The lone gunman squaring off in a dusty street, hand hovering over a low-slung holster, is one of the most durable images in American gear culture. Its origin lies not on the frontier but in the East, in a formal ritual imported from Europe and practiced for decades by prominent men in the young ...
When I plucked the September-October issue of Smithsonian magazine out of my P.O. Box, the first article I turned to was “The Secret Life of Cormac McCarthy” by Richard Grant. As I skimmed it, a pull-quote leaped out at me: “He never left the house without a book. He never left the house wi...
In 1969, an armed citizen named Richard Davis shot it out with a trio of armed robbers and survived — but was hit a couple of times during the melee. Deciding that there had to be something better to stop bullets with than one’s own flesh, he conceived soft, concealable body armor and became ...
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have Colt’s big bore double action in its handiest form, built in 1882 and chambered in 44-40. The Model 1878 was Colt’s answer to a market that wanted a double action revolver in a serious caliber. It sold in decent numbers and it w...
When I was a teenager, the misconception I had about professional racing was that the trophy would go to the most powerful car, or perhaps the most aggressive driver. It was in the mid-90s that a number of racing games hit the market that tried to simulate the physics and details of motorsports a...
Frank Hamer and his Instincts were a Bridge between Old West Justice and Modern Investigations. The post The Lawman who Hunted Bonnie and Clyde appeared first on .
James Earl Jones is known for lots of things—he played famous roles like Darth Vader’s voice in Star Wars and not-so-famous roles like General Solomon in the Command & Conquer video games. But he was also (perhaps to the surprise of those who only know him for his thespian work) a...
By all accounts, Cekada passed the test, and he will likely become the next Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.