The Guns of The Rifleman: Every Weapon Identified

The Rifleman ran from 1958 to 1963 and gave television its single most recognisable long gun. Most people can’t name another western rifle. Everybody knows this one, and specifically they know the sound of it, because the opening titles are five seconds of Chuck Connors emptying a Winchester into a dusty street.

The gun list on this show is short, which is refreshing. Four firearms carry the whole run. Here’s each of them, and the genuinely clever bit of gunsmithing that made the opening sequence possible.

Lucas McCain’s Winchester 1892

Lucas McCain carries a Winchester Model 1892 saddle ring carbine fitted with a greatly enlarged lever loop. The big loop is the point: it lets him work the action one-handed, spinning the rifle around his hand, which is how a man on horseback reloads without putting anything down.

The opening shows twelve shots in under five seconds. That’s not editing.

Connors had a machine screw tapped into the trigger guard, positioned so that closing the lever pressed the trigger. Work the action and the rifle fires, every single time, as fast as you can throw the lever. A twist of the screw backed it out again for normal shooting. It’s a simple, slightly alarming piece of prop engineering and it produced one of the most imitated openings in television.

Three rifles did the work across the series: two genuine Winchesters and a Spanish-made El Tigre copy that absorbed the stunt work. The El Tigre was a common stand-in of the period, close enough visually to pass in a wide shot.

One honest flaw. The show is set in the 1880s and the Model 1892 obviously didn’t exist yet. Nobody at the time cared, and the rifle is so tied to the character now that fixing it would be worse than the error.

The Rossi R92 is the affordable way into this action, and Winchester still builds the 1892 properly. We covered it in the Winchester Model 1892 review, and there’s a wider list in best lever-action rifles.

The Colt Single Action Army

Paul Fix played North Fork’s town marshal, Micah Torrance, with a Colt Single Action Army on his hip, and the SAA is the default sidearm for basically everyone else in the show as well. The Artillery model with the 5.5-inch barrel in .45 Long Colt is the one you’ll see most.

Nothing about that is unusual for a TV western. What’s worth noting is how little the show leans on it. The revolver is set dressing. The rifle is the character.

If you want to actually shoot these, cowboy action shooting is where they live now.

The Colt Lightning Carbine

The best one-off in the series. In “Sporting Chance,” a character named Jeremy Pennebrock carries a nickel-plated Colt Lightning Carbine, a pump-action rifle chambered in .38-56 WCF.

The Lightning is a genuinely odd gun. Colt built a pump-action centrefire rifle to compete with Winchester’s lever guns, and it never really took. Putting one in a nickel finish against Lucas McCain’s plain blued carbine is a nice bit of visual writing, and the episode gives it real screen time, including a shooting-contest sequence where you get clean looks at the whole rifle.

The Remington Rolling Block

A Remington No. 1 Rolling Block sporting rifle turns up in the hands of a trapper. Single-shot, dropping-block action, and completely period-correct in a way the Winchester isn’t. It’s a small detail, but it shows somebody in the props department knew the difference.

Why this show’s gun work holds up

Four guns across five seasons. No arsenal, no escalation, no episode where somebody suddenly produces a Gatling gun. The rifle does everything, and because it does everything, it means something. Compare that to almost any modern action series and the restraint is striking.

Frequently asked questions

What rifle did Lucas McCain use in The Rifleman?

A Winchester Model 1892 saddle ring carbine fitted with an oversized lever loop for one-handed operation.

How did the rifle fire so quickly in the opening?

A machine screw was tapped into the trigger guard so that closing the lever tripped the trigger. Working the action fired the rifle automatically. Backing the screw out restored normal operation.

How many rifles were used on the show?

Three. Two genuine Winchester 1892s and a Spanish El Tigre copy used for stunt work.

Is the Winchester 1892 historically accurate for the show?

No. The series is set in the 1880s and the Model 1892 wasn’t introduced until 1892. It’s an anachronism, and a well-known one.

Can you buy a large-loop lever gun today?

Yes. Several makers offer large-loop levers on 1892-pattern carbines, and the Rossi R92 is the most affordable route in. A standard Winchester 1892 can also be fitted with an aftermarket loop.

Keep exploring

Part of our guns of TV legends series. For more period iron, see the guns of Tombstone and the real guns of Red Dead Redemption 2.