Given than the CAS rules allow the use of the M1887 lever-action and M1897 pump-action shotguns, I’ve always wondered why they only allow Single-Action pistols- especially given that the British and Europeans had been making double-action pistols for many decades by the time the M1897 came on the market.
Any CAS shooters out there know why the rules require single-action handguns only, given that double-action pistols were extremely common by the 1870s and 1880s?
Because that wouldn’t be the Cowboy Way. Anyway, didn’t you know that the ONLY handgun used in the Old West was the 1873 Single-Action Army Colt? Well, some fellows also carried Derringers, but they were low-down snakes in the grass who cheated at poker. 
Were the Brit/Euro double action guns widely available in the US at the time? If not, I’d say that’s the reason.
They do have some nice toys… before I read your username and remembered your location, I’d have asked if you were at my shooting club in the lousy weather yesterday. They had a SASS (Single Action Shooting Society) shoot (as far as I know) on Sunday.
I do know that the Cowboy action folks really get into their shoots though. The costuming is amazing, and the guns are drool worthy.
Nah, the Old West was lousy with double-action pistols. Both Colt and Smith & Wesson sold slightly more of their double-action models than their single-action ones. I don’t know why the Colt Single Action Army became the handgun of choice for the movies. Maybe because it was prettier than the others, and once the studios had built up a stock they were loathe to add to it.
Oh, and I suppose SA pistols were a lot safer in the hands of actors.
AHA! The Straight Dope!
http://coyote.gatogrande.net/rules_committee_minutes.htm
"The Committee began discussion of Rule Three(II)(D)(3) which prohibits the use of the Gunfighter Style with Classic Double Action Pistols. It was generally felt that Classic Double Action pistols were sufficiently safe for Gunfighting, but might confer an unfair competitive advantage. The question of whether CDA Gunfighters should compete in the Gunfighter or CDA classifications was also considered. "
And the Derringers were powerful weak.
I’d figured it was a reaction against B western movies, in which Our Hero, armed only with his trusty six-shooter, is waylaid by a gang of nine Bad Guys. Miraculously, none of them could hit the continent of Asia with an ICBM an a H-bomb, while he’s able to shoot all nine of them with nine well-placed shots. With his six-shooter. Without reloading.
“Unfair competitive advantage”? Considering that particular club also has competitions for Autoloaders as well (not many of those in the old west at all!), I can’t see why they can’t have a Classic Double Action Pistol one as well…
Some of the spaghetti Westerns have machine guns and automatic pistols.
Maybe he was pretending he had a Lemat. 
But if the no-good son of a horny toad got the drop on ya…
I believe you are referring to The Wild Bunch, which is not a “spaghetti” western, having been made by Sam Peckinpah, an American. The automatic weapons were appropriate because it was set in 1913.
[hujack]I had a Model 97 shotgun that I just loved. While I was in the Army my father sold it for $25. It’s a good thing for him that he had sold my only gun. I might have shot him for that.[/hijack]
David, your .45 didn’t go missing into your dufflebag? My dad’s was stolen on the transport ship (Queen Mary–all painted gray and with many more on board than it was designed for but too fast for a sub to catch) and he made the mistake to report it while still in US waters. Had he waited before they reached international waters it would’ve been considered the fortunes of war but he was responsible for it until then. He refused to pay for it until the early 70s, when he wanted a government job.
Or maybe the 1859 John Walch Navy Model 12 shot revolver which you can see about one third of the way down this page.
1917, I think. The machine gun they use is a Browning M1917, introduced in the same year. There’s also reference to aircraft “That they’re going to use in the coming war” (which I took to mean the War the US was going to enter, ie WWI, in 1917).
Yes, it was a Browning M1917 but I assume that was because a more correct Colt-Browning M1895 “Potato Digger” wasn’t available. The M1917 was not put into operation until mid-1918 so it wouldn’t have been used by Pershing on the Mexican border.
Looking through the screenplay, you are undoubtedly right that Wikipedia has the year wrong, but I would place it as more like mid-to-late 1916, with weapons being brought in by the US to use against Villa and the German officer remarking on the naivety of the US government, which I always assumed referred to our attempt to remain neutral, though it could also be about our “naive” choice of sides. Aw, hell–the landscape is timeless so what’s the difference of a couple months? 
The most depressing thing about that unrelentingly depressing movie may be that Emilio “El Indio” Fernandez, the fat and ugly actor who played Gen. Mapache, was supposedly the model for the Oscar statuette.
Really? I thought the Oscar statue was supposed to be a Knight standing on a film reel cannister?
The M1917 is a tough one, though- Peckinpah got so many other little details right (you’ll notice the crates of rifles the Wild Bunch take from the train are all stamped with the “Flaming Bomb” US Ordnance ownership markings, for example), and yet he goes and has the US army using a Machine Gun that wasn’t widely available until 1918… It must have been on troop trials for evaluation. Yeah, that’ll do.
The spaghetti western ‘Joe Kidd’ features a Broomhandle Mauser prominently.
Don’t remember any machine guns, though.
And the “knight” was modelled by El Indio. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0273477/
The greatest director is sometimes limited by what’s available. The Browning was what was available in fireable condition. Tons were made of it and it was still in use in some places in the late '60s. The Colt was a collector’s item by then.