Understanding the Origins of American Gun Culture Can Help Reframe Today’s Gun Debate
27th May 2020
A writer in Time magazine attempts to explain Flyover Country to the Crustians who read it.
27th May 2020
A writer in Time magazine attempts to explain Flyover Country to the Crustians who read it.
May 27th, 2020 at 11:48
Shane: “A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that.”
Before the Colt pistol was widely available, folks commonly carried a Bowie knife (that is to say, a large knife), and drunks frequently killed other drunks with them. Guns didn’t wipe out Native Americans; the Sioux had the 7th Cavalry significantly out-gunned. (Winchesters versus Sharps) People have an amazing capacity to match or exceed the killing power of their enemies, whether it be with a bigger knife or a better pistol or a multi-warhead nuclear ICBM. The Civil War started with Napoleonic tactics and ended with trench warfare, submarines, steel ships, observation balloons, trains, repeating rifles (Henry), machine guns (Gatling), trains for troop and supply movements, and telegraphy that would all be features of WWI, some 50+ years later. Not only the industrial North, but the agrarian South produced innovations in killing. The Virginia (originally Merrimac) fought the Monitor and in a single day rendered every navy in the world obsolete. The airplane barely gets aloft in 1903, but is dealing death from the skies by 1916. Prop driven aircraft rule the skies in 1945 and are obsolete by 1950.
May 28th, 2020 at 16:24
Shane was a wise man.