While I was out in California, I had the opportunity to visit a shooting range and shoot some old-fashioned six guns like this Beretta Stampede. It’s a replica of the Colt Single Action Army, aka “The Peacemaker”, that has appeared in countless Westerns. This particular replica gun is made in Italy, where the love for Spaghetti Westerns apparently continues unabated.

Shooting a single-action revolver is a lot different from a modern pistol: there are individual chambers to load, cylinders to rotate, and a lot of manipulation of the various clicky parts of the gun for every shot. It’s not a very fast process, but it becomes pretty cool when you’re replaying lines from your favorite westerns as you punch holes in the paper targets down range: “They’re poisoning the well!”, “No one buys a drink for Molly but me!” and “You’ll never take my land!”

I heard there’s a national group called the Single Action Shooting Society that has on exhibition matches: it’s quite popular out west, and there’s even a few groups here in New England. It’s sort of like a role-playing shooting sport built around “Cowboy Action Shooting”. You pick an “old west” nickname as an alias, register, and dress up in period costume. Like a Renaissance Fair I guess, except it’s the 1800s. Apparently they put on quite the barbecue at these events, so I am looking forward to attending one in person. I was wondering if, being Asian, I wouldn’t fit in, but apparently there’s this Chinese guy, Dennis Ming aka “China Camp”, who won the big tournament 5 times in a row.