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Checking Up on the Gunslinger's Myth
NMB, Florida December 8, 2001 A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published Now and
Then. Opinions Pro or Con Are Welcome.
CHECKING UP ON THE GUNSLINGER'S MYTH
There is a story in the NY Times this morning on the perils of printing
research about the right to bear arms. Michael A. Bellesiles wrote about the
origins of the American gun culture and used some statistics that other
historians and ALL the gun societies are up in arms about. The cause of all
the controversy is the Second Amendment to the Constitution that does not
give us the right to own and carry weapons around on our persons.
Basically his research showed that ownership of guns was not extensive and
the inventories he studied disclosed that most of these weapons were old and
not in working condition. The argument is about the statistics that he used
to arrive at his conclusions.
Now, I have not done the research or read his book. I have the same
conclusion but this is based on comparative knowledge of ancient times and
those times more recent where warfare is involved. War is expensive and
messy. We dress it up AFTER it is over and the ladies love the show-off
soldier in his well-made and flashy uniform. (Colorful uniforms only made
them better targets.)
Think about the ancient warrior. He is pictured in the victor's account of
wars on carved pillars and rock walls. Most of his soldiers appear to be
well armored and with weapons bristling all over them. Such accounts are
exaggerated. Weapons were the tools of the wealthy. Ordinary soldiers
fighting on the orders of Lords and Aristocrats who could afford the armor
and the weaponry went to war with the tools of their trades. If they were
lucky they were given a spear. What would a simple farmer need a spear for?
Extrapolate this to the time when there were firearms. Almost all were
handmade until the American Revolutionary War. They broke down easily and
there were no machine made exact replicas of the needed parts available.
The rifles or smooth bore (not very accurate) "guns" were put to work as
clubs. Sharpshooters used very carefully created weapons that could kill at
a distance but were very difficult to carry and maneuver because of the
great length of the barrel.
It is more likely that as in early times when men gathered around the man
on horseback as their leader (ownership of war-horses was rare since they
were expensive) other men used sharp wooden pikes to accompany the man with
the gun. War was more close-up in those days. The bow and arrow were your
distance weapons and cannon were more accurate because they could throw
shrapnel like the nuts and bolts and scrap metal used in the bombs strapped
around the waists of suicides today. These account for more deaths than
"drive-by" shooters. The suicides who flew planes into the Twin Towers and
the Pentagon could not afford them. They hijacked them. They could not
carry guns aboard the planes so they used simple tools of workmen -
box-cutters and such. They used "thinking" as their weapons. They sorely
wounded Americans (most likely none of them owned a gun) but they had the
Second Amendment.
No man naturally loves guns. Little kids do. The stories told, written
and made into "Movies" are just that, stories. We love the vicarious
thrills to think of the gunslinger coming into town to save US! More likely
he was hired to drive out the farmer so that the moneyman or the ambitious
power seeker could get the land where the real wealth was. Go back into
ancient history and see the gunslinger as a Goliath with a club who is used
to scare the farmers of those days into quietly giving way to the man who
hired him.
Why does the worker in a high rise office tower need a gun? Why does the
farmer need a gun these days? Those who need guns get off on their power
and potential. Women let the men play with them - how many women own and
use guns? Reasoning like this is more powerful than arguments of the NRA
and the kids in the military who play at being soldiers. We have the Second
Amendment in order to supply MILITIAS with armories where guns can be picked
up when the need is there. The kids who belong to the present-day militias
spend weekends practicing for the time when they are needed. They don't own
the guns they practice with.
Switzerland has yet to go to war seriously but they train their citizens in
warfare and each citizen/soldier has a rifle at home at the ready. While
most Israelis do not own guns they are under the constant threat of war and
attack by terrorists. Like Switzerland their citizens are prepared for war
and guns are at the ready. Our history is different.
In America there was no reason for every citizen in the colonies and early
national period to own and carry weapons. The gunslinging western settlers
were an invention of the "Penny Dreadful" writers who glamorized the power
of pistol packing "Dead-Eye Dicks" having shoot-outs routinely making it
impossible for peaceful people to cross the streets of dusty towns across
the country.
The historian Bellesiles used sloppy research. He got it right but didn't
use my reasoning.
Carol's Evaluation: 9.5 out of 10.
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