On this episode of Beyond the Bushwhackers on Road Gang Radio, host Jimmy Mac welcomes back historian Matthew Hulbert, Elliott Associate Professor of History at Hampden-Sydney College and series editor of American Wars and Popular Culture at LSU Press, for a deep dive into the real history behind pistols, gunfighters, and the mythology of the Wild West.

The conversation explores how firearms moved from everyday tools to romanticized symbols of identity after the Civil War, and how war experience, frontier life, and early marketing shaped America’s gun culture. Hulbert breaks down what people actually carried, how gunfights really worked, and why Hollywood got so much of it wrong.

Topics include:

Why guns were considered normal tools in early America

How the Civil War changed attitudes toward vio ...