Search: Schofield

The 2nd Amendment never was about hunting or sport shooting. It was about the Massacre at Wounded Knee and John Snowling’s mini massacre.

The archetypal Old West gunfight was largely the product of pulp fiction writers’ vivid imaginations. However, there were a few frontier shootings and a few frontier shootists that were legitimately larger than life.

Jesse James’ life of crime and mayhem lacked the glamor depicted in books and movies. Hounded and harassed to the end he was finally gunned down brutally by a friend.

Opening a newly arrived box at my local FFL dealership inspired a couple “Wow!” responses – one of them my own. The 1860 Richards Transition Model Type II nestling therein sports eight glorious inches of gleaming blued steel barrel, a beautifully figured walnut grip, and a very nice color-casehardened frame.

I was a young cowboy with a fondness for horses, firearms, and pretty girls, in that order. One afore-mentioned pretty girl awaited my arrival across a high mountain pass that guards my Rocky Mountain home, but as my diesel pickup growled its way upward toward the pass I knew I was going to be early for our date. So I geared down and pulled off the highway into a small patch of ponderosa timber. The motor grumbled to a halt and I lifted my most recent crush off the truck seat, it’s long frame svelte and gleaming in the late afternoon light. The action was as smooth as whipped cream sweetened with maple sugar, and I forgot all about my upcoming date. Carrying the curvaceous form a little way from the truck I swung it to eye level and squeezed. A distant twig disappeared with a thunderous crack, and smoke rose in slow spirals from the six-inch barrel of my vintage Colt Python. I was in love.

Now that the year 2011 has passed and we are handily into 2012, enough has been said about the 100 year anniversary of the 1911 pistol. We should all be able to just return to shooting these classic and ergonomically near perfect firearms for the next hundred years. The question remains, however, can you buy a bargain priced 1911 and have a good reliable firearm. The folks selling guns under the Iver Johnson name these days would answer that question with a resounding “yes.”