The Riflemen: Chapter 1, 12 Shots / 4 Seconds

Chapter 1, Twelve Shots Four Seconds This chapter recreates the opening sequence of The Rifleman, The protagonist slowly walks with a rifle while quickly firing at an unseen and unknown target. There is no music, only the sound of a high powered rifle discharging twelve shots in four seconds. The rifle has been modified to work semi-automatically, a technology that did not exist at the time the television show was set. The 1950’s were extremely conservative years in the United States. In March of 1958 The Rifleman began its five-year, 168 episode run. The show is about a rancher struggling to raise and defend his son with civilized morals in the pre-colonized New Mexico territory of the 1890’s. This television western and many others like it were the shows of the formative years of the Baby Boomers generation. Rifleman themed toys such as the semi-automatic rifle of the protagonist were marketed to children. Good men were idols and were depicted as independent and void of emotion. However, their conviction and dedication to the Christian bible, as a means to form a new nation, propelled them. Western expansion created space for white men to exact their own justice. In their world violence was always justified when upholding the civilized morality of an expanding American colony. The hero killed more than 120 people in five years, typically, extra-judicially. He was guided with this same moral center and lone judgment that he used to raise his son. The legacy of patriarchy is inescapable.