Scott here with another episode of the History and Plug podcast.

Gunfighters were a unique kind of outlaw that made a living with his weapons in the Old

West that appeared in the late 19th century and disappeared in the early 20th century.

But there's no reason that this type of criminal should have only existed in the United States.

Pistol duels existed long before

the 19th century. Crime was all across the world. And using pistols, commit crime and engage in shootouts,

few armed robberies of banks and trains, could have easily been done in Europe. Why is this archetype

so closely associated with the United States and why did it only really exist there in mass numbers?

To understand American history and its deep-seated relationship with violence,

we have to look at the last three decades of the 1800s in the American West,

which had the highest murder rate per capita in American history,

and it all boils down to one place.

Texas.

Texas was born in violence on two fronts,

with Mexico to the south and the Comanche to the north,

and the invention of the Colt Revolver

only made the area wilder and less orderly. Across the 19th century frontier, defending one's

honor and reputation often resulted in duels and bitter feuds. After the cattle business boom,

the sensation spilled into the greater west from Arizona's Wyoming to Kansas, and there

was an incredible amount of money to be made by stealing livestock. This trigger-happy

assortment of rustlers, hustlers, gamblers, and freedom that's lawmen and their desire to

defend their honor, caught the eye of newspapers, igniting a firestorm of myth-making. The word

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