>>668202three to four shots a *minute"? You wish. Twenty to fifteen seconds is by no means long enough for one man to do all that preloading, pre-cocking shit by himself. Maybe two shots in minute, if the man was very good with his hands.
Those old guns really were one-man cannons. All the drama that it takes to load and prepare one shot for those old front-loaders, performed by three to five men, having to be performed by just one. It was in that old-timey environment that the Winchesters made their fortune.