Were gunslingers real? There were people in the Wild West who were employed to shoot people, or who did it for other reasons, but they weren’t called gunslingers. That term didn’t come into existence until 1920.
The image we have of gunslingers is pretty much entirely a myth that we can thank the Spaghetti Westerns and their ilk for. We have an image of a hero facing a villain at high noon with all of the people in the village watching out of windows. The clock strikes, they both go for their fast draw guns in their low slung holsters tied to their thighs, and the hero shoots the villain between the eyes. The villain looks at the camera for a few seconds, and then falls. Not one part of that is actually true. Let’s try to break it down.
The term gunslinger and many of the ideas that we have of the Wild West came from movies, and the term gunslinger was coined in the Western film Drag Harlan, that came out in 1920. Before that, gunslingers had various other names. The most common was “shootist”. They were sometimes called “pistoleer”, which came from Spanish, or “gunman”. The myth of the gunslinger has been built up by Hollywood, but it started long before Hollywood even existed. The first sensational stories of gunfighters began in newspapers and then in books that were known as dime-novels, because they cost a dime. They were sensationalist accounts written purely with the aim to sell more books. Hollywood picked up on the idea of the cowboy and the Wild West, but it had long finished by then. The era of the Wild West is generally considered to be from 1865 to 1895. It started with the emigration across America after the Civil War, and it ended at the turn of the century. It was pretty much finished by the time automobiles were taken up.
What kind of guns did they use? Again, Hollywood has given us the image of the gunslinger spinning their gun and then fanning the hammer to fire all six shots. Well, this is not true because the metal cartridge wasn’t invented until 1882, almost twenty years into the Wild West era. Before then, guns were fired by having a gunpowder cartridge dropped down the barrel and a bullet rammed afterwards. They were single shot guns and not very accurate. There was a revolver called the Colt that had a revolving chamber with six holes, but it had to be filled with powder, a bullet pushed in each chamber, and a percussion cap added before it could be used. Spinning it would probably have dislodged the powder. The invention of the metal cartridge changed all of this, but the Wild West was almost over by then. Most shootists favored a shotgun or a rifle because they were more effective over a greater distance, The revolvers were not very accurate.
The holsters were not what we imagine as well. The kind of holsters we think of are called buscadero holsters and they are hung lower on the hip to allow for a faster draw because the gunman doesn’t need to lift his arm far. They were invented by Hollywood. The quick draw holster was improved in the 1950s when quick draw shooting became a competitive event. It had a metal spring that held the holster open and started to cock the weapon on the draw. Gunmen in the 19th century didn’t have these. In the early days, they use large holsters left over from the civil war. These were strong because the early revolvers weighed almost 2 kg. Then, in the 1870s and 80s, a Mexican holster called the Mexican Loop holster. It made access to the gun easier, but it wasn’t meant for quick drawing.
The duels. There were definitely some duels and you can read about them on the Internet, but there were very few. Most gunmen preferred to ambush, or shoot with a shotgun, or use superior numbers. Most gunmen were not stupid enough to go for a one on one duel. However, they did sometimes exist and the tradition appears to have come across from Europe with the Spanish that colonized Mexico. Dueling was a big part of upper class European Medieval culture and swords or pistols at dawn was not unheard of. Mexican cowboys that lived in the southern USA still used duels and some cowboys that lived in the south did to begin with, but the tradition didn’t last.
A shootist was either paid to deal with someone bad, or was someone bad trying to deal with someone good. If they had the choice of using a heavy, inaccurate revolver, pulled from a stiff holster, and facing against their aggressor, or using a shotgun and having more people, I know what they would go for. That doesn’t make such an interesting movie, though. And this is what I learned today.
Photo by Kevin Bidwell: https://www.pexels.com/photo/two-men-standing-beside-brown-wooden-cabinet-2386728/
Sources
https://freerangeamerican.us/how-cowboy-guns-were-carried
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_firearm
https://shop.otmtactical.com/The-History-of-Ammunition-The-First-Bullet.html