#OldWest

“Why, Johnny Ringo… you look like somebody just walked over your grave.” – Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday, from the 1993 film Tombstone. Ringo’s legend is inexorably tied to Holliday and his compatriots, the Earp brothers. During the last two years of his life, 1881-1882, Ringo tangled with them multiple times, and it’s suspected that one of them may have gunned him down in the Arizona Territory’s Chiricahua Mountain Range in the summer of 1882. Officially, however, Ringo’s death was ruled a suicide. The Colt SAA revolver that reputedly fired the fatal shot by Ringo’s own hand was listed by serial number in the coroner’s report, and it’s been kept track of perfectly for the last 139 years. Now this well-documented piece of wild west and firearms history is headed to auction.

In the pantheon of stories about the Wild West, “ Lonesome Dove” is often hailed as one of the best. Writer Larry McMurtry’s seminal novel was published in 1985, and earned the following year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A few years later, the book was adapted for a television miniseries screenplay starring dual leads Robert Duvall as Captain Augustus McCrae and Tommy Lee Jones as Captain Woodrow F. Call, two gun-slinging old Texas Rangers turned ranchers. The series enjoyed overwhelmingly positive reception and significant acclaim, as many critics have credited it with reviving the once-dead Western film genre. The series was nominated for eighteen Emmys in 1989, of which it won seven. As you’d expect for the category, the show featured many classic firearms like revolvers and lever-action rifles, of the style that Cimarron Firearms specializes in today.

If you’re in the market for a replica Old West cartridge revolver or a classic percussion pistol reproduction then you may be familiar with Italy’s Pietta Firearms. This year they’re expanding their line of Colt 1873 Single Action Army revolvers with half a dozen calibre options and 30 configurations available.

If you don’t live in a cave, you might have heard some talk about Red Dead Redemption 2. And if you’ve been watching my Fallout series, you know where this is going. We’re going to compare the guns of Red Dead Redemption 2 to the real world and attempt to answer whether the gunplay seen in the game is in any way realistic.

If you are a fan of the American Old West history and firearms, then you must like this incredible Gambler set by American Legacy Firearms. It consists of an engraved stainless steel Ruger Vaquero chambered in .45 Long Colt, dice, playing cards, poker chips and a 5oz flask.

Romanticized in countless movies, the Old West was the epitome of white hat law dogs versus black hat scoundrels. In reality, however, it was an unforgiving life on the high plains with days of never ending, back breaking labor by families just trying to make a life for themselves. Of course, gunfighters both good and bad existed, carrying some historic weaponry. At the Museum of the West in Grand Junction, Colorado, there are several exhibits displaying guns from famous (and infamous) historical figures – It’s worth the trip if you are ever staying or driving through.

The Spencer Carbine was one of the first successful repeating rifles ever fielded by the US Army, seeing use in the Civil War. Despite being a very advanced design for the period offering firepower well above what muzzleloading rifled-muskets of the period were capable of, the Spencer has been denigrated in retrospect due to its cartridge, which has been perceived to be underpowered. Shawn of LooseRounds takes a look at some of the anecdotes surrounding the Spencer in a recent article: