Heck, there was less violence in the entire era of the Old West (1865-1890) than there is weekly in a typical American city today.
Citizen justice extended far beyond the old west. The days of citizen justice extended into the 1920s and even 1930s. Citizens were especially sensitive about bank robbing before the days of FDIC insurance. Bank robbers were often met with citizen justice as they attempted an escape from town. The Great Depression made the bankers into enemies so the public became sympathetic to bank robbers for a few years.
There certainly were ugly sides to citizen justice especially the lynchings. Despite ugly sides, many bad hombres were given swift justice. Law enforcement was not equipped to deal with some of the bad applies so citizens had to protect themselves and their property.
The popular notion of the Wild West is a creation of show business that started with Wild Bill Cody and continues to this day in Hollywood.
There’s quite a bit of historical research that indicates that life was not nearly as violent as Hollywood would have you believe. For example, Dodge City, of Gunsmoke fame, had a grand total of 15 violent deaths from 1876-1885, a murder rate of 1.5 per year. Gunsmoke portrayed a few murders per week during its twenty year run on television.
Correct. In general, things were mostly peaceful and law abiding compared to most large cities today.
The isolated incidents have been repeated over and over and exaggerated by Hollywood to the point that people think it was an every day occurrence. And since there was no false security of 911, people understood that it was their duty to protect themselves and their community. See what happened to the James gang in Northfield MN.
One of the things that I always laughed at was the supposed handful of bad guys that could ride in town and terrorize the citizens at will. What a joke that was considering that those old west towns were settled by men who fought either in the Civil War or against the Indians even to get to the west. A few drunk cowboys were not going to terrorize those guys.