Gun Laws and Good Drinks of the Wild West

Historian Mark Lee Gardner joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about the Wild West era, including whether or not they actually hard tougher gun control laws in those days than they do now.


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[Jake_Steiner]

There's a reason that Colt's best-selling revolver during the period was the 1849 Pocket Model percussion revolver. Concealed carry was more common than open carry, much like today.

[jopo]

I don't know how strict their gun laws were, but I suddenly have a craving for KFC.

[ProjectThunderclaw]

Many medieval cities had similar laws. Only nobles were allowed to wear swords within the city walls, so you could bring one for ersonal protection on the road, but you had to leave it at the gates and pick it back up on your way out.

[Levacque]

Champagne in particular was weirdly popular. And most of these places also served a lot of food. Sometimes you just had to pay for your drinks and then the food was complimentary, and you'd get all kinds of food because lots of immigrants came to the area to run support industries for the mining and ranching labourers.

[marcuspinson]

It's also worth mentioning that these towns were very often private property owned by a company or local tycoon and your rights do not extend to private property.

[CAepicreviews]

Plus a big benefit of Champagne to my knowledge was the fact you knew you were getting good quality, unadulterated drinks. It opens there, nobody's able to water it down or add stuff to extend how long one bottle lasted.

[genconsensus]

In Tombstone the Earps and Doc Holliday kept their pistols hidden in their pockets. Even though some of the Earps were deputy marshals they did not wear gun belts like it shows in all the movies. They confronted the cowboys because those men rode into town wearing their guns openly. The Earps were trying to disarm them when the famous shootout near the OK Corral went down. The gunfight was the result of months of tension and arguments between the groups.

[stevecole]

It’s illegal in most states to carry a firearm while intoxicated unless of course you’re an FBI employee and accidentally drop your firearm while backflipping resulting in an innocent civilian getting shot by said firearm when it fails a surprise drop test.

[Josh-thtm]

The OK Coral incident was a case of lawmen attempting to disarm cowboys because they refused to check their guns.

[theduke]

its important to note, most of these town's gun laws didnt apply to permanent local residents, and none of those laws said what they could own, how much, or where they kept them.

[Heavenly.Harlot]

"I'm not saying you can't own a gun. I'm not even saying you can't CARRY a gun. You just can't carry a gun in town! That's not so bad, is it?"

[Ryan.]

As a Brit have to apriciate the irony of it all, between 1870 and 1920 all you needed to do to carry a concealed handgun here was go down to the local Post Office and buy a 10 shillings (about $2.50) licence, annually.

[Sure_You_Betcha]

Should be noted that these ordiances were also often VERY selectively enforced by the law enforcement of the time... Or were just not enforced unless they saw the need for enforcement.

[yourconscious]

I was a bartender for some time and early cocktails were an interest of mine. The main boom of cocktails was in the 1920s near the end of the wild west, but they were commonly used to hide the taste of poorly made alcohol. Thanks to prohibition, a lot of the people making alcohol didn't have the necessary equipment and ingredients to make the quality of alcohol that came before. Some people where just trying to cut costs. I could see the same applying to the west, and thus the need for cocktails even before prohibition.

[ronarnold]

The Bartender's Guide is still awesome, even in 2024!

[Eli-eqwi]

Babel is the the only RF Kaung I’ve read so far and I LOVED it. It is slow at times and maybe is just a little bit longer than it needed to be, but I loved the characters and their dynamics with each other. The magic system was so cool (though I do wish she did just a little more with it), and the ending was one of my favorites. The characters, the ending, the atmosphere, and just what this book had to say all stick so well in my mind even after reading it over 2 years ago

[davidreinker]

Sure, but at the same time most people didn't carry a gun on their hip, though many owned a rifle which had more utility and was more accurate than an expensive revolver. Open-carry was generally the rule except in a number of towns. Such ordinances were not easy to enforce and didn't typically do much, for the same reasons as today. People bent upon mayhem don't concern themselves much with ordinances. The most violent year for Tombstone, Arizona was in 1881 when five were killed, three of which were at the OK Corral.

[rabbit]

Why the 38short was made. It was a "pocket pistol" that they didn't turn over to the sheriff's. It happened all the time

[rorymacintosh]

Yup. There’s a reason the NRA doesn’t allow people to carry guns at their own meetings!

[tcnance]

The idea of the individual right to carry a gun wherever you are really wasn’t a thing until well into the 20th century, even though the Second Amendment is much older.