George M. Chinn

George Morgan Chinn (January 15, 1902 – September 4, 1987) was an American firearms expert, author, and a colonel of the United States Marine Corps. He attended Centre College, and played on the 1921 Centre Praying Colonels football team, which won the national championship. Chinn then opened a diner in a cave, known as 'The Cave House', which also functioned as an underground gambling center. He served as the bodyguard of Happy Chandler while he was governor of Kentucky. Chinn was also Sergeant at Arms for the Kentucky Legislature. Later he was the production line inspector for several weapons manufacturers, and eventually a Marine. He designed the Mk 19 grenade launcher.

Eventually one of the United States' premier arms experts, Bill Bright, said of him, "He did for military weapons what Wozniak and Gates did for computers. He added the right pieces to make them reliable and usable. He was what was then called a garage (in his case, cave) inventor." Chinn retired to become director of the Kentucky Historical Society from 1960 to 1973, and later the Kentucky Military History Museum.

At the request of the Department of the Navy, Chinn would author a five-volume book series titled "The Machine Gun," described by the National Rifle Association as a "...fund of knowledge on a topic of increasing importance at a time of national emergency."