Rated R Region 1
Young Guns is the story of New Mecico's Lincoln County War that was waged between John Tunstall and Lawrence Murphy in 1877-78. Murphy was a very crude and ruthless owner of the Murphy-Dolan Cattle Company who had exercised a monopoly over the price of cattle being sold to the U.S. Cavalry and the Dept. of the Interior for distribution to the Indians on reservations. His underhanded business practices were rife with payoffs and bribes. The Governor of the territory was rumored to be on his payroll as well as the military commanders. When John Tunstall arrived in Lincoln County, he too went into the Cattle Business. Tunstall was an aristocrat(An Earl), a gentleman, and highly educated. He took in the unwanted young men of the frontier as employees. He cultured and educated them, using them as regulators on his property. When Tunstall threatened to upset the monopoly and attempt to sell cattle to the government, he was murdered by Murphy men. This was the beginning of the Lincoln County War.

William Bonny (Billy the Kid) was one of those boys taken in by John Tunstall. Following Tunstall's murder, he along with several others were deputized to serve warrants on several men who were wanted in connection with Tunstall's murder.

Knowing that nothing would be done to the murderers, the regulators/deputies just killed the men named in the warrants. The county sheriff and eventually the Cavalry were sent after them. In the movie, Billy the Kid shot and killed Lawrence Murphy in 1878, but in reality he died of cancer in 1878, at the age of 47. One of the men who had earlier ridden with the Kid and his group, Pat Garrett, was made Marshall and charged with the capture of Billy. Billy was supposedly killed by Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881. There is however, some evidence that this isn't true.