Carrying guns and the Wild West

Next time someone talks about ‘everyone having guns in the Wild West,’ remind them that this was not the case.  Most communities did not want anyone walking around with firearms – least of all in the saloons. They certainly didn’t want drunk cowboys with blazing pistols riding down Main Street and ‘painting the town red.’ Historically, keep in mind that the fabled ‘Shootout at the OK Corral’ began when Tombstone Marshal Virgil Earp, Deputy City Marshal Morgan Earp, temporary assistant Marshal Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday went to disarm the cowboys. When the cowboys did not disarm, as the expression goes, ‘everything went south.’  Gun-slinging was only part of the Wild West in celluloid histories. [See my books at https://authormasterminds.com/master-of-the-impossible-crime.]

Steve Levi is an Alaskan writer who specializes in the Alaska Gold Rush (nonfiction) and the ‘impossible crime,’ (fiction.)  An ‘impossible crime’ is one where the detective must figure out HOW the crime was committed before going after the perpetrators – like a Greyhound bus with bank robbers and hostages disappearing off the Golden Gate Bridge –THE MATTER OF THE VANISHING GREYHOUND. Steve’s books can be found at www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi

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