Most of those old Wild West movies where some gang rides into town and terrorizes it's citizens are complete Hollywood fiction. 99% of the citizens in those towns had guns, could shoot very well, all the way down to the children. Bad guys riding into town would have faced a barrage of lead from all sides.
Dang, I should have read the thread first. See my previous post just above.
Most of those old Wild West movies where some gang rides into town and terrorizes it's citizens are complete Hollywood fiction. 99% of the citizens in those towns had guns, could shoot very well, all the way down to the children. Bad guys riding into town would have faced a barrage of lead from all sides.
That was the reality - but the Hollywood version was far from reality. I spent some time Out West, and checking out old newspapers and historical markers, I found very few mentions of Hollywood style gunfights.
As a student of western history, no. The famous townspeople uprising at Northfield against the James Gang was the exception and not the rule. Or perhaps it was becoming the rule, since the scenerio was repeated in Coffeyville where the Dalton's met their end. In either event, in the West's heyday, outlaw gangs, and even non-outlaw gangs pretty much ran ripshod over small towns just as depicted in most of the older movies. The unromantic truth is that lawlessness sucks, even in the old West.