BANG!

I hate to say this after crapping on single-action revolvers. But I've been watching a lot of Westerns lately, and well...

I'm surprised the original cowboy-era Colts aren't more common. You would think they would be all over the place, but I guess collectors have snapped them up and aren't anxious to sell. And I'd feel weird shooting something that old.

I notice there are a number of cute Uberti clones out there. But the neatest clone I've seen is from United States Fire-Arms. Supposedly they work out of an old Colt factory, using superior modern...stuff. You can get a single-action Colt replica for five or six hundred bucks. But if you want it to look like the real thing, you have to pay like nine hundred. The cheaper ones have a very uniform, polished bluing on them. Which is not exactly bad, but it's not as nice as the "case coloring" on the more expensive models. As I understand it, case-hardened stuff used to look this way.

I had always assumed most Colts used in the old West were .45s, but it looks like an awful lot were .41 and .32 calibers. I have also learned that the .45 Long Colt, while obsolete in some regards, is a perfectly good defense round with ballistics comparable to a .45 ACP. I read somewhere that the .45 ACP was designed to mimic the .45 LC's capabilities. I don't know if that's true.

I didn't know it was unsafe to carry an old Colt with six rounds in it. But it's not a big shock. My great-uncle had an accident with an old revolver, because it was made in a way that allowed shocks to drive the firing pin into the primer of the round under the hammer. He was in the men's can in the courthouse in Breathitt County, Kentucky, and the gun was in his pocket, and when he lowered his pants, it hit the floor, and he ended up shooting himself in the leg.

I was told that gun was Italian. And cheap.

Life is so strange these days. Imagine trying to hang out at the courthouse now, with a loaded revolver in your pocket. When I was a kid, you could drive to KMart, buy any gun you wanted, and walk out. Now buying guns is like buying pornography; it's all underground, as if it's something to be ashamed of. And crime is worse today.

I wonder how many boxes of ammunition I bought when I was a kid, with no adult escort. I remember walking into the Western Auto in Campton, Kentucky, and buying .22 shells. If a kid tried to do that today, some liberal pansy bureaucrat would take him away from his parents and put him in a foster home. I really hate what those idiots have done to America.

Far as I recall, the situation was no different in Miami. I remember the local KMart, with its huge gun display. Mike and I used to go in there all the time and buy implements of destruction, like Wrist Rocket slingshots, BBs, pellets, and so on.

The Breathitt courthouse, in Jackson, Kentucky, used to be a focal point of downtown life. People went to watch trials, largely because their neighbors were in there, being forced to air their dirty laundry. Old men sat out front, whittling on bits of cedar. Imagine sitting on a courthouse bench with a sharp knife in 2008. When I practiced law here in Miami, many times I got twenty feet from my car and had to walk back and put my knife on the driver's seat.

I'm bummed out to learn that the cowboy movies are wrong. John Wayne may have kept six blanks in his gun, but real cowboys limited themselves to five rounds or ended up like my great uncle. I guess I should have known that. I suppose that, for all its romance, the SAA Colt revolver is not the world's greatest weapon. But it would be great fun to have one, and to learn to shoot it from the hip.

I guess I should quit watching Westerns. Last night I saw Burt Lancaster in Lawman, and he shot a whole bunch of annoying people at great distances, from the hip, using a blued revolver with stag grips.

That's the secret to a good Western. Make sure all the annoying people eventually get shot. If only life were that simple.