Winchester Model 1873

An over one-hundred-year-old gun in my safe is a Winchester Model 1873 that left the factory in 1891.  I consider it a companion to my 1884 vintage Colt Frontier Six Shooter Model 1873 revolver; both are chambered for the .44 Winchester Centerfire, AKA .44-40., AKA .44 WCF. Since the same cartridge fed both that model rifle and that model revolver, the load became very popular with frontier American shooters as a matter of convenience.

My old Winchester ’73 holds 14 cartridges in the magazine, 4 rounds over the “assault weapons ban” benchmark magazine capacity of 10. The Battle of Little Bighorn was in 1876 and the Cavalry was using the single-shot Springfield Model 1873 .45-70 carbines. During the same period, having more foresight than the military, many civilians had armed themselves with the high-capacity Winchester repeating rifles, the 1873 being so common it was called “The gun that won the west.” The .45-70 load was not replaced until the military adopted the 5-round capacity .30-40 Krag Jorgensen in 1894, which was replaced in 1903 by the 5-round capacity Springfield Model 1903, which was replaced by the 8-round capacity semi-automatic M1 Garand in 1936, which was replaced by the 20-round capacity select fire M14 rifle in 1957.

The significance of this short thesis is that high-capacity rifles did not become universally popular with the military until long after civilians began commonly using them back in the frontier days.