There is actually a real misconception of the Old West that truly needs correcting. That is the notion of an uncivilized Wild West, where antisocial and violent behavior was the norm, and where citizens were afraid to leave their homes, afraid of rampant crime and in fear for their lives.
This savage perspective turns out to be incorrect—false assumptions of the Old West based on sensationalist press, the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show of the 1880s and ‘90s, and subsequently cowboy shows and Hollywood movies. Bands of working cowboys and good citizens did not go about town in their leisure time challenging, outdrawing, and shooting each other in a systematized orgy of violence and gunfights as portrayed in the movies.
Bad men and violent outlaws did kill each other, but almost always left the good people of the towns alone. The famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona, in which Wyatt Earp, and his brothers, Virgil and Morgan, with Doc Holliday, killed three of the outlaw “Cowboys,” became a celebrated incident not only because of the unique circumstances but also because brother lawmen killed brother outlaws in a historic shootout. Even then it was newsworthy and certainly not a daily occurrence.
In his book, Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier, historian Roger D. McGrath has corrected the historic record with substantive scholarship. After studying the Sierra Nevada frontier towns of Aurora and Bodie, McGrath found that those mining towns, where audacious young men and gunmen roamed freely packing either Colt Navy .36 six shot pistols in Aurora or Colt double action “lightning” or “peacekeeper” revolvers in Bodie, were peaceful towns, except for the quarrels in the carousing and gambling saloons. Otherwise, both towns carried on well, and everyone not interested in whoring, drinking, and gun fighting were left alone.
True, the homicide rate was high among those carousing and looking for fights in the saloons, but in the rest of the populace, the old, the ladies, and those not willing to pick fights, homicides were rare. Likewise, robbery, burglary, and rape were rare. Murder was confined to the “drunkards upholding their honor.” The homicide rate for Aurora and Bodie were 64 and 116 per 100,000, respectively, compared to Washington, D.C., at 72 per year in the 1990s. Likewise, the burglary and robbery rates were 6 and 84 per 100,000, respectively, for Bodie; compared to 2,661 and 1,140, respectively, for New York City in 1980.
The townspeople, although they might have carried guns, respected each other, and townspeople did not even bother to lock their doors at night. Similar observations have been made by other researchers studying the supposedly violent and crime-ridden Lincoln County, New Mexico; the Kansas towns of Dodge City and Wichita in the 1870s; and the Texas frontier towns from 1875 to 1890.
Returning to the issue of the possible confiscation of American firearms in the current era, consider the practical obstacles, not to mention the constitutional protection. Trying to blame, register, ban, and confiscate (one step usually follows the other) over 300 million firearms owned by Americans would bring about a tinder box situation, at least an order of magnitude worse than Prohibition, for Americans obey just and moral laws but not capricious or tyrannical laws, and a veritable police state would be required to enforce the draconian gun laws that would be necessary to carry that out.
Thus, politicians who sadly continue to use the latest tragedy (and the emotionalism and the passions elicited in its wake) to push for the usual round of gun control—while ignoring the accumulated objective research published in the social sciences and the criminologic literature—are not sincerely lamenting the deaths of the innocent or sympathizing with their families, but attempting to score political points, political points at the expense of the victims or good citizens.
They are also further polarizing America and tearing apart the fabric of this great nation by using emotionalism rather than common sense to bolster their unwise, political actions. Let’s stop demonizing guns and end the shootings by incarcerating the criminals and identifying and healing the mentally ill, for much work needs to be done in the psychiatric and mental health arenas and in the task of reducing violence. Sensationalization of violence day after day by the press, the electronic media and the internet—heaped upon impressionable individuals subject to our increasingly dumbed down, popular culture and public education—is having a malevolent effect that needs to stop.
Written by Dr. Miguel Faria
Miguel A. Faria, Jr, MD is a retired professor of Neurosurgery and Medical History at Mercer University School of Medicine. He founded Hacienda Publishing and is Associate Editor in Chief in Neuropsychiatry and World Affairs of Surgical Neurology International. He served on the CDC’s Injury Research Grant Review Committee. This article is excerpted, updated, and edited from his book, America, Guns, and Freedom: A Journey Into Politics and the Public Health & Gun Control Movements (2019).
This article may be cited as: Faria MA. Gun Violence and the Wild West. HaciendaPublishing.com, February 28, 2022. Available from: https://haciendapublishing.com/gun-violence-and-the-wild-west-by-miguel-a-faria-md/.
Copyright ©2022 Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D
Categories
Smith & Wesson 500 Magnum Review
The Chopper, an S&W Model 66, as re-imagined by Tiger McKee of Shootrite Academy.
