Our Man Flint

A 1718 breech-loading magazine-primed flintlock fowling piece by Robert Rowland.

Of course, when it came to guns, the really scary part wasn't so much the pieces themselves, though the choice for your average highwayman in the mid-18th century was quite extensive:

blunderbusses : two-barreled weapons, good on the short range, set off by flint-lock ignition;

pistols : smaller guns, not much used on horseback;

muskets : non-rifled barrels, good on the short range;

rifles : long guns with rifled barrels, making them more accurate;

carbines : evolved as a cavalry weapon, more accurate than muskets, good for close range from horseback.

No, the really scary part was what you put inside them: nails, glass, lead-shot and whatever else came to hand. Projected 25-50 feet in a scatter-formation, this lacerating miscellany could and did do lethal harm to their targets.

But the highwayman preferred, on the whole, not to shoot. It was far more effective to continue your career as a robber than be hunted down as a murderer... Which is why the night of Wednesday 4 May 1737 was so unlucky for Richard Turpin and one Thomas Morris.