cnd read the question asked in the title of the thread - it's got nothing to do with music, it has nothing to do with the song. It is on the other hand all about possible reasons for our lad doing a runner in the situation he found himself in.

" I intentionally looked in dates past the 1850s, for the period when flintlocks dropped heavily out of usage in favor of more modern revolvers"

Pity that as out of your first list of 31 incidents only 10 of them were later than 1850.

Differentiation between a 1-on-1 gunfight and a duel? The latter is a rather formal affair and involves a number of other people, the two duelists of course, each of whom have a second, a referee and a doctor. The duel itself has strict rules of procedure as to how the duel itself is organised, i.e. place, time, weapons [Normally all the choice of the person challenged] - the one thing a duel is not is spontaneous it is planned. Now then cnd does that resemble in any way the circumstance, the situation and what was described in the song? Reading back it was YOU who described gunfights as duels - put simply they are not, the two could not be more different.