The big white dot of the front sight centers on the target as your finger rolls the trigger back, so smoothly it feels like an oiled ball bearing. The recoil of the .357 Magnum round is more reassuring than painful and the stippled grip doesn’t move inside your grasp at all as the trigger slides smoothly back forward, the white ball already centered again on the shot group forming downrange.
You are shooting a “Chopper,” a sweet Smith & Wesson revolver made all the sweeter by the ministrations of one Tiger McKee.
If you’re well acquainted with the handgun world, you already know the name. Tiger McKee is a world-recognized authority on defensive shooting, as evidenced by the fact he writes the Tactics & Training column for this magazine’s sister publication, American Handgunner. He earned his fame with two classic guns of his generation, the 1911 .45 pistol and the AR15 rifle, but admits to a love for revolvers. For a number of reasons, he thinks they’re good choices for armed citizen carry — and he improves them.
Muzzle re-shaped and counterbored. Note protective sight wings.
Meet The Test Gun
The Chopper featured here is one of a pair he built for Roger Caudle, a regular customer who already owns two or three McKee revolvers. It began as a Model 66-1 from the good ol’ days before internal locks, with a 2.5″ barrel and S&W’s micrometer adjustable sight. It looks a lot different now.
Tiger explains, “I started out taking square butt, 4″ barrel K-Frame revolvers and turning them into the 3″ round butt configuration everyone wants now and can’t find. That left the ‘Smith & Wesson’ designation on the left side of the barrel and the caliber designation on the other side no longer centered, and I wound up milling the sides of the barrel flat. That solved the aesthetic issue, and also seemed to improve the balance of the gun. The balance element is the reason I do it on guns that are already the desired barrel length.”
This Chopper has distinctive sights. Tiger added an XS Big Dot front with tritium dot in the front, and the big, rugged fixed rear sight Cylinder & Slide Inc. makes to replace factory S&W adjustable sights. The humongous front sight is flanked by thin steel protective wings. The reshaped barrel is pleasantly sculpted, its muzzle re-crowned for accuracy and counter-bored for protection. Tiger has made this 66 a “triple lock” with a spring-loaded ball bearing on the crane, giving the Chopper a three-point cylinder lockup. Tiger does a “melt” rounding of all sharp edges on the revolver. The backstrap of the grip-frame is lightly stippled and so are the Hideout grips from Brownells. The most expensive and time-consuming part of the full Chopper job, Tiger says, is reshaping and narrowing the trigger guard to allow faster access by the index finger. The gun is finished in Gun Kote, this sample being Magpul FDE for the frame and Magpul Stealth Gray for trigger, hammer, cylinder and traditional style cylinder release.
Another nice touch — the front edges of the cylinder are chamfered, allowing for smoother re-holstering: an important and often overlooked subtlety.
Which leaves the trigger work. Ah, the trigger work …
Added lock on yoke, unique barrel treatment are seen here.
CCI Lawman .38 +P gave us our best group with the Chopper.
The Chopper in Action
Externally, he radiuses and polishes the trigger itself (“For fighting, not target shooting,” as he puts it), and bobs the hammer. Tiger explains, “All metal-to-metal contact points are honed and polished. I’ve had a lot of people help me learn to tune one, like Roy Huntington. Correct tolerances are critical. The springs are Wolff. I use their standard hammer spring — a little lighter than factory but still giving positive ignition even with the hardest primers. I put in a 14-lb. rebound spring for faster trigger return.”
On the Chopper’s first of many range runs, I invited along Alan Davis and his son Owen. Alan is a many-time Stock Service Revolver division champion in major IDPA matches, and his first reaction to pulling the Chopper’s trigger was “Ooh. This is nice!”
My sentiments exactly. The trigger is hospitable to the finger, reset is indeed fast and the DA pull runs around 10 lbs. but feels a lot less because it’s so smoo-ooth. Like J.H. Fitzgerald, the legendary Colt guy who created the famed Fitz Special, Tiger leaves the bobbed hammer’s single action capability in place — sub-3 lbs. — for the customer who thinks he just might one day need a crisp short pull for a precision shot. You start the trigger back until enough of the stubbed hammer has risen for the support hand thumb to catch it, or he’ll make it double-action only, your choice.
We found ourselves shooting way low putting the Big Dot all the way into the U-notch of the rear sight, “ball in basket,” the way we shoot S&W Nightguards and 340 M&Ps so equipped. With the front sight up higher, we were on target, and Owen was soon going six for six on the falling plates. A call to Tiger elicited the info this particular customer preferred a sight picture with the Big Dot up out of the notch and the tritium dot level with the top edge of the rear sight. Two lessons: Don’t trust the other guy’s sights ’til you’ve shot the gun, and — Tiger McKee will make your gun exactly the way you want it.
