Realities of Gun-reference language in the USA 1850-1900

U

Unlicensed Dremel

Moderator
Gents and ladies,

Watching Western movies & TV shows, I'm wondering the real deal as to how Americans in the old West referred to firearms; i.e. the specific words/language used.

In the movies, it's *almost* always "gun" to refer to rifle - e.g. "Put down your guns, boys", or "Hand me my gun", regardless of rifle, shotgun, or pistol/handgun.

I'm wondering if any historians here know for sure whether they might have actually used both "gun" and "rifle" to refer to rifle, as we do today (and likewise, both "gun" and "shotgun" to refer to shotgun, etc), or were they more specific?

My SWAG would be that, since these tools of theirs were in many ways central to their way of life, during this time period, in the West, they were intimately familiar with firearms and would not have used the generic term "gun" at all, or only very rarely. I would guess that they said "Rifle" to refer to a rifle, "Shotgun" to refer to a shotgun, and "Pistol" or "Revolver" or "Handgun" to refer to those. I should think that to them, someone saying "gun" to refer to a rifle would be akin to an astronaut on the space station saying to another astronaut "Hand me that doohickey."

I dunno; just curious.
 
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Don't forget all the other ways to call firarms:
By Name - Winchester, Colt, 'etc.
By type - lever gun, side by side, revolver, 'etc.
Hogleg,
Shootin' iron,
Bird gun,
Scatter gun,
Buffalo gun,
While we've been influenced by movies and tvs, back then they were influenced by the dime novels.
Not everyone in the Old West was well versed in firearms.
Probably the majority, much like today, didn't even carry one.
Farmers, ranch hands, railway workers, town folks, most either couldn't afford guns and the ammo to practice, or didn't need therm all that much, in their everyday lives.
 
Exactly. Those things I can definitely believe - that's realism. But "hand me that gun" just doesn't seem like it really happened that way, to me. Of course, there are good westerns, mediocre ones, and bad ones. Mainly it's the TV shows that almost always have the characters using generic "gun". You know, all the usual suspects: Bonanza, Rawhide, The Big Valley, The Rifleman, Gunsmoke, etc.
 
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Farmers, ranch hands, railway workers, town folks, most either couldn't afford guns and the ammo to practice, or didn't need therm all that much, in their everyday lives.
Click to expand...

You are sounding like Bellesiles.

With that said, the History of Montague County, Texas (1913) makes a lot of use of gun and rifle. It describes many of the skirmishes with Native Americans and other issues of the late 1800s.
https://archive.org/stream/historyofmontagu00pottrich/historyofmontagu00pottrich_djvu.txt

Here is an original AZ news account from the OK Corral (top right corner)
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015133/1881-10-30/ed-1/seq-3/
 
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It really is a question...where do we get our history?

It USED to be that I could go to my local library and look at microfilm copies of actual newspapers written about WWII DURING WWII. The last remodel of the library got rid of the microfiche and microfilm because it took up too much space.

I remember a newspaper article before the US entered WWII that said the Brits in North Africa loved the tanks we had sent them as they were far superior to the German tanks. It's fun/interesting to read the stuff that was actually written back then.

The following is only my opinion:
There is a LOT of history being written by folk that don't do much research and verification. Also, sometimes they have an obvious political point of view that colors there work.

To answer the OP's original question I guess the thing to do would be to find stuff written back then and see what phrases they used. The 'dime novels' might NOT be representative but maybe newspaper accounts (if you could find 'em) or letters folk wrote to each other would be helpful.
 
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