In the early 1950s, Hollywood partially dodged the ban on “excessive violence” for TV shows watched by children by having heroes like Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry shoot the guns out of the hands of the bad guys. In the real Old West, Lincoln County War Regulator George Coe lost his index finger when a bullet hit his gun during an 1878 gunfight. Surgically disarming a foe in this manner is actually a dangerous fantasy.
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