Editing Gunslinger (section)

==Famous Guns of the Old West==
Initially pistols were designed for ball & percussion cap, and while metal cartridges did exist prior to the Civil War, very few pistols used them.  For logistical simplicity, cap & ball persisted through the war, but afterwards a lot of conversions were designed to retrofit the hundreds of thousands of service revolvers to shoot cartridges. 

The vast majority of Old West revolvers are single-actions, meaning that the user had to load cartridges through a small hole one-at-a-time and had to pull the hammer down between each shot. For this reason, gunfighters would carry several loaded revolvers, and would “fan-fire” revolvers by rapidly swiping the hammer with their off-hand for rapid-fire shots.

''A note about loading: 19th and early 20th century revolvers were not known for having safe hammer designs.  Only the reckless or stupid would fill all chambers on an older revolver, you needed one empty to safely rest the hammer and firing pin, otherwise you were liable to shoot yourself while riding.  To load revolvers you pulled the hammer back to half-cocked which pulled the firing pin clear and unlocked the cylinder.  But only one spring is keeping the gun at half-cock and any jolt could make it release and fire, so when holstered you'd want to decock the gun over an empty cylinder.  The design of the Derringer meant it was safe-ish to load both barrels.

* '''1847 Colt Walker & 1848 Colt Dragoon''' - the original BIG IRONS. The Walker was the first commercially successful revolver ever made, which was lucky for Sam Colt since he was nearly bankrupt after failing to sell the fairly weak Colt Paterson.  The Walker fired a .44 bullet and could kill horses in a single shot; it was the most powerful revolver to date.  A couple thousand were procured for the Mexican-American War, where the high power and frequent use resulted in a number of failures.  After the war an improved model called the Dragoon was introduced to address these problems, and would serve in the Indian Wars. As a cap-and-ball gun, reloading it was a finnicky business. 
* '''1851 Colt Navy''' - A lighter .36 version of the Walker/Dragoon.  Nearly a quarter million of these were produced, but the sheer number of copies not made by Colt (many copies were made, some of which Colt managed to squeeze a licensing fee out of) push that number even higher. Despite the obsolescence of Cap and Ball revolvers, cartridge conversions of Navy revolvers was very common and several mod kits were offered commercially.
* '''Beaumont–Adams revolver''' - A British revolver, notable for being double action. Accounts of the Indian Mutiny say the British officers had rivalry if this or the Colt was better. The Beaumont–Adams was faster to fire and was made in a larger, more powerful caliber; the Colt had one more cylinder.  In the Americas, it was noteworthy for being used by the Canadian mounties until the Enfield was introduced.
* '''Remington New Model 1858''' - A revolver with an all steel frame that joins the front and back that made it far stronger than the Colt. Has a notable oddity that the cylinder is relatively quick to remove and replace, so it can theoretically be reloaded comparatively quick. In reality, black powder fowling, the hand-fitting required of original examples and a second gun being faster to bear still makes the actual use more of a novelty. The extra $.50 in cost made the Union balk about buying them until the Colt factory burned down. First produced in both Army (.44) and Navy (.36) sizes, the sheer number of surplus examples post US Civil War forced Remington to make miniature versions in .31 caliber to have a market. The durability means it is now considered the best single-action cap and ball revolver for those shooting modern reproductions with no particular need for any single model.
* '''1858 Lefaucheux''' - One of the earliest examples of a cartridge-firing revolver, and a double-action one at that. Demand for it was very high at the time and was used on both sides in the Civil War, as it was significantly easier and faster to reload than percussion caps, though it was also less powerful than most .44 caliber revolvers. It used a cartridge system known as pinfire, where the firing pin was built into the cartridge itself, making it difficult to store safely and had to be aligned precisely so that the pin was exposed outside the cylinder.
* '''1860 Colt Army''' - A hastily redesigned 1851 Navy to shoot .44 to replace the aging Dragoons.  The Union bought over a hundred thousand of these.  Because the frame was originally designed for .36, they had a habit of going boom instead of bang.  An 1861 Navy model was offered but not many were made as the 1851's were holding up fine.  Conversions of the 1860 Army wasn't nearly as common as the 1851 Navy, as the frame's bad reputation was well known; it was just too much power and not enough gun to hold it.
* '''LeMat''' - a very unique European revolver that was popular with the confederacy. This revolver is best known for having way more capacity than your typical six-shooter; besides having a nine chamber cylinder, it also had a 20 gauge shotgun barrel beneath the pistol barrel. 
* '''1873 Colt Single Action Army, aka "Peacemaker"''' - [[Metal Gear|Six Bullets. More than enough to kill anything that moves]]. Was designed for cartridges from the start, and came in a bunch of different calibers.  Previous Colt designs has been ''open topped'' (lacking any frame over the cylinder), but Colt finally acknowledged that the Remington closed top design was stronger and started using it.  First cartridge revolver adopted by the US and, thanks to General Patton's eccentricity, at least two were still in service during World War II.
* '''Smith & Wesson "Schofield .45"''' - Also know as the Model 3, this was a top break designed for the Russian Army.  Major Schofield made a number of recommendations for improvements which appeared in the US model in 1875. The Schofield was best known for being the fastest revolver to reload due to its top-break design, though the .45 Schofield cartridge had a reputation for being underpowered compared to the more popular .45 Long Colt. That being said, The Model 3 was extremely popular on the international market, especially in Imperial Russia, and had many variants including double-action and carbine length versions.
* '''1877 Colt Double Action''' - Colt's first mass produced double action revolver, basically a double action version of the Peacemaker.  Had some pretty serious reliability issues and is still today regarded as the worst double action design ever brought to production.  
* '''1892 Colt Army''' - One of the first swing out cylinder revolvers; used by Teddy Roosevelt's roughriders.
* '''Remington Model 95 Derringer''' - Popular with gamblers and as a garter-gun. This tiny two-shot pistol could easily be hidden in one’s person, making it a useful personal defense or assassination weapon; though the range was pitiful beyond a couple feet.
* '''Sharps Derringer''' - another tiny pistol, usually four shots instead of two.  Interestingly, derringers like these had barrels so short the bullet was subsonic and can be seen in flight in good lighting.
* '''Pepperbox Revolvers''' - before Colt, Pepperboxes were the most common revolver configuration. each chamber was also a barrel, and while this made them mechanically simpler since you didn’t have to line up the chamber and barrel precisely, it also made the gun much heavier. Pepperboxes were still used in small-caliber revolvers where weight wasn’t an issue.
* '''Volcanic Pistol''' - only a complete fool would have carried this pistol. No, really. It was the first repeating pistol that was commercially available, but it was so underpowered that a man who attempted suicide with a Volcanic survived with only minor injury.


