What 3 guns would you bring if you could travel back in time to the old west?

[The Heretic]

Another consideration would be one of those cartridge conversions for a cap & ball revolver. You start off with the cap & ball, more or less the handgun of the period, but you have the cartridge conversion cylinder to shoot your modern ammo. The revolver itself would have to be custom made to be stronger than the typical cap & ball today - I would want it to work with magnum pressure loads. It would be stainless, but finished black.

But maybe do it the other way around - take something like my 329PD and have a cap & ball cylinder conversion made for it. Maybe a .44-40 cylinder too and maybe some of the other .44 caliber chamberings. Then have it modded/designed to make the cylinder conversion easy to swap out - I saw a double action conversion revolver that you just pull a pin and the cylinder and the crane came out - as easy as taking the cylinder out of a single action. Forget which make/model it was.

Personally, I don't know why I would bother to go back east and sell the design to a manufacturer - Browning made a living doing that, but I don't think he got rich from it until he decided to make his own guns.

 

[RicInOR]

Reality is that when it is the time for Railroads you get railroads, not air planes.
That is either Heinlein or Pournelle.

What ever you take - you would use to arm yourself. Better would be to duck the locals: Your language will be wrong. Your accent will be wrong. Got teeth? Many didn't. Got filings? What are you wearing? How about manners?

Assuming you can explain away all that without being a witch.

Good luck eating.

Assuming all that ... just like the time machine --

You would want something just slightly advanced for the time and still hand build-able. The S&W revolver a gun that /almost/ won the west (ammo due to the army's needs, stupid logistics)

Any of the pump shotties - mostly a cartridge issue.

A repeater like the Henry.

 

[Certaindeaf]

I love these threads....

"This is my BOOM Stick"

Don't forget the chainsaw

 

[deann]

AK47,1911,BARRET BROS.BOLT ACTION 50.CAL

 

[aflineman]

Since we are talking in what ifs, I would take the first three weapons I could find which are self replicating.

 

[rick benjamin]

Me n <broken link removed> .

 

[Riot]

The main thing I would bring would be body armor. Body armor in the 1800s would be a game changer, for sure...then other accessories like a scope, suppressor, range finder, etc...

A scoped, suppressed rifle would mop up anything that came your way...then a concealed, hi-cap semi auto pistol for close stuff.

As mentioned earlier, if you're displaying a bunch of toys around, you're going to get stabbed in the neck by a prostitute and have them taken away from you...but if nobody knows you're even a player (because you're dealing silent shots from hundreds of yards away) you could keep doing whatever you want without any issues...that's until small pox kills you.

If I could travel back in time I'd probably bring back guns to the future. A mint Navy Colt would look great in my safe...but I'd probably want to just assassinate Lincoln before he became president.

 

[Qjay]

Girandoni Air Rifle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_Air_Rifle
Just because it is a great hunting/defense weapon, and already available in the Old West.


If I go with a modern airgun, I'd get a Quigley 72 or a Quackenbush .50 cal. I like air, because you just need a pump and a mold, and in the old west, the powder wasn't that awesome anyhow. The 72 uses 12 ga slugs, and costs a lot more than the Quackenbush, but I'd be really happy with either one.

Colt 1911 in .45 with an optional .22 barrel conversion. I love this particular bit of versatility.

Thompson M1A1 from WWII, because it shares some ammo and has excellent capabilities.

Dang, now I need to find something that can take a bayonet...

 

[RVTECH]

Just because it is a great hunting/defense weapon, and already available in the Old West.

Given it's history I doubt there were many Girandonis in the 'Old West'. It kind of pre dated that time frame - if you are using the generally accepted time frame of post Civil War to the late 1880s as being the 'Old West' - but it was still subjective.

 

[The Heretic]

I usually don't understand or agree with the "if you could only have X number of guns..." questions. Such constraints are artificial.

The real question should be "if you could only have as many firearms and ammo as you can physically carry on your person while walking on foot for 100 miles, which would they be?"

 

[clearconscience]

My AR rifle, my AR carbine, and my AR pistol.

 

[Scrammer]

I've always wanted to show up at the Alamo with 200 1903 Springfields and lots of ammo. ;-)

 

[Qjay]

But if you only had three? I'd say an M134, an M2 Heavy Barrel, and a M82A3 would be good choices for the Alamo. Heck, imagine the difference 3 M16s could make.

 

[Gator Monroe]

Type 56 Chinese "Spiker" AK , Gen 3 Glock 17, M14,

 

[AMProducts]

I'm not really sure introducing anything to an environment that austere would be such a great thing. 1850's... that means you're pre-civil war, introducing modern cartridge firearms with enough lead time for them to get the manufacturing kinks worked out, that could make one hell of a mess. If only one side enjoyed the advantage (probably the north, as they had all the manufacturing) it would have been a genocide. If both sides did, and employed the dominant tactics, the US never would have become the world power it did after WW2, probably because the allies would have lost WW1.

Don't get me wrong, I like technology, and I'm always interested in the results of it's development, however any time advanced technology gets into the hands of a species who doesn't understand it, it's either ignored, or used to wipe each other out. The first case is like dropping an I-phone on an ant hill. The second is the jihadist nuclear weapon. In neither case is the possessor of the technology ready to accept the implications and responsibilities that come with it.