Guns

Guns were considered a necessity in settling the American frontier during the colonial era, for they provided personal and familial protection and enabled colonists to kill game for survival. In the twenty-first century, guns remain central to popular images of the self-sufficient pioneer and mythic gunfighter, and they are an essential tool of film and television heroes. American men, in particular, are associated with guns, which they have used to assert their power and dominate people in warfare, law enforcement, and personal conflicts.

Although there is some controversy regarding the development of America's gun culture, it is generally believed that guns were essential to notions of republican manhood and an emerging national identity in Revolutionary America. The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution granted citizens “the right…to keep and bear arms.” The association of guns with a manly defense of liberty was apparent in Ralph Waldo Emerson's poetic celebration, in his “Concord Hymn,” of the embattled farmers who began the American Revolution with “the shot heard round the world.” This association between guns, Americanism, and manliness was reinforced by subsequent wars.

Guns became particularly important to southern ideals of manhood. After the French and Indian War (1754–63), colonists, especially in the South, adopted from French and British aristocrats the tradition of dueling, which was part of a code of manly honor that demanded ritualized combat between two equals when one had questioned the integrity of the other. At the same time, southern white men were particularly troubled by the possibility that black men might use guns to challenge a social system grounded in white patriarchy, racial hierarchy, and paternalism. As early as 1640, laws were passed making it illegal for African Americans to carry weapons. After the Civil War, Southern states passed the “Black Codes,” which included provisions denying former slaves the right to own weapons.

During the antebellum period, burgeoning firearms manufacturers like Samuel Colt helped bolster the nation's gun culture by making guns affordable, accurate, and durable. Inspired by Unionist shooting enthusiasts, rifle shooting became such a popular sport after the Civil War that the members of the National Guard formed the National Rifle Association (NRA) in 1871 to advance the sport. Membership [Page 199]in the NRA boomed after World War I as hunters in rural areas joined the organization.

During the twentieth century, American gun culture continued to facilitate the formation of masculine identity. Gun ownership became a rite of passage, particularly in rural areas where boys were given a progressive assortment of firearms upon reaching a certain age. Hunting became a vital part of many young males' initiation into manhood. After the late-nineteenth-century disappearance of the western frontier left many American men anxious about the future of American manhood, shooting and marksmanship became popular sports, and such organizations as the Boy Scouts of America (established in 1910) awarded boys badges for demonstrating these skills. Marksmanship competitions, historical re-enactments, firearms collecting, and gun shows provided a range of activities that appealed to various social classes and subcultures as ways of fashioning masculine identity.

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