You would be statistically more likely to be gunned down in Victorian London than the American Wild West

[Zone]

This is according to this book I'm reading atm.





Apparently Cowboys couldn't even afford guns because they cost the equivalent of 9 months wages. And apparently the Native American Indians didn't give much of a shit about being at one with the living Earth,but they were masacred down from a population of 2 million in 1835 to 90,000 in 1895. They in turn killed 362 people.

[Jackalope]

Perhaps. Unless you were a native, I suppose.

[Cyberman]

You might be interested in checking out this article as well:

6 Ridiculous History Myths (You Probably Think Are True)

How many murders do you suppose these old western towns saw a year? Let's say the bloodiest, gun-slingingest of the famous cattle towns with the cowboys doing quick-draws at high noon every other day. A hundred? More?

How about five? That was the most murders any old-west town saw in any one year. Ever. Most towns averaged about 1.5 murders a year, and not all of those were shooting. You were way more likely to be murdered in Baltimore in 2008 than you were in Tombstone in 1881, the year of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral (body count: three) and the town's most violent year ever.

[Minimalist]

The Gunfight at the OK Corral was because Tombstone had a gun control ordinance on the books.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/23/...e-20110123

And one fact is usually ignored: Back then, Tombstone had far stricter gun control than it does today. In fact, the American West's most infamous gun battle erupted when the marshal tried to enforce a local ordinance that barred carrying firearms in public. A judge had fined one of the victims $25 earlier that day for packing a pistol.

"You could wear your gun into town, but you had to check it at the sheriff's office or the Grand Hotel, and you couldn't pick it up again until you were leaving town," said Bob Boze Bell, executive editor of True West Magazine, which celebrates the Old West. "It was an effort to control the violence."

Far superior to the douchebags running Arizona today.

[Anomalocaris]

... apparently the Native American Indians didn't give much of a shit about being at one with the living Earth,but they were masacred down from a population of 2 million in 1835 to 90,000 in 1895. They in turn killed 362 people.

More modern research suggested there were >>100 million Indians in North and South American on the even of Columbus's landing, and 20-30 million lived in what is now United States.

It also suggest the American prairie and the east coast forest land which had been symbols of the untamed American wilderness were in fact not natural ecosystems.. They were the result of Indian land management techniques which were ecologically some of the most destructive ever practiced by pre-iron age cultures. Indian land management by controlled fire on a vast scale has been linked to change in global atomspheric CO2 content and global temperature between 5th - 10th century.

[Zone]

The Gunfight at the OK Corral lasted for 60 seconds and involved 3 deaths.