The Guns of Tombstone (1993): Every Weapon Identified

Here’s the thing about Tombstone that explains why its guns are better than everybody else’s. The man who supplied most of them is in the film. Peter Sherayko plays “Texas Jack” Vermillion, and he was also the production’s armorer, an Old West firearms specialist who put his own collection on screen.

That shows in the detail. Barrel lengths are assigned by character. Doc’s two revolvers are two different actions on purpose. Wyatt’s vendetta shotgun has three triggers. And the most famous gun in the film is a gun that almost certainly never existed. Here are the guns of Tombstone, who carries what, and what you can buy.

Table of Contents

The armorer is in the movie

That’s Peter Sherayko in the buckskin, playing Texas Jack Vermillion. He’s also the reason this film’s armory is what it is. He’s a working film armorer and an authority on Old West guns, and he provided the majority of the firearms used in the production, several from his personal collection. He still supplies period westerns through Caravan West, the outfit he runs for exactly this kind of work.

Most period westerns rent whatever the prop house has and dress the cast in matching Colts. Sherayko did the opposite. He gave individual characters individual guns, and he gave them guns that a specific man in 1881 Arizona would plausibly own. That single decision is why the film still holds up to people who know what they’re looking at.

---

The Buntline Special that probably never existed

Kurt Russell’s Wyatt carries a Buntline Special, the Single Action Army with the absurdly long barrel, and it’s the image everybody keeps from this film. It’s also almost certainly a fiction.

The story comes from Stuart Lake’s 1931 biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, which claimed the dime novelist Ned Buntline presented five long-barreled Colts to Dodge City lawmen including Earp and Bat Masterson. Nobody has ever found one, Colt’s records show no such shipment to Buntline or to Edward Judson (the man behind the pen name), and nothing mentions the guns anywhere before Lake’s book.

Give the believers their best argument first. Colt kept shipping records rather than production records, so a gun collected in person at the factory would leave no paper trail, and that’s the hole the story lives in. Then close it: Buntline was living east of the Mississippi through 1876 and 1877 with no record of him traveling to Kansas at all, and Dodge City is where the presentation is supposed to have happened. True West has been over the whole thing more than once.

What Earp actually had at the O.K. Corral was a Smith & Wesson .44, a gift from John Clum, Tombstone’s mayor and newspaper editor. Not a Colt, not from Buntline, and not twelve inches long.

The myth got so big that Colt eventually built the gun to meet demand for a revolver from a book. The 1950s Hugh O’Brian TV series cemented it, and here we are.

One more layer. The Buntlines in Tombstone are not Colts either. Current Colt Buntlines only came with 12-inch barrels, which was too long for what the production wanted, so Sherayko had three custom EMF/Uberti replicas built for the film.

You can buy one, and Cimarron will sell you one badged “Wyatt Earp.” A reproduction of a gun that was invented by a biographer. I love that.

---

Read the barrel lengths

Nearly everyone in this film carries a Colt Single Action Army, but they don’t carry the same one. The film uses all three standard barrel lengths and assigns them by character, which is set dressing almost nobody bothers with.

Model	Barrel	Who carries it
Quickdraw / Civilian	4.75 in	Doc Holliday, Johnny Ringo (both nickel)
Artillery	5.5 in	Texas Jack Vermillion, Marshal Fred White, Sherman McMasters
Cavalry	7.5 in	Wyatt, Morgan Earp, Curly Bill Brocius, Sheriff Behan, Billy Clanton

The gunfighters and the gambler get the short, fast guns. The lawmen and the Cowboys ride with the long ones. Curly Bill carries two Cavalry models because of course he does.

Uberti, Cimarron and Taylor’s all build the SAA in every one of those lengths for a fraction of what an original costs, and people shoot them hard in cowboy action shooting. More in our best revolvers guide.

---

“I got two guns, one for each of you”

Doc’s two revolvers are not a matched pair, and that’s the good bit. In his right he has the nickel SAA Quickdraw, a single action: thumb the hammer, pull the trigger, repeat. Riding higher on his belly in a cross-draw holster is a nickel Colt Model 1877 Lightning, which is a double action. One pull does everything.

