Mark Twain Quotes About Gun

[JimT]

I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson's seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It had only one fault--you could not hit anything with it. One of our 'conductors' practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and behaved herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, and he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief.
- Mark Twain, Roughing It


I have carried a revolver; lots of us do, but they are the most innocent things in the world.
- Mark Twain, interview, Adelaide South Australian Register, 10/14/1895


George Bemis . . . wore in his belt an old original "Allen" revolver, such as irreverent people called a "pepper-box." Simply drawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As the trigger came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a feat which was probably never done with an "Allen" in the world. But George's was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the stage-drivers afterward said, "If she didn't get what she went after, she would fetch something else." And so she did. She went after a deuce of spades nailed against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the owner came out with a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was a cheerful weapon--the "Allen." Sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it.
- Mark Twain, Roughing It

[AJMD429]

"...She went after a deuce of spades nailed against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the owner came out with a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow..."

[piller]

I have seen a few guns at shooting ranges which people were almost that accurate with.

[AmBraCol]

That first quote always reminds me of the first cartridge firing pistol I ever owned, a glorious little Rossi double barrel derringer. It was only slightly more effective than Twain's revolver, due to the more potent LR cartridge is shot. So the two barrels about equaled the seven shots Twain had! And it was about as accurate as well.

[Bill in Oregon]

I don't know how many times I have read "Roughing It," and laughed each time like I had never seen it before. The pepperbox that fetched the mule, the "right sociable heifer" in the stagecoach, efforts at reform, the coyote" thinking about his sins." Dear Father, please grant us another wit as dry as the one you blessed Samuel Clemens with, please?