In “The Rifleman: The Later Years,” Lucan McCain is seen carrying a phased-plasma rifle in the 40-watt range.
Well, it depends on how you chronologically want to define “The Old West.” In addition to the already mentioned Gatling, these pieces were available in the 19th century:
Maxim Gun invented 1885.
C96 Mauser invented in 1896, this one turns up in the Clint Eastwood western Joe Kidd.
The Borchardt C93 which was an ancestor of the Luger.
The Luger itself was first offered in the 1890’s.
There were also the Schoenberger pistol, Schwarlose, Bergmann, and Webley-Scott automatic pistols available before 1900. Right at the turn of the century was the Mars Pistol which, with a bit of fudging on the dates, would have allowed Lucas McCain to carry an autopistol with power well into the Dirty Harry-class.
John Browning did something interesting with a lever-action Winchester. I can’t find a reference right now, so I’ll have to go from memory. He put a ‘flap’ at the muzzle of the rifle. When it was fired the gasses pushed the flap out of the way before the bullet came out. Opposite the flap was a lever that ran to a pushrod, which connected to the rifle’s action. The gasses pushed the flap, which pushed the pushrod, which worked the action. I don’t know if it was automatic or semiautomatic. It seems to me that an automatic version would be simpler. I read once, but have no cite, that Castro’s revolutionaries had Winchesters converted to automatic fire. I don’t know if that’s true.
40 Mega Watts. :rolleyes:
These “Later Years” wouldn’t happen to have been, oh, I don’t know, the 1920’s, would they? And this phased plasma rifle you speak of sounds lethal. Could it have been classified as, oh let’s say a “Death Ray” perhaps?
OK. There were no rapid-fire personal weapons in the middle of the 19th century (the 1860s when “The Rifleman” with its 1870-1890 firearms and 1930s-1950s Western clothing was alleged to occur). The Maxim was certainly not a weapon that one could carry around and shoot by hand even less than the M-60 favored by Rambo. The rest of the semi-automatic pistols linked were from a period 25 years following the TV show.
The Taylor-Sutton feud was over by 1875.
The Lincoln County War occurred in 1877-1878 (and Billy the Kid died in 1881).
Black Bart’s career lasted from 1878 to 1883.
The gunfight at the OK Corral was in 1881.
Jesse James was killed in 1882, (and the Younger Brothers were imprisoned after the Northfield bank robbery of 1876).
The massacre at Wounded Knee closed the war against the Indians in 1890.
The Johnson County War was most violent in (and best known for) the events in 1892.
The destruction of the Daltons in Coffeyville occurred in 1892.
(And among Western legends, the two latter events are more recognized by people who actually follow history than by the general populace.)
There were a couple of later episodes of violence–the robberies by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the 1900s–but the popular image of “the Old West” generally ended before any widespread use of semi-automatic pistols.
Better? 
Yer too tied up in history, dude. The Wild West as most folks think of it never existed. The Wild Bunch, with its machineguns and autopistols, is just as much the Wild West as The Rifleman.
Um, no, my wannabe time traveler. From IMDB:
[At a gun store]
The Terminator: The .45 Long Slide, with laser sighting.
Pawn Shop Clerk: These are brand new; we just got them in. That’s a good gun. Just touch the trigger, the beam comes on and you put the red dot where you want the bullet to go. You can’t miss. Anything else?
The Terminator: Phased-plasma rifle in the forty watt range.
Pawn Shop Clerk: Hey, just what you see, pal.
carnivorousplant, may a deceased yak soil your virgin daughter’s prized fez.
My second shall call upon you in the morning, Sir!