Whether you were looking across the table over a pair of aces or riding shotgun delivering the payroll, if you moved west, conquering the continent and fulfilling America’s manifest destiny, you were armed. Or you should have been. While are plenty of gats that laid claim to the title of the gun that “won the west,” the truth is it took a lot of different firearms to do the job…pistols, rifles and shotguns.

Here’s our list of the top five wild west guns.

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29 COMMENTS

  1. Is it that difficult to type a list to go with the video? One expects that from yahoo, but thought y’all were better than that.

    • .22 is a rimfire. 44-40 was a bottleneck cartridge 44 caliber and 40 grains black powder. Rifles and revolvers were chambered in this caliber so that you only needed to carry one caliber of cartridge. Innovative and popular in the day. Rimfire cartridges were popular at that time but have been supplanted by centerfire cartridges for a number of reasons.

    • A mistake. There was the .44 Henry, which was the rimfire cartridge used in the famous 1860 Henry rifle extant during the Civil War. But with the advent of center fire cartridges (made by Winchester), the Winchester 1873 was chambered in .44-40 WCF. Colt introduced its 1873 SAA in .45 Colt, but ultimately was forced to start producing them in .44-40 due to the popularity of the Winchester rifle and the fact that the Remington centerfire pistol was also chambered in .44-40, out competing Colt in the cowboy market, as buyers preferred to have the pistol and rifle chambered the same.

  4. Had a boo-foo. The 44-40 was not a rimfire round. The Henry was chambered in a 44 Rimfire and there were some Model Ps made in that caliber.

    The 44-40 was a centerfire cartridge and was also know as the 44 CLMR (Colt Lightning Magazine Rifle).

    • Ummm, I think the OP is referring to the .44-40 WCF (Winchester Center Fire), the caliber for which the 1873 Winchester rifle was chambered. Because of the popularity of Winchester’s rifle, and because that popularity affected Colt’s bottom line with respect to sales of its .45 Colt handguns, Colt came out with the Colt Lightning Carbine, chambered in .44-40 to directly compete with Winchester. It also released is “Peacemaker” in .44-40. If Colt made its own ammunition for that rifle, I’ve never seen it.

      • Yes . 44-40 WCF and 44 CLMR are the same. And 32-20.

        Proprietary naming was the rage. e.g. 38 colt and 38 S&W.

        The 44-40 version of the model P was actually called the Frontier Six Shooter.

        The32-2], 38-40, and 44-40 were designed to function better in rifles and revolvers. It was believed that the bottlenecked cartridges would cycle and eject better with high fouling associated with black powder cartridges.

        Dont know if its as i have never fired any of these in blackpowder. I know bottlenecked cartridges are more tedious to reload. I have always favored straight cases and avoided black powder.

  5. I greatly miss the days when a TTAG list of guns actually involved a list of guns. A link to ar-15 parts at a different site just doesn’t cut it when I’m expecting a list of TTAGs top 5 wild west guns.

  8. Did not watch the video but I’ll take a stab at it….

    1. Colt Peacemaker
    2. Winchester Lever Action in some weird caliber.
    3. Double Barrel Shotgun. in 8 ga.
    4. Derrenger
    5. Gatling Gun

  10. this site soon brought to you by Yahoo ‘news’ – click here to be redirected to the next page where you can click again and again and….- or some video bs

  13. Overall, lots of people have somewhat incorrect ideas of what were the most popular guns in the period of “the old west” from modern movies and gun collectors (ie, what’s now most valuable for collectors).

    Here’s some guns that lots of people forget:

    1. Shotguns. Usually double barreled, break-action, sometimes with “damascus” barrels, but not the modern pretty damascus – no, I’m talking of “trade guns” with barrels hammered out in Belgium or France and then the barrels were shipped here by the crateload for making cheap farmer/rancher guns in the US.

    2. The Springfield Trapdoor rifle of 1866. There was no qualification of “in private hands,” and the US Army was the 800lb gorilla on the western frontier in those days, and their choice of arm was the Trapdoor. The 1866 Trapdoor was the rifle of the Wagon Box Fight, and was a decisive factor in turning back Red Cloud’s forces (who included Crazy Horse). These same Indian forces had won the Fetterman Massacre only a few months earlier.

    3. The Sharps rifles, starting with those chambered in .50-70 government.

    4. The Remington Rolling Block rifles, again, starting with the .50-70 Government.

    • My reason for the Sharps , was , Won the West. In my reasoning , had it not been for the decimation of the buffalo, the west would not have been open to cattle grazing, and with out a major food source brought the native Americans under control. No guns actually won the west.

  16. I watched it so you don’t have to. Donations for bourbon to my PayPal, please,
    #5 Colt SAA
    #4 Winchester 1873
    #3 S&W Model 3 revolver
    #2 “Vest pocket pistols.”
    #1 Double barreled SxS shotty.

  17. I know I am being harsh, it’s because I think you are capable of doing better than this.
    Come on this is just barley more historically accurate than the Winchester 92’s and Colt SAA’s
    used on Bonanza during the California Gold Rush,
    Pretty much the usual, half baked, list of B.S. urban legend T.V. “famous guns” most
    people in the west could never have afforded to own. Everybody did not have a
    Winchester “1 of 1000” , and a Colt Single Action Army with a 7 1/2 inch barrel
    Cheap patent infringement copies of most every description, from Belgian or
    back east. Surplus Civil War guns of every description, and/or cartridge conversions of the same.
    Those were the Real Guns of the “Old West”. I did notice you didn’t say 45 “long Colt” that was good.

  18. Yeah, that does it for me too. Not gonna watch a stupid video when I came here to READ… a skill that seems to be rapidly vanishing.

    If I wanted to watch this video, I’d just go to YouTube, not come here! Moving on…

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