The tell for spotting the Lightning is the grip. It has a bird’s head butt, that downward hook, where the SAA has the straight plow handle. Once you know it you can pick the Lightning out of any frame in the film, including one on McMasters late on.

Kilmer actually works the double action on camera during the O.K. Corral, which is a small piece of homework most actors wouldn’t have done. Two guns, two mechanisms, and a man drunk enough to need both.

The 1877 earned its reputation honestly: the lockwork was famously delicate and gunsmiths hated it. If you want one today the reproduction market is thin, so this is one of the few guns in the film I can’t point you at with a straight face.

---

Virgil’s top-break is not a Schofield

Sam Elliott’s Virgil carries a nickel Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3 with pearl grips, and Wyatt is seen with it in his own holster at one point before handing it back.

This gun gets called a Schofield constantly, and they’re genuinely different revolvers. Both are Smith & Wesson Model 3 top-breaks, so the confusion is understandable, but the Schofield was Major George Schofield’s modification with the barrel latch moved onto the frame so a cavalryman could work it one-handed with his thumb. The New Model No. 3 of 1878 went back to Smith & Wesson’s original barrel-mounted latch, partly so the company could stop paying Schofield royalties. There’s a visual tell too: the Schofield has a rounded rear grip frame while the New Model 3 has a pronounced knuckle at the top.

Either way, the top-break is the fast one. Snap it open and the extractor throws all six empties at once, while the Colt shooter is still poking cases out one at a time through a loading gate. That speed is why so many serious men carried them.

Uberti builds the Schofield pattern and Taylor’s and Cimarron import it. It’s the closest thing on the market, though strictly it’s the other model.

---

Doc’s 10-gauge, which is the historically correct one

Doc walks into the O.K. Corral with a 10-gauge side-by-side, a Belgian-made Meteor from Sherayko’s collection, and this is the film getting the history right rather than the drama. The real Doc Holliday carried a 10-gauge that day. His own gun was a 10-gauge Colt double.

Ten gauge is a serious thing to hand a man dying of tuberculosis. It throws around two ounces of shot and kicks accordingly, and it went out of fashion because 12 gauge does nearly the same work without hurting as much.

The prop is not perfect. It appears to have a monobloc breech, a design that arrived about two years after the film’s setting.

Wyatt’s vendetta gun is a different animal: a Stevens 10-gauge with three triggers. Two fire the barrels, and the third, sitting forward of them, is the opening lever. It’s an unusual arrangement and it is visible on screen if you look at the trigger guard when he faces Curly Bill at Iron Springs. He kills Frank Stilwell at the train depot with it too.

The Stoeger Coach Gun is the modern default and cowboy action shooters run them by the thousand. If you want exposed hammers like the period guns, CZ builds a Hammer Coach.

---

The long guns

The Winchester Model 1873 is the Cowboys’ rifle, Ike Clanton’s in particular. It is the one everybody knows, and the reason it mattered is that it took pistol cartridges, so a man could feed his rifle and his revolver from the same belt.

Less expected is the Winchester Model 1876, carried by Johnny Ringo, Breckenridge, McMasters and Texas Jack. Sherayko has said there were five of them on the production, chambered in .45-60. The ’76 is the big brother of the ’73, built on a longer action for full-power cartridges, and you almost never see one in a western.

There is also a Whitney Kennedy in .44-40 on the vendetta ride, and, in one lovely throwaway, a man protesting Virgil’s gun ban by raising a Kentucky flintlock, which by 1881 was already an antique.

Winchester, Uberti, Cimarron and Taylor’s all build the ’73 today. Our best lever action rifles guide covers where the breed went, and the .30-30 guide covers the working end of it.

The supporting cast of revolvers

Three more worth knowing. Wyatt arrests Curly Bill with a nickel Colt 1878 Double Action rather than his single actions, which is a sensible choice for a man expecting trouble at conversational range. “Turkey Creek” Jack Johnson shoots a man in the background with a Remington 1875, prompting Doc’s driest line in the film about how cosmopolitan the town is. And Kate pulls a Forehand & Wadsworth British Bulldog, a cheap pocket revolver, on a saloon keeper reaching for a shotgun.

The Remington 1875 was the Colt’s main rival and lost badly in the market, which is why you see one in a film and almost nowhere else. Uberti still builds it.

