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My father was a big advocate of old cowboy guns. Hailing from Europe by birth and upbringing, his fascination with the old West and the cowboys who won it bordered on overzealous. Any gun good enough to be preferred by the old-time cowboys was good enough for him.
He had a point.
There is an old adage that “there are bold gunfighters and there are old gunfighters, but that there are no old, bold gunfighters.” Bat Masterson was one of the few exceptions. Long after Dodge City was behind him Bat kept the legend alive, not as a gunfighter or lawman but as a journalist; proof perhaps, that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, or the gun!
By the time William Barclay “Bat” Masterson received the handsome, nickel plated and hand engraved six-shooter pictured, he was already a legendry lawman, as famous as his friends Wyatt Earp, Charlie Bassett and Bill Tilghman.
When I was cowboy shooting at SASS matches back in the mid-90s, my holy grail cowboy gun was the Winchester 1887 lever action shotgun. It never made any sense to me that the most competitive shooters used a ’97 pump gun, and up until I found an ’87, I shot strictly side by sides. Sure, [...]
A great mystery in the world of classic revolvers is the story of the 1860 Army cartridge conversions. Were they made by Colt’s, or were they merely the creations of gunsmiths addressing a demand from consumers? Read on to find out the story behind these and how you can buy one for yourself.
Prior to Samuel Colt’s 1835-1836 patents for the revolver, American handguns were, for the most part, variations of European-style single shot pistols, first of the flintlock type and later the new cap-and-ball percussion lock design. There were double barrels, swivel barrels, and even multiple barreled Pepperbox pistols, but the revolver was at best a theoretical design before 1836. This is not to say that revolvers did not exist before Colt’s patent, they just didn’t work. Samuel Colt’s design did. This is the story of how it came to be.
Called “The gun that won the West”, the Model 1873 remains an iconic rifle of the American West some 143 years after its debut. And today you can have your own recreation of this classic rifle that you can shoot without the fear of damaging a valuable collectible.
In a lot of cases, people who like guns tend to like history. Sure, for some a firearm is simply a tool, a means to an end (a handgun for competition, a rifle for hunting, etc.). But, for many of us, the story behind the firearm is often as important as the physical product itself. [...]
The 1860 Henry, a paradigm-shifting lever action that first appeared in the Civil War era and influenced firearm design well into the future. But, originals of this firearm can be rare and expensive. So what about those of us who would like to own one for themselves, one that we can actually shoot?
More than 140 years after the Colt SAA was invented, Uberti decided it was high time to change the rules and engineered a solution to the historic problem of having to “safely” carry a Single Action with the hammer resting on an empty chamber.