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Thread: Could Gunfighters Really Shoot? - From GUNS January 1956

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    Post Could Gunfighters Really Shoot? - From GUNS January 1956

    After today, it's all historical.

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    The tile is incorrect.
    The question the article addresses is whether COWBOYS could shoot, not gunfighters.
    Gunfighters by definition could shoot and most could shoot well.
    As one man put it, cowboys made a living with a rope and saddle. A gunfighter made his with a gun, whatever his actual occupation was.

    As example Wild Bill Hickok regularly practiced outside of Dodge City when he was marshal there.
    He liked people to come out and watch because the stories of how good he was tended to cause potential troublemakers to have second and third thoughts about taking him on.
    Witnesses stated how fast and accurate Hickok was at shooting cans out of the air, bouncing cans along the ground with a gun in each hand, and one trick where he stood between two telegraph poles, aimed at one pole, turned his head and aimed at the the pole and fired both guns at the same time, hitting both poles.
    In those days the poles were much farther apart then telephone poles are today.

    The average cowboy didn't have the money to buy practice ammunition, so very few ever got any good with a pistol.
    This was often not the case immediately after the Civil War.
    During the war a lot of men in the cavalry or in the infamous Missouri-Kansas border war got extremely good with pistols.
    Many went West and one of the few available occupations was as a cowboy. So in those days a lot of cowboys were experts with guns.

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