I always like getting a little more context on photographs that are a bit of a mystery.

I appear to have made a mistake in assuming the young men with Krags were National Guardsmen, in the Jack Dempsey & Harry Houdini photograph.

I now believe they were NYPD recruits in training in 1920.

I found on-line a viewable 1920 NYPD "Annual Report". In the volume, there were references and photographs of recruit training and likewise for the 1920 Police Field Days.

The attached photograph of recruits drilling in a gym has a great similarity to the gym visited by Dempsey and Houdini. Also attached are references to NYPD departments using rifles.

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