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<p class="in-category"> <span>in:</span> <a href="https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/" rel="category tag">Character</a>, <a href="https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/knowledge-of-men/" rel="category tag">Knowledge of Men</a>, <a href="https://www.artofmanliness.com/podcast/" rel="category tag">Podcast</a></p>
<p class="single-date"> <span class="vcard author" itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"> <span itemprop="name">Brett &; Kate McKay</span> </span> • <span itemprop="datePublished">August 26, 2025</span><meta itemprop="dateModified" content="August 26, 2025"/></p>
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<p>When you picture a gunfighter, you probably think of a Hollywood cowboy — spurs jangling, six-shooter on his hip, squaring off at high noon in a dusty frontier town. But gunfighters weren’t just products of Hollywood. They were real men who lived and died by a code: one rooted in a particular sense of honor.</p>
<p>My guest today is Bryan Burrough, author of <a href="https://amzn.to/4fOPzel"><em>The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild</em></a>. We dig into the true story behind America’s gunfighting era — how it grew out of the South’s dueling culture, was intensified by the violence of post–Civil War Texas, and spread across the frontier via the cattle drive. We explore why so many gunfights had less to do with crime and more to do with reputation, why the Colt revolver transformed personal conflict into deadly spectacle, and how young men came to see violence as a rite of manhood. Along the way, Bryan also explores how gunfighters went from frontier figures to pop culture icons — and which films, in his view, captured their essence best.</p>
<h2>Resources Related to the Podcast</h2>
<p><a href="https://amzn.to/3UI6R2V"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-190502" src="https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2025/08/81FJCis36L._SL1500_.jpg" alt="Book cover featuring a 19th-century American gunfighter holding a revolver inside an outline of Texas; text reads ";The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild"; by Bryan Burrough, exploring themes of honor and manhood." width="325" height="494" srcset="https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2025/08/81FJCis36L._SL1500_.jpg 325w, https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2025/08/81FJCis36L._SL1500_-320x486.jpg 320w" sizes="(max-width: 325px) 100vw, 325px"/></a></p>
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<h2>Transcript Coming Soon</h2>
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Podcast #1,082: The Code They Killed For — Honor, Manhood, and the American Gunfighter
