks and their competitors have crumbled away, there will be steel; elegant revolvers produced in the heydays of Smith and Wesson, Colt and others; perhaps in times still to come. Virtually any steel firearm can be almost timeless; and stainless steel will outlast them all.

Perhaps we should all, for our own peace of mind, possess at least one, ageless firearm that we can perceive to be in existence when our moribund civilization is long vanished. A short note about the gun, written on acid-free paper, and rolled up inside a cartridge in a chamber, would make a time capsule of unique perspective in a time when archaeologists are attemtping to solve the riddle of so many steel slides from pistols without frames, among the rubble.

Today I picked up a 61 year old Smith and Wesson revolver that is like new. I wonder what a 60 year old Glock will look like; and if it will still function? Or perhaps that does not matter in a civilization whose entire, physical culture will likely decay into oblivion. Do not will your treasures to undeserving offspring. Seal your Rolex, your gold and your Model 65-2 in a Halliburton and bury it for posterity.