Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2020 i Guns of the Old West

Everyone has a Gunsmoke story. Almost every major actor today who started out playing small roles on TV from the 1950s to the 1970s has one. This includes doctors, lawyers, salespeople, business executives, writers, directors and the guy who owned the old corner grocery store or worked construction in the post-World-War-II housing boom. If you grew up or were an adult in the two decades when Gunsmoke was on the air, from 1955 to 1975, you had a Gunsmoke story. There were a lot of Westerns on TV in those days—some popular, and others fleeting but memorable. But none was as enduring as Gunsmoke and its stories of U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon and Dodge City, Kansas. The show first aired on September 10, 1955, and the 30-minute, black-and-white series was…

If you’re like me, your firearms are tools, and every gun in your safe has a purpose. Normally, they all fit nicely into categories like hunting, home defense, personal protection and sometimes just good old-fashioned plinking. I started shooting guns around 13 years ago. Like many pepole, I got into handguns for concealed carry to protect myself, and pretty much every range session amounted to training. Although any type of shooting is normally fun, my guns were all purpose driven, and owning a gun “just for fun” seemed like a waste of space in my safe. Then I got a bigger safe, which sort of made me realize that it’s all right to have a few fun guns in the mix. You know this: Sometimes you just have to go…

IT COMES TO OLD WEST GUNS, WHEN modern importers and manufacturers have a real challenge coming up with new “historic” products for us. So, I give Cimarron Firearms and Uberti a respectful tip of the hat for going out on a limb to develop a replica of one of Colt’s rare factory cartridge conversions. This project was more than two years in the works. The new Cimarron replica is quite close to what collectors call a “Type 4” conversion of the “Pocket Pistol of Navy Caliber” or sometimes the Improved Police Model of 1872. Unlike Colt’s other .38-caliber metallic-cartridge pocket conversions, this model used a new barrel assembly instead of a reworked cap-and-ball component with the loading lever hole filled in. The barrel was also round and slightly tapered instead…

Camels and horses both originated in the Americas. And like the wild horse, the wild camel migrated across the Bering land bridge to Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Interestingly, both the camel and the horse survived in the Old World but were wiped out during the spread of humans from Asia to North America. Camels thrived on the steppes of Central Asia, and then flourished in the harsh deserts of Arabia and North Africa. Humans domesticated the dromedaries around 3,000 BCE, and the animals were adapted for war by 1,200 BCE, when the first camel saddles were invented. Warriors rode camels into battle throughout antiquity, and it was found that horses were often afraid of the scent that camels gave off. At the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BCE,…

When people hear General George S. Patton’s name, most think of him serving in World War II. Photographs of him in uniform, wearing his three-star helmet and an ivory-stocked, silver-plated Colt Model 1873 Single Action Army revolver on his hip, are ubiquitous. However, most people have no idea why Patton carried this Colt. They just assume that since he was a general, he could carry anything he wanted. Upon closer inspection of some of Patton’s more notable photographs, especially those taken in Sicily around 1943, one begins to notice that his uniform is not the uniform of the period. Nor does it show any association with the U.S. Army Tank Corps. Further investigation reveals equestrian-style riding pants and a horse crop along with that Peacemaker. From A Different Era Patton’s…

In January of every year, hundreds of firearms manufacturers show off their brand-new products at the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in Las Vegas. It takes days to walk the miles of aisles and see all the different displays, and while AR-15s and concealed-carry handguns might be all the rage, a handful of companies still bring forward new models with that Old West flavor. Here are some of the best replicas already making waves this year. Cimarron Bad Boy Cimarron has expanded its Bad Boy line of revolvers with a model in 10mm Auto. This revolver stands out from the others in some key ways. The gun uses a solid pre-war frame, so the cylinder doesn’t swing out. Instead, the gun loads and unloads through the traditional loading gate.…

The Wild Bunch hit theaters across America in 1969. Set along the volatile southern border in 1913, the film involved an aging outlaw gang that rides into Mexico and is recruited by a corrupt Mexican general to steal guns from the U.S. Army. There’s a double-cross and a big shootout at the end. Of course, in this era, modern weapons like the machine gun, pump-action shotguns and semi-automatic pistols were being fielded. Advanced special effects used by director Sam Peckinpah made this film especially bloody for its time. Cowboy Action Shooting (CAS) competitors’ desire to use period weapons like those in the movie spawned the “Wild Bunch” category, which was codified by the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS) in 2009. Rules allow the use of certain 1911 pistols, lever-action rifles…

The year 1969 was a big one for westerns with the release of The Wild Bunch, True Grit and But ch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. A year after these classic films arrived, another film that had a “Western” theme was released and went on to win seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. It focused on one of America’s most famous (even infamous) military leaders. The film, Patton, was a bombastic biography of General George S. Patton during his World War II years. Without a single scene taking place anywhere in the United States, it might be hard at first to see Patton, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner from a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, as a “Western,”…

Among the celebrated Colt revolvers, the Model 1851 Navy is surpassed only by the Model 1873 Single Action Army as one of the most legendary guns of the American West. The 1851 Navy—or Belt Model, as it was referred to early on—was patented in September of 1850, with the first examples produced in Connecticut by early fall. The Navy proved easier to carry than the .44-caliber Colt Dragoon, and the U.S. military deemed it an effective sidearm. This was one of the most critical achievements of Samuel Colt’s new business, which had been built on the shoulders of the 1847 Whitneyville Walker. The military officially adopted Colt’s Navy Model in 1855 and ordered 35,000 guns, which were distributed to the U.S. Cavalry, the infantry and the Navy. During the Civil…

THE camel has been called both “the ship of the desert” for its ability to cross arid lands like no other animal and “a horse designed by committee” to highlight the fact that the animal appears misshapen. But camels are actually highly efficient and well suited to their desert habitats. These animals can run as fast as 40 miles per hour in short bursts, or sustain an average speed of 25 mph over great distances. Their feet provide excellent traction on various types of soil, and as we all know, camels can withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. The dromedary camel, the most common of three camel species today, can drink as seldom as once every 10 days even in extreme heat, and can safely…

Despite its rapid-fire capabilities, handsome lines, handy size and relatively powerful chamberings, Colt’s Model 1877 revolver has the dubious honor among knowledgeable shooters and collectors of having the worst double-action system ever devised. Evidence of this can be found by observing the number of malfunctioning 1877s at almost any antique gun show, or by trying to find a gunsmith who will work on one of these guns. The Model 1877 was built around the same general lines of the highly popular Model 1873 Single Action Army, though the former had a bird’s-head grip as well as an enlarged frame to handle the internal workings. Ironically, though, the Model 1877 also incorporated several design elements from Colt’s pocket-sized New Line revolver, an earlier firearm that also had somewhat inefficient design elements.…