How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Calvin

Maybe if you give everyone rifles, but you could just as easily hand your enemies pistols. If your historical game requires enemies to have rifles, then I suppose that's how it's going to be. But the point of this is to at least get you thinking about these things.

I was thinking shotguns, actually - they're very common in non-military situations where guns show up (more common than pistols in many), and at close range their damage is quite high. Not every NPC is going to load their gun with rock salt.