In his hand he held a longbarreled sixshot Colt's patent revolver. It was a huge sidearm meant for dragoons and it carried in its long cylinders a rifle's charge and weighed close to five pounds loaded. These pistols would drive the half-ounce conical ball through six inches of hardwood and there were four dozen of them in the case.
Etc.
Anyway, I remember thinking that even with a gang of sociopaths such as Glanton is riding with, I'd want more firepower if I'm being charged to carry out genocide.
Facing four hundred Comanches, what happens when the twelve shots from my two guns are spent while I reload? I figured the other 388 Comanches probably decide to make me a tree ornament. And who can blame them?
I know, it's a gang, so there's probably a couple dozen more killed, but still.
Thing is, my thoughts about the relative power of the direct ancestor of Dirty Harry's '.44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world (in 1975 it was still true), blah blah blah' are all couched in a world filled with things like 50 caliber belt-fed machine guns; aircraft that can unleash a depleted uranium mine full of 20mm projectiles in less time than it takes the person in the crosshairs to say 'Oh shit!,' nuclear weapons and a President who calls them 'nukular' weapons.
So while I don't want a Colt Dragoon pointed at me, the prospect of such a weapon doesn't freak me out the way Obama or McCain being the next President does.
But I get the Oxford fact of the day and they sent me this.
I'm struck by a few things, reading this. For a start, as usual I'm shocked at how young boys ran away from home in the early 19th Century. I mean, when you look at Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and as it turns out Sam Colt, they left home when they were roughly Em's age, and they didn't become prostitutes in some slum, they started businesses, often businesses that continue to exist two centuries later.
Well, Colt was probably sixteen when he ran away, but maybe a precocious thirteen according to Oxfod, so that is Em's age more or less.
Another thing that strikes me, he was 21 (if born in 1814) when he patented the modern revolver.
Check out the big brains on Sam. There have been refinements, but in terms of the basic mechanism, this is a gun you'll see on the duty belt of cops today. Some carry semi-autos, I know, but the revolver is still made and sold. Reliable as all get out, too. I never heard of one jamming, so I guess if push came to shove and I had to use a gun to defend my life, I'd probably rather be the guy with a 'sixshooter.'
Full disclosure, I don't own a gun. This is strictly academic. I enjoy guns, but I've never made it priority to keep them around me. Maybe if the world financial system is about to collapse, I'll be the acme of foolishness on that score, but on the flip side I know how to make great beer. So maybe I can barter some booze for a gun...
But most of all, the reason I thought of the scalp hunters in that bleak Cormac McCarthy novel, is the novel is set in 1849. The revolver had only been invented fourteen years prior. Which I guess makes Sam Colt the Bill Gates of 'good Indians.'
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