Gunfighter Stats

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

The following article was previously saved by me from “The Old West Web Ride”, http://www.theoldwestwebride.com/ , which is apparently not up and running at this time.  Hamp

Gunfighter or Gunmen
This is a amalgamation of articles
 
The gunfighter era was an outgrowth of the Civil War. Some outlaws were spawned of the Civil War as were Quantrill's Raiders.

The average year of birth was 1853. The average year of death was 1895. About 1/3 of all gunmen died of "natural causes." Many gunmen did not die violently and lived a normal life span (70 years or so). Of those who did die violently (shot or executed), the average age of death was 35. The gunfighters-turned-lawmen lived longer lives than their persistently criminal counterparts.

Most professional gunfighters died in states or territories where the most shootings occurred: Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, California, Missouri, and Colorado.

The "occupations" of the various gunmen were often those that used firearms in ordinary pursuits. They often carried firearms as a job requirement. There were 110 gunmen who were law officers, 75 who were cowboys, 54 as ranchers, 46 as farmers, 45 as rustlers, 35 as hired guns, but also men who had been soldiers, miners, scouts, teamsters, actors, butchers, bounty hunters, etc.

Gunfighting peaked in the 1870s: Six fights in TX and KS in 1870, 22 in 1871, 13 in 1872, 27 in 1873, 14 in 1874, 13 in 1875, 22 in 1876, 21 in 1877, 36 in 1878, 14 in 1879. In the 1880s: 25 in 1880, 27 in 1881, 15 in 1882, 9 in 1883, 17 in 1884, 7 each in 1885-6, 20 in 1887, 10 in 1888, and nine in 1889. 1895-96 were bad years, 19 fights in each, but then it began to taper off.

Who were the gunfighters? And what were their gunfights really like?

I'm happy to say that Leon C. Metz, best known for his first-rate biographies of Pat Garrett and John Wesley Hardin, addresses those very questions in "Gunslingers and the Art of Gunfighting", which also features some pretty high-caliber artwork. Was Big Jim Currie a gunfighter or just a drunken bully who happened to carry two guns under his coat? His opponent, actor Maurice Barrymore, was ready to fight all right...but with his fists. Barrymore, a former amateur boxing champion in England, was by no stretch of the imagination a gunfighter; he didn't carry a gun. Currie opened up on him anyway, and a little later shot dead another unarmed actor.

Is it a gunfight if only one of the parties involved has a gun? Probably not. But when the smoke cleared, one man was dead and another was badly wounded. It had to be something. You might call it "murder," but the jury in Marshall didn't see it that way. So maybe it was just a "shooting incident." Later though, Big Jim Currie went to prison for killing his saloon business partner, and a few years after his release, he was fatally shot in a brawl by a man described as a "Mexican bandit." How many shooting incidents did a fellow have to be in to rate as a gunfighter?

Metz would probably put Currie in his "gunman" category, not the "gunfighter" category. Like some other Western historians and writers, Metz makes a distinction between gunfighters, who shoot you face to face, and gunmen, who are more likely to shoot you in the back. He admits that the line gets fuzzy at times. In the foreword to Eugene Cunningham's 1934 classic Triggernometry: A Gallery of Gunfighers, Eugene Manlove Rhodes wrote: "In the old days we said 'gunman'--a word exactly comparable with 'swordsman.' Because of the modern gangster, the word gunman now carries the implication of coward, of baby-killer. It brings up the idea of seven against one; of helpless victims 'taken for a ride'...." Rhodes went on to say that the gunmen of the 19th century at least did not kill women or children or men who were unarmed and bound. Well, mostly they didn't. On the other hand, these gunmen--or gunslingers, shootists, shooters, gun hands, pistoleros, man-killers, whatever you choose to call them--rarely stepped out onto Main Street like Marshal Matt Dillon and allowed the other guy to slap leather first.

Metz is more particular than most when deciding whether someone falls into the "gunfighter" category. Not only would Big Jim Currie not qualify, but neither would such famous outlaws as Jesse James, Cole Younger and Bob Dalton, who were "not so much gunfighters as holdup-artists with an occasional compelling or clumsy need to shoot someone." You won't find Big Jim Currie in Bill O'Neal's Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters, either, but O'Neal does include Wild Bunch members such as "Flat Nose" George Curry, as well as those brotherly holdup men--the Jameses, Youngers and Daltons. In his introduction, O'Neal writes that he included men in his book who were "involved in at least two verifiable shootouts--usually but not necessarily fatal ones." Both Metz and O'Neal agree that gunfighters operated on both sides of the law, which makes the name of this magazine's most popular department, "Gunfighters and Lawmen," a bit misleading. A gunfighter could be a lawman, too...but not all lawmen were gunfighters.

Even if you use Metz's narrower definition of a gunfighter and agree that these men were a breed apart, there were still quite a few of them roaming between Deadwood and Tombstone. But who were the greatest gunfighters? In his book, O'Neal rates the gunfighters by their number of "verifiable" killings. Here's the top of his list: Killin' Jim Miller (12 killings), John Wesley Hardin (11), Bill Longley (11), Harvey Logan (9), Wild Bill Hickok (7), John Selman (6), Dallas Stoudenmire (5), Cullen Baker (5) and King Fisher (5). Billy the Kid, Ben Thompson (see story, P. 48), Henry Brown, John Slaughter, Clay Allison and Jim Courtright are next with four killings apiece. According to O'Neal, Wyatt Earp had no killings (but five possible killings or assists), Bat Masterson and Jesse James had one each, and Doc Holliday and Garrett had two each.

For comparison, here is Metz's Top 10: 1, Wes Hardin; 2, Wild Bill Hickok; 3, Billy the Kid; 4, Pat Garrett; 5, Dallas Stoudenmire; 6, Wyatt Earp; 7, Doc Holliday; 8, Clay Allison; 9, King Fisher; 10, Jim Miller. Gunfighter historian Joseph Rosa, who is interviewed in "Reviews," has also given us a Top 10 (gunfighters who most deserve their reputations, but not necessarily for how many men they killed): 1, Hickok; 2, Hardin; 3, Bat Masterson; 4, Stoudenmire; 5, Ben Thompson; 6, Ed Masterson; 7, Thomas James Smith; 8, Virgil Earp; 9, Wyatt Earp; and 10, Chris Madsen.
 

[CanChaserKate]

Just my Opinion, but upon Further Study of BTK, he should not even be in Metz's Top 3. Billy was the Least Bad of ALL the Outlaws and such I have Ever run across.