Who doesn’t love a good Western? One of our shelves in our expansive video library is filled completely with Westerns, many of which feature John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and many other traditional Western heroes, generally wielding Winchester lever-action rifles and Colt revolvers. There are exceptions, like Tom Selleck in the wonderful film “Quigley Down Under” in which he co-stars with a Sharps breechloader, but the usual pattern is Winchester/Colt.
Thus the story of the history of guns in the American West is, in the gun world, the story of those two primary arms: Winchester lever-action rifles and Colt revolvers. It all started before the Civil War, with the 1860 Henry and the Colt dragoon revolvers and the famous 1851 Navy and 1860 Army revolvers, and continued after the war with the 1866, 1873, and 1876 Winchesters and the famous 1873 Colt Single Action Army and 1877 and 1878…
