ABSTRACT
The nineteenth-century western frontier represents an important theatre in historical justifications of the Second Amendment, not only in asserting the ubiquity of firearms in the trans-Mississippi region, but also in positioning them as practical and symbolic tools integral to the 'Winning of the West'. Perhaps the most iconic character of the American West remains the stoic masculine hero, whether that be a cowboy, outlaw or a lawman, clothed in the typical garb of the frontier and armed with a firearm. Far from recoiling from their use, lady adventurers and pioneer women found in the gun a routine object of utility and a powerful tool of identification and enablement. Calamity Jane's reputation as 'armed heroine of the plains' gained wider dissemination in the 1870s courtesy of western popular literature. Deadwood's locally notorious western character thus made the leap from regional interest to object of national literary attention.
