Poor weapons may have lost Texas for Mexico

“The British weapon had a hitting range of 25 yards. Maybe you could hit a target at 50 yards. Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess,” Mitchell said recently. “On the Texas side, it’s hard to know what the percentages are. There were Springfields in Houston’s army, muskets of various manufacture, maybe even a few Brown Besses. But the vast majority, probably over 500, carried the weapon of choice — the American Kentucky rifle.”

Mitchell said the Kentucky rifle was accurate to up to 200 yards in ideal conditions. But even in the chaos of battle, he said, it was a sure killer at 50 yards.