Swifty Morgan
member
I found out that a bunch of Have Gun - Will Travel episodes were on Youtube, so I've been watching. Saw some things of interest to a gun person.
1. Paladin claims his trigger pull is one ounce. Better hope he's not eating beans around the campfire, because if he breaks wind, someone is going down.
2. I saw an episode where he goes off on gun control. I couldn't believe it. It was 1958, for crying out loud. A sheriff tried to impose Philadelphia's ordinances on a little town in the West, and people went nuts. He didn't allow guns in town. Paladin told him he was disarming decent people who obeyed the law, and he said criminals would still have guns.
3. He doesn't carry a rifle. Makes me want to smack him. He constantly goes up against bullies with repeating lever action rifles, and all he has is a revolver. In one episode, he even admitted revolvers are inferior. He was trapped in a mine entrance, and he couldn't shoot back at bad guys who had him pinned down with rifles. He said they had twice the range of his revolver. So why not get a rifle?
4. The show features magical entertainment guns. Paladin walked away from a bully, and the bully shot a skinny cigar out of his mouth from a good distance with a revolver. How come those revolvers are never available when I go to gun stores?
5. In every episode, Paladin displays shockingly poor trigger discipline. The show always opens with him cocking a revolver with his finger on the trigger.
There is a fair amount of projecting NYC liberal values onto the old West in the show, and it makes for some laughs. Gene Roddenberry was one of the writers, so a certain amount of ham-handed propagandizing is to be expected. I noticed that the really dumb, poorly written episodes often had his name tacked to them.
1. Paladin claims his trigger pull is one ounce. Better hope he's not eating beans around the campfire, because if he breaks wind, someone is going down.
2. I saw an episode where he goes off on gun control. I couldn't believe it. It was 1958, for crying out loud. A sheriff tried to impose Philadelphia's ordinances on a little town in the West, and people went nuts. He didn't allow guns in town. Paladin told him he was disarming decent people who obeyed the law, and he said criminals would still have guns.
3. He doesn't carry a rifle. Makes me want to smack him. He constantly goes up against bullies with repeating lever action rifles, and all he has is a revolver. In one episode, he even admitted revolvers are inferior. He was trapped in a mine entrance, and he couldn't shoot back at bad guys who had him pinned down with rifles. He said they had twice the range of his revolver. So why not get a rifle?
4. The show features magical entertainment guns. Paladin walked away from a bully, and the bully shot a skinny cigar out of his mouth from a good distance with a revolver. How come those revolvers are never available when I go to gun stores?
5. In every episode, Paladin displays shockingly poor trigger discipline. The show always opens with him cocking a revolver with his finger on the trigger.
There is a fair amount of projecting NYC liberal values onto the old West in the show, and it makes for some laughs. Gene Roddenberry was one of the writers, so a certain amount of ham-handed propagandizing is to be expected. I noticed that the really dumb, poorly written episodes often had his name tacked to them.
