Noted author Giles Tippette wrote some excellent books, among them many westerns. While they were entertaining, there was a HUGE annoyance factor in them for me, and I suspect for a lot of other readers as well:
Tippette knew absolutely NOTHING about guns, and made that ignorance obvious in all of his westerns. One would think readers or friends or editors would contact him and explain the error of his ways, but apparently they did not, or he ignored them.
They were horrid mistakes. He had NO IDEA what, for instance, .44-40 meant. (It’s a .44-caliber cartridge loaded originally with 40 grains of black powder.) Instead, Tippet wrote about his ‘hero’ Wilson Young: “I carried a Colt .44/.40, which is a .40-caliber revolver on a .44 frame [WRONG!]. With the heavier frame I get the weight in the hand and the stability without the godawful inaccuracy of the higher caliber [PURE B/S].” He later called this a Navy Colt. (The Colt Navy was a .36-caliber percussion revolver from the Civil War era.)
There’s more: He carries a “model 91 Winchester lever action .30-.30.” (Always a dot before each number.) (The Model 91 Winchester was a double shotgun in the mid 20th century, never even advertised in the USA.)
Then he has his partner get a “…Colt .42-caliber double-action revolver which he could shoot with much better accuracy than the .45-caliber knuckle buster he’d been carrying….” [EGAD!]
These quotes are from number eight in the Wilson Young series, “Hard Luck Money.” The blunders went on through all the many books I’ve read by Tippette. And they got worse. His gun became a double-action, in an era where that was extremely rare. And then it was revealed he had the front of the trigger guard cut away. This is never recommended.
In another book of his the blundering went on. The time period of the action was given to be in the late 1800’s. The rifle being used was a .30-’06…. DUHHHH. This cartridge did not exist until the U.S. military demanded it in 1906. What was this fool thinking of?
What Tippette didn’t know: Back then, just about everybody who used a gun carried a single-action Colt, and very rarely anything else. A variety of calibers were available in the Colt SA, all of ’em on the same frame. All had barrels appropriate to the caliber, so none of them showed a significant variation in weight or balance, no matter the caliber. Accuracy was generally outstanding, and did not vary by caliber.
Although D/A guns existed in the late 1800s, they were rare, clumsy, and not well thought of. Anyone who wanted to get a powerful shot off fast carried a single-action Colt 45. (The proper name of the cartridge was .45 Long Colt). Occasionally they’d prefer .44-40 caliber in the same Colt single-action, so the cowboy could use the same cartridge in pistol and rifle, which would be the popular Winchester 1873 carbine, AKA “The Gun That Won the West.” Rifle calibers were generally .44-40 and .38-40. There were others, but they were never popular.
We also have Mickey Spillane, creator of Mike Hammer, who wrote up Mike Hammer as carrying and using a 1911 Colt 45 Auto. It was clear Spillane never touched a 45 auto, as proven by his many foolish statements about the gun that could not happen. One example was putting the safety on without the hammer being cocked. He also had no idea how the 45 auto is supposed to be carried, i.e. in a cocked and locked position.
There have been many others, I’m sure, authors who love the mystery of the carried gun yet never have touched one, let alone shot one, or even bothered to learn about it. That somehow seems wrong to me.