Long guns were also common, but the sheer variety of functionally identical single shot percussion fired rifles and shotguns makes cataloging them daunting. Hell, lots of people were still using surplus flintlocks as they were dirt cheap.  Besides... we're talking about gunslinging. That said, while gunslingers are most famous for the QuickDraw, there are still those like Billy the Kid with a reputation for being excellent marksmen.

A quick overview of the types of "long guns" cowboys would carry;

* '''Trapdoor Rifle''': Take a musket, saw a bit off the back of a barrel and slap a hinged breech and and firing pin in it's place. No really, that's what they did. There was a lot of civil war muskets lying about and it was cheaper for the US Army to do this quick and dirty upgrade than buy better new ones.
* '''Coach Gun''': While double barreled shotguns were extremely commonplace, the "Coach Gun" configuration was an iconically Western one. This short-barreled shotgun was commonly used by stagecoach guards to defend against bandits, hence where the term "riding shotgun" comes from.
* '''Repeating Shotguns''': Repeating shotguns were not as common compared to break action shotguns, but at least two existed prior to the 1890s. You had the pump-action Spencer 1882, and the wildly popular Winchester 1887 of Terminator fame. If we’re willing to stretch our timeline to prior to WWI, there’s also the famous Winchester 1897 pump action, and the Browning Auto-5, the first self-loading shotgun.
* '''Lever-Action Rifles''': These existed as early as the Civil War, and became the go-to firearm for cavalry and other horse riders. Lever-actions were commonly shorter compared to infantry rifles and could be easily stowed on a saddle, and fired pistol cartridges (making it easy to carry ammo for both your revolver and long gun). Most importantly, it was an early and extremely popular repeating firearm (a few of which were used in the Civil War, including the Henry 1860, Spencer 1860, and Sharps Carbine) before bolt-action rifles became commonplace. Popular models included the ''many'' different Winchester rifles, as well as their competitors at Marlin and Savage Arms, etc.
* '''Buffalo Rifles:''' These high-caliber rifles, as the name suggests, were powerful enough to bring down Buffalo in a single shot. Of course, they were also useful for other large game, making them popular with hunters. Famous models include the Sharps 1874, Remington No. 1 Rolling Block, and the Trapdoor Springfield.  Peep sights were common; 19th century telescopic sights were rare, expensive, big, and finicky.  

Because of their fame, many of the guns above are still produced today in limited quantities by companies that deal in replicas such as Uberti, or in the case of the Peacemaker, by their original manufacturer.