A Beautiful Antique 19th Century 'Wild West' Nickel Plated Derringer Revolver, Fully 'New York' Style Engraving & Very Fancy Deep Scroll Design Acanthus Leaf and Vines Grips

7mm pinfire action with foldaway trigger, excellent tight and crisp action, as good as new. Cylinder engraved with "The Guardian American Model of 1878" and an ELG oval proof stamp. A stunning little pocket Derringer imported for the American Wild West period personal protection market in the late 1870's until the very early 1900's. The perfect multi shot close quarter action revolver for the riverboat and saloon gamblers, and for ladies whose safety was their primary concern in those dangerous and troubled times in the American West.

The most famous shootout in the history of the Wild West – the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona – lasted just 30 seconds. In that half-a-minute of mayhem and murder at around 3pm on 26 October 1881, three outlaws from a gang known as the ‘Cowboys’ were shot dead when they faced off against the Earp brothers and their friend Doc Holliday.

That the brief and bloody shooting happened isn’t in doubt. But the real gunfight little resembled the way it has been portrayed in numerous films and books. Aside from the brevity of the action, the shooters were extremely close together, standing about six feet apart when the exchange of bullets began. It hadn’t been prearranged, almost all of the 30 shots were fired from handguns, and it didn’t even happen at the OK Corral, but in a vacant lot on the side of a photography studio nearby.
The dead Cowboys have been largely greyed out of the collective memory of the event, reduced to anonymous villains when compared to town marshal Virgil Earp and his deputies. But in the aftermath, and amidst a swell of sympathy in Tombstone for the dead, the Earps and Holliday were arrested on charges of murdering brothers Tom and Frank McLaury and 19-year-old Billy Clanton as they tried to surrender. They were put on trial and spent time behind bars before ultimately being acquitted.
In the grand scheme of things, the gunfight was a minor, albeit lethal, scuffle. It was borne from a simmering feud involving ageold themes – jealousy, power, money, mistrust and machismo – which, in the febrile booze-and bullet-filled atmosphere of the time, got out of hand.

That year, 1881, was one of the wildest 12 months in the American Old West, at least as big-name shootouts go. Three months before the OK Corral, on 14 July, Sheriff Pat Garret gunned down Billy the Kid, while earlier, in April, the ‘Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight’ had taken place in the infamously lawless town of El Paso, Texas.

The Wild West was being mythologised before the era even ended, with gunslinging cowboys and lawmen representing freedom and tough justice; living the original American Dream. The gunfight at the OK Corral didn’t became widely known until 1931, when Stuart N Lake published a. biography of Earp. It was long after the West had been tamed. Yet for years already, ‘dime westerns’ – cheap and popular, pulp fiction-style booklets – had been transforming the gritty, hard-bitten, weapon-wielding characters into legends.

The Earp biography inspired the classic films My Darling Clementine and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. That was nothing unusual. In every decade since its inception, the film industry has delighted in the antics of trigger-happy cowboys, bandanna-wearing bandits, vigilante posses, and justice-serving sheriffs and marshals, which now define the Wild West. Although it would be fair to say 95% of the Wild West was actually composed of hard working pioneers and those looking for a better future, through the hardest times, and toughest of conditions, and yet it’s overall success is self evident today.

As with all our antique guns, no license is required as they are all unrestricted antique collectables

Code: 25042