The work ain’t cheap, but it’s so much in demand he has a four- to six-month wait time. From what I saw and felt shooting it, it’s worth the wait! You can reach Tiger McKee to discuss what you want through Shootrite.org or write him at Shootrite, 98 Lois Lane, Langston, Ala. 35755.
Warning over ‘summer of violence’ with kids pressured to carry guns in US warzones after shooting deaths hit record high
THERE are fears that this summer will bring wild west-like gun violence in US cities where even good kids feel pressure to carry guns.
This feeling of an impending storm follows Monday’s CDC analysis of shooting deaths during the pandemic, which reached levels America hasn’t seen since 1968 and disproportionately impacted black men.
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Firearms were involved in 79 per cent of all homicides in 2020 – a 35 per cent increase from 2019 – according to a May 10 report published by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
There were 19,384 gun murders in 2020, which surpassed the previous high of 18,253 recorded by the CDC in 1993.
The sky high number of firearm murders coincided with the pandemic-fuelled spike in gun sales, according to Pew Research.
“In 2020, the number of monthly federal background checks for gun purchases was consistently at least 20 percent higher than in the same month in 2019,” Pew Research said in its September report.
“It’s about to be a crazy summer. You can feel it in the air,” Damon Jones told The Sun.
Jones, who spent three decades in law enforcement, is New York State’s representative of Blacks in Law Enforcement of America and publishes the local newspaper Black Westchester.
The paper covers issues impacting black communities in Westchester County, New York and focuses on the predominantly black city of Mount Vernon, which is a few miles north of the Bronx.
AJ Woodson, Black Westchester’s editor and journalist, said he met a straight-A high school student who stays out of trouble that told him that he feels unsafe in his neighborhood without a gun.
“There’s one youth, a real good kid, who admitted he carries a gun because everyone else has one,” Woodson said.
“He’s scared to go to the store without it. He’s scared to go to the movies without it … Our children are living in a war zone, and there’s no where to go to unpack their trauma.”
Woodson’s single anecdote is representative of a key finding in the CDC’s report about gun violence during the pandemic.
The firearm murder rate among black men between the ages of 10 and 44 was 21.6 times higher among than white men of the same age.
The number-based report didn’t reach any conclusions about why there was such a drastic leap in firearm deaths during the pandemic or why black communities were hit the hardest.
GUNS ARE THE EFFECT. WHAT’S THE CAUSE?
“It’s 6.30 in the morning, and we turn on the TV at work and there’s always a story about someone getting shot,” Jones said.
“After awhile, you say what’s going on? Where’s black lives matter? There were protests against police brutality, but what about the black lady shot while sitting at a stop sign? All black lives should matter.”
In Woodson and Jones’ hometown, 13-year-old Shamoya McKenzie was killed in December 2016 when a stray bullet intended for a rival gang member pierced the passenger side of her mom’s car.
A recent burst of violence included a shooting outside of the city high school, a melee involving dozens of students and a beloved cheerleader who was murdered.
“When I was growing up, we had places to go. Three or four days out of the week, we would play pool to stay off the streets,” Woodson said. “And if i had a serious issue, I could talk to someone.”
“I was a coin flip. A lot of my friends spent double digit years in prison. I could’ve been one of them if I didn’t have places to go.
“But now, there are no programs for our youth, and then they wonder why our youth are out in the streets. What do you expect the kids to do?”
And then there’s a cycle of violence and trauma that reaches back to the kids’ parents and grandparents.
“There’s generational trauma in our communities,” Woodson said.
“These are kids trying to figure it out when adults aren’t able to. And all of that trauma builds up, and most of the time it comes out in a way that’s not positive.”
US IS AT A ‘CROSSROADS’
Jones said the CDC’s report shows how the US is “at a crossroads.”
“As someone who champions criminal justice reform, I think the narrative has gone too far. We need policing but good policing.
“Now we need to invest more in reform and social issues and mental health services that have been cut in our communities.
“You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to see there was something wrong with the Brooklyn subway shooter. We have to address mental health and social issues in the black communities.”
Jones and Woodson said they’ve been pushing for federal prosecutors to go after the gun traffickers like the DEA has been clamping down on narcotic suppliers.
“What plagues our communities are guns and drugs, none of this is being made in our community; they’re being brought in,” Woodson said.
Building off the point, Jones said, “The young brother who has to have a gun to go to the store can get jammed up and face stiffer penalties, but there’s no increase in sentencing for gun trafficking.
“Those laws need to have stiffer penalties and the gun manufacturers need to know where their guns are going.
“We know of a gun trafficker who has been caught but hasn’t spent a day in jail because they say he’s a small fish and they want a big fish. Meanwhile, illegal guns continue to come into our city.”
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