Chuck Connors' "Rifleman" still owns the rerun ranch Fifty years after its September 1958 premiere on ABC, "The Rifleman," starring Chuck Connors and Johnny Crawford, goes on and on. Of the dozens of Westerns that populated the TV landscape in the late 1950s, the genre's heyday, few continue in continuous reruns today. "The Rifleman" starred baseball- player-turned actor Connors as widowed rancher Lucas McCain, who was raising his only child, Mark, in the New Mexico Territory in the late 1870s. He often helped his friend Micah (Paul Fix), the sheriff of the nearby town of North Fork, keep the peace. If the 6-foot-6 McCain wasn't intimidating enough to rabble rousers, his expertise with a trick-lever Winchester 1892 saddle ring carbine was the convincer. Indeed, the rifle was the show's gimmick. "A prop man at Paramount Studios devised the screw in the trigger guard that allowed the gun to fire each time it was levered," Gardner said. "We made five copies." Every week, "The Rifleman" began with a tracking shot of Connors walking North Fork's main street toward an off-camera foe, shooting a dozen blasts with the Winchester's butt braced at waist level. While firing away and littering the dirt street with spent shell casings, he doesn't miss a step or blink.