Posted by keithmerk on Friday, August 11, 2006 at 1:19PM :
In Reply to: Re: Right to Bear Arms... posted by David Sherman on Friday, August 11, 2006 at 1:04PM :
I respectfully disagree. The most of it is hollywoodized but there is a little town called Tombstone in AZ which was the site for mulitple shooting and lets not forget William Bonner (billy the kid) he shot a few folk in his time. And range wars did happen frequently but they were usually over in a matter of days not years.
Alot of the "Wild West" stuff was started by rumors to keep people in the east. The cattle ranchers wanted as much open range as they could and new if people started moving out here then they would lose open range to farmers and town folk.
You may have read old newspapers but I have read old timers journals who say that the west was wild but not as much as John Wayne would have you believe. There are stories of range wars about water and grazing grounds and all kinds of stuff but most of the time the folk who lived back then were peaceable and law abiding. The biggest difference was that often things ended up with a few shots being fired by both parties of an arguement.
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