The single best and most economical arm for hunting and defense in the Old West was the side by side double-barreled shotgun. Scores of thousands of these sidehammer scatterguns were a mainstay to settlers miners ranchers gunfighters and virtually anyone who needed a weapon. In times of civil unrest many lawmen considered the scattergun as the best town tamer and express companies especially realized the value of these smoothbores and armed their messengers with them. They each knew the threat of scattered shot from a shotgun's blast had a greater chance of dissuading an unruly crowd or a road agent than would the single projectile from a rifle or pistol. The Cimarron® 1878® Coach Gun® inspired by an original in our collection is available in either the full-length 26-inch barrel or the 20-inch barreled model both capable of handling 3-inch shotshells with the traditional working exposed sidehammers a pistol grip stock and schnabble forearm blued barrels and a blued receiver. When you ride shotgun ride with a Cimarron® 1878® Coach Gun®.