Earlier this year, the mayor of Tombstone, Ariz., proclaimed his town “America’s Second Amendment City.”
Which is just ironic as all get-out.
Wyatt Earp
The town is known for one thing — the most famous gun battle in the history of the Wild West, which occurred 136 years ago today. But here’s the thing about that: Those revered gun-slinging lawmen the Earps (together with Doc Holliday) were engaged in trying to enforce strict gun control when the shootout happened. And they were prepared to remove the guns from the subjects’ cold, dead hands if necessary. Which they did, in three cases.
So what do we do with that? Do we honor them by enacting and enforcing strict gun control today? Or do we conclude that hey, gun control doesn’t work — see what it led to in this case?
Me, I’ve been a Wyatt Earp fan since the TV show in the ’50s, so I think the idea of disarming Ike Clanton and the other Cowboys was probably a good and just one.
And if you want to argue with that — there may still be some Cowboy partisans out there, fans of Johnny Ringo and Curly Bill Brocius — well then, I’m your Huckleberry…
This photo of Tombstone in about 1881 was taken by C. S. Fly. The famous gunfight occurred next to his studio, rather than at the O.K. Corral.
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I’ve been there, it’s amazing that anyone lived… the whole site is about the size of an average hotel room.
Photo of the actual site:
https://s3-media1.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/EMi4fCDwf3hxGDxyWfBxCg/o.jpg
Man, I thought this would be a FUN topic! I guess all of y’all are too young to remember Westerns.
But aside from that — with all the talk about gun control these days, I thought y’all would be really interested to discuss one of the most dramatic instances of gun control enforcement in American history.
I mean, do y’all think there are lessons to be drawn from this or not?
You might say, well, this isn’t the Wild West, with folks having shootouts in saloons and riding down the street firing indiscriminately and stuff.
It isn’t? We have a governing majority in our Legislature that just can’t hold itself back from allowing guns in more and more places — including latter-day saloons. Just recently, eight people were shot in the Vista in one incident.
Several years ago, I was about 20 yards from a sudden, fatal shooting at the State Fair. Pop-pop-pop — firecracker sounds, and a kid was dead.
Seems to me, a Wild West town where one of the Earps was marshal might have been safer….
I was going to link to it, but I can’t find where I wrote about that shooting incident at the Fair years ago. SURELY I wrote about it at the time, but I just can’t find it….
Brad, let me just ask you this philosophical question:
Does Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday bear any responsibility for the Tombstone version of the gunfight breaking out?
Yeah, I’m afraid so. Because of the wink…
Before that, his role was debatable. Aiming the shotgun at the Cowboys might be seen as provocative, but at the same time, he so obviously had the drop on them that up until the instant of the wink, he was actually discouraging them from drawing their weapons. So you could say the shotgun had a peacekeeping effect. As long as he had them covered that way, you could maybe see the Earps disarming them before any shots were fired.
But the perverse insolence of that wink… no Cowboy could ignore a taunt like that…
no true Cowboy, anyway.
That’s a well-cast movie. Kilmer steals the show, of course. He’s got all the great lines (such as when Ringo says he was just fooling, and Doc replies, “Ah wuzn’t.”)
But others are good, too. Michael Biehn stands out as Johnny Ringo (“All right, lunger!”) Powers Boothe is good as Curly Bill.
And of course, the presence of Sam Elliott MAKES it a Western.
I like Ike Clanton, whom you may or may not recognize as Stephen Lang. It’s the crazy eyes. I’ll always think of him as the Party Crasher in “The Hard Way“…
It’s one of my favorite movies. So many great scenes. In no particular order:
1. The scene where Doc defuses the tension by imitating Ringo’s gun handling with his cup.
2. The scene early on where Doc has the confrontation at the poker table, and has the line, “There, now we can be friends again.” I quote this line a lot.
3. The scene where Wyatt beats up Billy Bob Thornton’s character who’s scared.
4. The scene when Doc has the drop on a drunk Ringo (pistol behind his back), but the other Cowboys recognize the danger and save Ringo from certain death.
5. “I’m your Huckleberry”
“If I thought you weren’t my friend, I just don’t think I could bear it.”
For Val Kilmer, that was the role of a career…
There’s no definitive story on how things played out. Some say Holiday didn’t even pull the shotgun until after the shooting started.
I saw this western at a drive in out near Gaston-a Warhol festival.It was an X-rated place.
Everybody left.It’s dirty but it’s art