Red Dead Redemption 2, being a western, is loaded with all sorts of iconic cowboy weapons. Set in the year 1899 for most of its narrative, the game not only features famous weapons from theWild West erabut also famous weapons from the early 1900s.Red DeadRedemption 2is similar to other Rockstar games in how it treats its weapons.
Liberties are taken for the sake of gameplay and lore purposes but unlike games such asFallout 4, they are not as drastic. These guns accurately resemble their source material. In fact, they make for a great starting point for someone who would like to familiarize themselves with Old West firearm history.
Updated July 11, 2025, by Gregory Louis Gomez:Few games are as lifelike and immersive asRed Dead Redemption 2. It’s one of those games that makes it extremely easy for the player to jump in and almost immediately get lost in its world. This is due in part to its incredible graphics and meticulous design philosophy. One area in which the player can appreciate this is in the game’s vast collection of mostly period-accurate firearms. From revolvers to long rifles, RDR2 faithfully recreates many historical firearms for players to use as they explore the game’s world. With that in mind, we’ve added a few more entries to this article, detailing some more of these expertlyrecreated firearms and their real-life counterparts in RDR2.
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The 1873 Single Action Army serves as the primary inspiration for the Cattleman Revolver. It is one of the most famous revolvers ever made, being the quintessential cowboy gun for many fans of the era. InRed Dead 2, the gun is portrayed rather accurately as a single-action-only pistol. The one quirk about it is the speed with which the player reloads it.
Normally this is a laborious process as it is entirely manual but in the game, the player whizzes through the animation in no time at all. Of course, this is purely for gameplay purposes. The game does not specify a caliber but the real gun fires a .45 Long Colt.
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The Navy Revolver is an online-exclusive pistol that is basically a one-to-one recreation of the famous Colt 1851 revolver. Unlike many of the other in-game revolvers, the revolver is of a cap and ball design, which means that it does not visibly use metallic cartridges. It uses the generic revolver ammo that other cartridge-firing pistols do. The revolver famously served during the American Civil War and is so named for having been manufactured by Colt for the U.S. Navy.
Though the pistol looks fantastic, its reload animation is utterly nonsensical. It is far too quick for a cap and ball revolver, especially since the player only appears to put the caps on the back of the cylinder and not the powder or ball.
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Returning from the first game, the LeMat revolver is a ten-shot, multi-barrel cap and ball revolver available inRed Dead 2’ssingle-player and multiplayer. The unique ten-shot capacity comes from its nine-chamber cylinder and an additional “shotgun” barrel that runs through the middle of said cylinder. The player can swap between the main barrel and the shotgun barrel the same way as in real life.
This pistol was developed by Jean Alexandre LeMat in 1855 and served as an officer’s pistol and cavalry revolver for the Confederate Army and Navy during the American Civil War. As such, it is a very large pistol, weighing in at over four pounds loaded. Normally, the pistol is .42 caliber with a 20 gauge center barrel, but in-game the gun just uses generic ammo types like every other gun.
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The Schofield Revolver is often considered to be the best single-action revolver of its era thanks in no small part to its break-action design, allowing for much easier reloading than other revolvers. In the game, this iconic break action reload is accurately represented as being rather fast compared to other revolvers, allowing the player to insert six rounds with ease during gunfights. It can be obtained afterthe mission “Blessed Are the Meek.” Dutch can be seen using a pair of engraved Schofields as his signature pistols.
The real Schofield was developed by Smith & Wesson in the late 1860s and put into production by 1870 (thus predating the Colt Single Action Army). Much like the Colt, it was used by the U.S. military and chambered in a 45 caliber cartridge, although the dimensions were slightly different (which would lead to logistical issues in the field). The game’s version uses generic revolver cartridges, however. The Model 3 is rather long-lived, with it even seeing service in the Russian Empire during World War 1.
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The Volcanic Pistol is kind of a strange case ofRed Deadtaking gameplay liberties with its weapons. The one in the game is one of the better pistols the player can get. It has both high damage and a higher capacity than most other pistols, along with comparable accuracy and range. Its slow reload speed is its only drawback. The pistol can be gotten as early as the start of Chapter 2 in Valentine, making itan excellent purchase optionfor the early game missions.
The real Volcanic Pistol (developed by Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson) was a breathtakingly weak handgun. It fired what was referred to as the Rocket Ball round, a lead projectile with powder stuffed into a cavity at its base. This meant that the charge was so low that there were reports of people and animals surviving being shot by it even multiple times. Still, the design of this pistol, as well as its rifle counterpart, evolved into the Henry repeating rifle. This would in turn become the Winchester family of repeaters.
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This revolver is undoubtedly based on the M1892 civilian model New Army & Navy.Red Dead 2’sversion, though, is simply called the Double-Action Revolver. Much like the rest of the firearms in the game, the Double-Action Revolver doesn’t have a specified cartridge that it fires. Instead, the game assigns it generic revolver cartridges.
The real pistol is chambered in a .38 Long Colt. It is correctly depicted as being both double action and single action, as the hammer is cocked manually upon drawing the pistol, with each subsequent shot cocked by the pull of the trigger itself. The Revolver would see service as late as World War 1. This was due to shortages of other handguns at the time.
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Many people have seen the famous (or infamous depending on one’s view) Luger pistol. The Borchardt C93 is its direct ancestor. Developed by Hugo Borchardt in 1893, it was the first semi-automatic pistol to see mass production. It was this exact pistol that Georg Luger would iterate on and perfect in the form of the P08 Luger pistol in the early 1900s.
RDR2’sversion of the pistol has a slightly altered profile in that its grip is much more angled than the real pistol’s grip (probably to fit existing animations). It also fires generic pistol ammo rather than the 7.65×25mm cartridge.
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This auto-loading pistol is rather significant in that it is the first pistol to use a slide, something all modern pistols feature. Developed by the legendary John Moses Browning, it makes its series debut as the M1899 pistol. Aesthetically, it differs in notable ways from its inspiration.
Chief among these is the much more angled pistol grip. The trigger is also shaped differently, and the overall size is bulkier than the pocket size of the actual gun. The game had it fire pistol cartridges while the real pistol is chambered in .32 ACP.
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The Mauser is and has been a common sight in video games for decades at this point. It was in the firstRed Dead Redemption, and it once again makes an appearance in its successor. Accuracy-wise, the pistol is a near one-to-one recreation of the actual C96. One deviation is that it’s stated to have been manufactured by the Mühlberg company in Germany, which is not a real firearms company. Another deviation is that it fires generic ammo rather than the historically accurate 7.63x25mm cartridge.
In real life, the C96 was developed by the Mauser company in the 1890s, hence the namesake of the pistol. It was one of the first successful self-loading pistol designs (to the point that it was copied illegally the world over) and would be used in conflicts around the world for many decades after its invention. Interestingly enough, China was the only nation to ever adopt the Mauser as its standard-issue pistol. It would, however, see extensive use as a contract pistol around the world.
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The Semi-Automatic Shotgun returns after appearing in the firstRed Dead Redemption. This return, however, is a little perplexing seeing as how much of the game is set in 1899. Given that it is based on John Browning’s Auto 5 shotgun, which was first produced in 1902, this makes it anachronistic for the time period.
Granted, the epilogue is set in 1907, which means that it would be totally fine forJohn Marstonto be running around with one.Arthur Morganon the other hand has some explaining to do. Other than this, the gun is faithfully recreated, though the speed at which the player reloads wouldn’t be physically possible until 1953 with the advent of the speed reload feature.