Every weapon in Tombstone

Sixteen weapons, and the list matches IMFDB’s screen-by-screen breakdown entry for entry.

Weapon	Who carries it	Note
Colt Buntline Special	Wyatt Earp	Three EMF/Uberti replicas made for the film; the legend is Stuart Lake’s
Colt SAA Quickdraw (4.75in)	Doc Holliday, Johnny Ringo	Both nickel
Colt SAA Artillery (5.5in)	Texas Jack, Fred White, McMasters	The middle length
Colt SAA Cavalry (7.5in)	Wyatt, Morgan, Curly Bill, Behan, Billy Clanton	Curly Bill carries two
Colt Model 1877 Lightning	Doc Holliday	Double action, bird’s head grip, cross-draw
Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3	Virgil Earp	Nickel with pearl grips; not a Schofield
Colt 1878 Double Action	Wyatt Earp	Used to arrest Curly Bill after Fred White is shot
Remington 1875	Turkey Creek Jack Johnson	The “very cosmopolitan” shooting
Forehand & Wadsworth British Bulldog	Kate	Drawn on the saloon keeper
Meteor 10-gauge side-by-side	Doc, Virgil, Morgan, Johnny Tyler	Doc really did carry a 10-gauge to the Corral
Stevens 10-gauge side-by-side	Wyatt Earp	Three triggers; the vendetta gun
12-gauge double-barreled shotgun	Billy Clanton, Cruz, Ike, Curly Bill	Coach guns throughout
Winchester Model 1873	Ike Clanton and the Cowboys	Pistol-caliber lever gun
Winchester Model 1876	Ringo, Breckenridge, McMasters, Texas Jack	Five used, chambered .45-60
Whitney Kennedy	Texas Jack, Turkey Creek	.44-40, on the vendetta ride
Kentucky flintlock	A protesting townsman	Already an antique in 1881

Why it still holds up

Almost everything in Tombstone is a real design that a real person could have owned in 1881, and almost all of it is still built today in faithful reproduction. That is unusual. Most period westerns hand the whole cast the same Colt and hope nobody notices.

The exception is the one everybody remembers. Wyatt’s Buntline is a replica of a Colt that Colt never made, carrying the name of a novelist who probably never commissioned it, in a film about the most documented gunfight in American history.

Which is fitting. The Old West we picture was always half invention, and the guns are where you can see the seam.

Frequently asked questions

Did Wyatt Earp really carry a Buntline Special?

Almost certainly not. The story comes from Stuart Lake’s 1931 biography. Colt has no record of shipping such guns to Ned Buntline, none has ever been found, and no source mentions them before 1931. At the O.K. Corral, Earp used a Smith & Wesson .44 given to him by Tombstone’s mayor John Clum.

What guns does Doc Holliday carry in Tombstone?

A nickel Colt Single Action Army Quickdraw and a nickel Colt Model 1877 Lightning, worn cross-draw. The Lightning is a double action and has a bird’s head grip, which is how you tell them apart. He also carries a 10-gauge shotgun into the O.K. Corral.

Is Virgil Earp’s revolver a Schofield?

No, it’s a Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3. They are both Model 3 top-breaks and get confused constantly, but the Schofield has a frame-mounted latch and a rounded grip frame, while the New Model No. 3 has a barrel-mounted latch and a knuckle at the top of the grip.

Who supplied the guns for Tombstone?

Peter Sherayko, who also plays Texas Jack Vermillion in the film. He is an Old West firearms authority and provided most of the production’s guns, several from his own collection, including the Meteor and Stevens shotguns.

Can you buy the guns from Tombstone?

Most of them, as reproductions. Uberti, Cimarron and Taylor’s build the Single Action Army in all three barrel lengths plus the Buntline and the Schofield pattern, Winchester and Uberti build the 1873, and Stoeger and CZ make coach guns. The Colt Lightning is the hard one.

Why does Wyatt’s shotgun have three triggers?

Two fire the barrels and the third, forward of them, opens the action. It’s a Stevens 10-gauge and the arrangement is visible on screen during the Iron Springs confrontation.

Keep exploring

More screen guns identified: Django Unchained, The Rifleman and Scarface. For the same era in a game, our real guns of Red Dead Redemption 2 breakdown does the same job.