Nothing makes me shudder and cringe like being introduced as a firearms expert.  To tell you the truth, I’ve met very few real experts in the firearms industry.  Ken...

Robust. Strong. Sturdy. Sound. All these words are fit for describing Colt’s New Service double-action revolver. The New Service was an evolution of sorts of Colt’s first revolver with a swing-out cylinder...

In studying the gunfights of the Old West it quickly becomes clear that many of the most savvy shootists preferred using a rifle whenever they could get their hands on one quickly.  The handgun came into use when dealing with a surprise encounter or the rifle was not close at...

The .44 Magnum is one of my all-time favorite cartridges. But it hasn’t always been that way. We didn’t really get together until I got some firearms education and got enough nerve to do some experimentation...

You just never know what you’ll see at a small-town gun show. A few years ago, I walked into our show that’s held each Labor Day weekend at Sul Ross State University in Alpine and sauntered up...

Dan Westbrook had been a veteran of World War I. When he got home from that little fuss he went to work as a theft investigator for one...

In 1917, Gee McMeans was much better known than Frank Hamer. McMeans had been a Texas Ranger, the elected sheriff of Ector County, Texas...

John Taffin passed away on March 10, 2025. He was 85 years old. John invited me to the Shootist Holiday in the early 1990s...It must have..

Studying the gunfighters, lawmen, and outlaws of the Old West one encounters some shootouts that were unavoidable. Some were justified...

The country where I live in far West Texas has the only mountains in the state. They run from the Big Bend of the Rio Grande all the way...

Any way you’d want to look at it, Rafael “Red” Lopez was a bad dude. Border legend has it that he was from the Mexican state of Coahuila...

Hunting camps and the folks we share them with are as important as the wildlife we see and hunt, oftentimes they are the most important...

The grand 41 Magnum turned 60 years old this year. Originally it was designed to bridge the gap between the 357 and 44 Magnums, and...

Instead of El Paso, this story actually starts in southeast New Mexico near a town called Eddy, now known as Carlsbad. And the central...

Smith & Wesson’s Model 28 Highway Patrolman is a no-nonsense, stout sixgun. The matt-blued Model 28 was designed to be a working...