The gun, like the axe and the plow, was an essential tool in the exploration and settlement of the trans-Mississippi West. It provided food for the cooking pot as well as protection against two- or four-legged marauders. As the century progressed, firearms also provided various forms of recreation for both men and women, primarily target and competition shooting. Of course the employment of the gun, whether for good or evil, depended upon the user. The men and women who lived the nineteenth-century western experience sometimes described in detail the role firearms played in their lives. Such...