[Lee Stewart]

To take it from John Wayne, Butch Cassidy, and Red Dead Redemption, the Wild West was an unpredictable free-for-all—just one region-wide, decades-long brawl. Thing is, that’s all myth. Peter J. Hill, a senior fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, puts it succinctly: “the violence of the [Wild] West is largely a myth.” Some research indicates that, between the years of 1859 and 1900, there were fewer than a dozen robberies total. Even the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, perhaps the most storied shootout in the entire compendium of Wild West lore, resulted in a relatively modest body count: three.