APRIL 28, 2019 – Western Civilization has endured for more than 2,500 years. The Wild West, has roared for less than 250. By “Wild West,” I don’t mean only the Great Plains, the Rockies, or the deserts of the Southwest, though they are fetching symbols of “wild” and “West.” I mean strains of American culture that still fuel certain attitudes.
One is the gun culture. A related one is what Herbert Hoover dubbed “rugged individualism,” what today we’d call, “libertarianism.”
By “gun culture,” I mean a social and political disposition that tolerates abuse and prolixity of firearms and prevents meaningful restriction of sales and licensing. My points of reference: all other western nations.
I split the gun culture into two basic groups. One encompasses criminals and extremists. The other group includes political conservatives wedded to what they think was intended by the Second Amendment. It’s the latter group that allows the former to flourish.
Attitudes that allow the “gun culture” to thrive in America are the legacy of the Darwinian imperatives that conquered the nation’s wild reaches. Call it the “frontier mentality,” which formed the centerpiece of historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis.” Chop down all the trees. Till the soil ‘til it’s turned to dust in the wind. Kill and corral indigenous people until they’re vanquished. Do as you please because you can—all in the name of your freedom, your liberty, and the pursuit of your happiness.
But America is a vastly altered place, of course, from what it was near its founding. In 1790, the population was under 4 million versus today’s of 328 million. When in 1775 the American general and politician Christopher Gadsen designed his flag “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, people traveled by foot, horseback, or horse- or ox-drawn wagon. We’re now a nation with 263 million automobiles and 87,000 commercial airplane flights a day. At the nation’s start, 90% of the labor force were farmers leveraged only by horse- or ox-drawn plows. In 2012, the percentage of employment in agriculture was 1.5%. Back in the day, wood, water, horse-feed, and tallow were about it for energy. Despite Mr. Franklin’s key-in-lightning experiment, he and his contemporaries couldn’t possibly have contemplated our continent-wide electrical grid powered by coal, oil, and gas—let alone by nuclear fission. Nor could they have imagined the hand-operated printing press giving way to 257 million hand-held smartphones.
And when it came to guns . . . if you even owned one in 1791 (the year the Bill of Rights was ratified), it was fired by a piece of metal striking a piece of flint.
If “big government” wasn’t part of the Founders’ format, neither was “big” population, economy, energy, media, nor . . . firearms. Yet the big hold on our culture is the idea that “Don’t Tread on Me” should block more restrictive gun control legislation.
Only when that “big hold” diminishes will we allow gun control the way we allowed . . . for example . . . construction of the Interstate Highway System.
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Chop down all the trees. Till the soil ‘til it’s turned to dust in the wind. Kill and corral indigenous people until they’re vanquished. Do as you please because you can—all in the name of your freedom, your liberty, and the pursuit of your happiness. This is a profound quote!
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