[quote=Spriggs27]
Actually most pistols back then were very bad a hitting their targets from range with miss fire, which is one of the reasons why I have Briggs using a pair of sawed off double barrels, usually the paces were shorten down, and my favorite duel was the family guy duels 

one was a duel where they slapped each other when the man was finished counting and said turn.

the second was Willam hole in the torso verses a guy that had a large block like torso, the block guy missed and began moving around back and forth.
[/quote]

In my head, the pistols issued to Garrett and Hal have two uses:

1. To at least have some form of protection in case they crash or get stranded in hostile territory.
2. To shoot themselves before they get captured/tortured by the enemy. Or before they die from starvation, frost, heat, or any other environmental hazard.

In a way, it goes in line with the Royal Navy's prejudice that airplanes are useless compared to airships, and do not expect pilots to live very long in combat situations.

As for duels... I found that one Simpson's episode pretty funny. Where Homer randomly challenged people to duels in order to get them to give in to his wishes. Until of course he challenged some Texan guy who was a "professional duelist". It had this build-up towards the climactic fight between them and well... Let's just say it ended with Homer getting some lead in his stomach immediately after the countdown XD