Speaking of shootouts in Arizona, 132 years ago today: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral [View all]

[legcramp]

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a gunfight that took place on October 26, 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona Territory of the United States. Despite its name, the gunfight did not actually take place at the O.K. Corral but in a vacant lot next to Camillus Fly's photography studio, six doors down Fremont Street from the rear entrance to the O.K. Corral. Although only three men were killed during the gunfight, it is generally regarded as the most famous gunfight in the history of the Old West.

The immediate cause of the conflict that led up to the fight was the arrest by Virgil Earp, acting in his capacity as deputy federal marshal, of two rural "cowboys" for a stagecoach robbery. Drunken threats made by another cowboy against the Earps set them on guard, and when family and friends of the drunken man arrived in town on horseback the next day, fully armed, there was a misunderstanding about how and where they should disarm according to city law. Within hours, both new arrivals were dead, as was a cowboy standing with them, who had illegally failed to surrender his pistol the previous day.

Same as it always was.

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral.html