Cpl. Jeffrey A. Cosola, 24th MEU, US Marine Corps,
ABOARD USS IWO JIMA: Since the invention of the firearm, tough men sporting guns have taken to the streets looking to settle quarrels while hidden behind a hail of bullets. Formalized in the old American West, heeled gunslingers sought the morbid truth revealed in black cordite smoke, often finding it lodged in the small, deadly spaces separating the quick from the dead.
To survive in a time of killers, it was the skill of the man that pulled him through the tough scrapes. Names like Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid and Wild Bill Hitchcock attest to the idea that veins coursing with ice water, explosive reaction time and a hard heart trumped luck in nearly every recorded gun battle. Today, living amongst a new generation of gunslingers, the task of settling quarrels still falls to tough men with guns
