The Gardner gun was an early type of mechanical machine gun. It had one or two barrels, was fed from a vertical magazine or hopper and was operated by a crank. When the crank was turned, a feed arm positioned a cartridge in the breech, the bolt closed and the weapon fired. Turning the crank further opened the breechblock and extracted the spent casing.

The Gardner machine gun was invented in 1874 by William Gardner of Toledo, Ohio formerly a captain in the Union army during the American Civil War. After producing a prototype he went to the Pratt and Whitney company, who after a year of development produced a military version of the weapon.

A demonstration to officers at the United States Navy yard in 1875 was successful, however they recommended that Pratt and Whitney continue with development of the system, incorporating improvements to the feed system, which were designed by E.G. Parkhurst, an engineer at Pratt and Whitney. The army attended the tests, but showed no interest in the weapon.

Ronnie Lee Gardner (January 16, 1961 – June 18, 2010) was an American criminal who received the death penalty for murder in 1985, and was executed by firing squad by the state of Utah in 2010. Gardner's case spent nearly 25 years in the court system, prompting the Utah House of Representatives to introduce legislation to limit the number of appeals in capital cases.

In October 1984, Gardner killed Melvyn John Otterstrom during a robbery in Salt Lake City. While being transported in April 1985 to a court hearing for the homicide, he fatally shot attorney Michael Burdell in an unsuccessful escape attempt. Convicted of two counts of murder, Gardner was sentenced to life imprisonment for the first count and received the death penalty for the second. The state adopted more stringent security measures as a result of the incident at the courthouse. While held at Utah State Prison, Gardner was charged with another capital crime for stabbing an inmate in 1994. However, that charge was overturned by the Utah Supreme Court because the victim survived.

Ronnie Lee (born 1951) is a British animal rights activist. He is known primarily for having founded the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in 1976. He also founded the magazine Arkangel in 1989.

Lee was a member of the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) in the 1970s, and formed an offshoot of it, which he called the Band of Mercy. The original Band of Mercy was started by a group of activists in England in 1824 to thwart fox hunting by laying false scents and blowing hunting horns. Lee and another activist, Cliff Goodman, revived the name in 1972, and set about attacking hunters' vehicles. They progressed to attacking pharmaceutical laboratories and seal-hunting boats, and on November 10, 1973, they set fire to a building in Milton Keynes with the aim of making insurance prohibitive for what they saw as industries that exploit animals, a strategy the ALF continues to pursue.

In August 1974, Lee and Goodman were arrested for taking part in a raid on Oxford Laboratory Animal Colonies in Bicester, which earned them the name the "Bicester Two". Daily demonstrations took place outside the court during their trial, with Lee's local Labour MP, Ivor Clemitson among the demonstrators. They were sentenced to three years in prison, during which Lee went on the movement's first hunger strike to obtain vegan food and clothing. Paroled after 12 months, Lee emerged more militant than before, and organized 30 activists to set up a new liberation campaign. Seeking a campaign named that would "haunt" those who used animals, he chose the Animal Liberation Front.

Terrence Lee Gardner (born January 16, 1975 in Hartland, Michigan) was an American Major League Baseball pitcher, who last appeared in the majors in 2008. In 2002, Gardner made his Major League Baseball debut with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays; he also played 5 games with the Devil Rays in 2005. Gardner spent the 2006 with the Toledo Mud Hens, the Triple-A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. He split the 2007 season between the Triple-A Albuquerque Isotopes and the Marlins. Gardner pitched in 62 games with the Marlins in 2007, going 3-4 with a 1.94 ERA.