Johnny Ringo appeared at a time in the history of the television Western when creators strove to make characters interesting by equipping them with "gimmick guns", the three most famous having been Josh Randall's "mare's laig" used by Steve McQueen in CBS's Wanted: Dead or Alive, Lucas McCain's trick rifle from ABC's The Rifleman, and the shotgun with the upper and lower barrel, intended to enforce accuracy both up close and at a distance, used by Scott Brady in Shotgun Slade.

The gimmick gun introduced in the second pilot of Johnny Ringo was a custom-built revolver called the LeMat, based on its historically authentic counterpart. The LeMat featured an auxiliary shotgun barrel under its primary barrel. Many episodes found Ringo getting into scrapes where that final round in the shotgun barrel was the deciding factor. Aesthetically, Ringo's LeMat most resembles the historical percussion model LeMat but features a top break cartridge-fed design.