SHE LOVES HER GUNS

After America's most recent and notable mass shooting, Heather Cox Richardson, professor of nineteenth-century American history at Boston College, wrote and spoke on the nation's lack of gun control. She was invited onto PBS where her newsletter was cited. There she'd offered that “... the nation’s current gun free-for-all is… a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority.” She was then asked how the United States became so captive to an extremist minority and whether the National Rifle Association, who seems central to all of this, was always vehemently opposed to gun control?

In response, she shared her personal memory of growing up in a world surrounded by guns. She recounted her upbringing in rural Maine where rifles were always around, often mounted on the back of one’s truck. The professor recalled how, given the ubiquity of and everyone’s close proximity to guns, the NRA would come into schools to teach kids how to be responsible around firearms. She explained that only recently did the NRA’s focus turn from gun safety to defending a particular reading of America's Second Amendment; a circumstance that coincided with America busily reimagining the image of the cowboy. The professor explained:

That image of the lone cowboy is really the image that comes out of the 1980s. And you can think about things like the fact that in 1977 the blockbuster image that of Luke Skywalker, who was this individual guy taking on the Empire. And a lot of Americans thought of themselves as that, in that period. And that's the moment the NRA changes from being about gun safety and protecting the sport of shooting ... and becomes what they call 'gun rights': the right of the individual to act as he (almost always [a male]) wishes.

This new American hero, she offered, was a unmarried white male, a libertarian above the law and free to act as he wishes, standing strong against a grasping government and its misguided, creeping regulation all while protecting his people from ‘the bad guys.’ This cowboy protagonist also had his antagonist, said the professor. Cox Richardson and host were careful to define this new enemy who was, by definition, always and specifically: Indigenous-Americans or Mexican-Americans, but occasionally indigenous Mexicans or Chinese-Americans. She also took some time to note how this wrongly revisionist vision always omits people of colour as cowboys or heroes despite, as she explained, minorities made up a third of that cohort. Also this myth didn't just misrepresent minorities but women as well, only ever showing them as mothers, wives, or prostitutes, the professor explained. So this novel, gun-loving Republican vision of the good American wasn't merely a curious rewriting of history but it was both racist and sexist as well.

HAS SHE EVER WATCHED STAR WARS?

Heather Cox Richardson and I couldn’t be more aligned in our desire to see the unique madness that is American gun violence come to an end, and fast, like yesterday, and by just about whatever means necessary. Still, everything this historian offers seems pretty far off from both the current reality and historical fact and so across several dimensions. Even as a gun-phobic Canadian from the West coast who has never voted as far right as Liberal, I find it very hard to see what she’s talking about. I don't get her newsletter, where I'm sure she offers more context and sources, but this interview felt more like a comforting tale directed at a highly accepting audience than anything comprehensive (or that could possibly be true.)

The first red flag for me when watching this interview was the suggestion that Star Wars (a ‘space opera’ that landed in the ‘70s) was an ‘80s cowboy flick about a lone hero fighting an unfairly infringing government. This doesn’t seem to me like a vaguely accurate reading of the original film or any among the multiple trilogies that followed. Nor does it take into account anything we're told by the film's creators. Like, it is almost as if the professor has never seen the film she references, but only came across them in conversation or analogy within pop culture. As in, how does this work? If Luke is the gun-toting [sic] white nationalist libertarian then who is the legitimate government he opposes? Does she understand Darth Vader and his clone army of tyrannical civilization destroyers to be analogous to the sensible, progressive, regulation-imposing Democrats? If not, it’s hard to resolve her argument into something coherent.

Beyond that, it is well-understood that Star Wars was strongly influenced by the work of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. More explicitly, director George Lucas has always acknowledged inspiration from Kurosawa's samurai epic, The Hidden Fortress. So, Star Wars is far less a Western and far more of a samurai movie, not just in its plot but also in its cinematography. And neither the first Star Wars film nor its inspiration offers lone heroes, evil government regulation, lawbreaking libertarians disregarding community or ethics for their own independence or personal enrichment, and none feature minorities as antagonists either. (Though maybe she considers gangsters, bounty hunters, and clone armies as communities being unjustly put upon.) And you wouldn't expect that from a mid-century Japanese storyteller, would you?

To be clear, Star Wars begins amidst a galactic civil war, so nothing like America in the 1980s or 1880s; and rather unlike the time of America's cowboys or those consuming this space opera and the NRA's propaganda. Within that context, Luke is brought into the story by a message from a central female protagonist (his sister, unbeknownst) seeking to save her people and restore peace to her world. Young Luke on his own is soft, bumbling, and essentially useless. Even to merely interpret the message he receives, Luke has to seek out a wise elder. And he only cultivates some basic understanding and skills through the laboured mentorship of a pair of monk-like elders who teach him patience, introspection, psychokinesis, and how to use a laser-sword - but only in self-defence or to maintain the peace. And all of this is accompanied by strong messaging that guns are uncivilized and that the hate in one's own heart is the real enemy.

More than that, throughout the films the protagonist maintains a strong reliance on a large group of friends and associates of all stripes – really a maximally diverse alliance of anti-heroes from all corners of the galaxy – who've banded together to serve the greater purposes of re-instituting peace, justice, and order against the will of the antagonist and his army of mindless gun-toting white clones. Importantly, the antagonist is family, the father, and nothing like the state. Also, given the professor's comments, it seems worth nothing that in this distant galaxy women don’t just lead their people as monarchs and elected officials but also participate in and head the military, along with rebellions against the psychotic all-male autocracy seeing to dominate every corner of the galaxy. (The professor missed where Luke, her "cowboy" armed with a lightsaber and magical powers, has his arm chopped off by his lone father in an unfamiliar setting while sister Leia, declothed and disarmed, kills the galaxy's most notorious gangster, who's also twenty times her size, with her nothing more than her bare hands and within his own flying fortress...) By my own interpretation then, there isn't a film more counter to the professor/historian’s assessment than her own example of Star Wars.

HAS SHE EVER WATCHED A MODERN WESTERN?

Moving on from Star Wars, Cox Richardson’s assessment seems stranger still if you recollect or go look at popular Westerns from 1980 onward. The historian clearly states that "that image of the lone cowboy is really the image that comes out of the 1980s." So explicitly not as a result of messaging prior to the '80s, but born from the '80s, and, as I interpret her, also the cowboy image we inherited and consumed thereafter.

It just so happens that I was born at this same time she highlights and was heavily exposed to cowboy flicks myself. My father, a child of the 1950s, was raised on Gene Autry, John Wayne, and the like. And I would wager that as an adult he watched just about every Western that showed on television, appeared in the video store, or made its way into local theatres. Of course, that meant that as a child I also saw many of these myself. Without looking, Cox Richardson’s version of events certainly doesn’t fit with my own blurry recollection. Though I couldn’t remember any, never mind a preponderance, of Indigenous-American, Mexican-American, or Chinese-American enemies in these films, I could’ve just been confused, forgetful, or just perfectly blind to the problem.

To figure out which it was, I spent seven hours of my weekend watching famous cowboy films. I searched ‘Western’ on Netflix, looking for all the popular 1980s or early ‘90s films available. I watched three of the four available from this period the professor highlights as a crucial transition and reeducation point. (I chose not to watch the fourth film, Geronimo, as the story is one sympathetic to an Indigenous leader who bravely stood against an unjust and brutal white settler government and its military. This seemed to me to be directly counter to the professor’s assessment.)

The first film I watched was the biopic Wyatt Earp, from 1994, starring Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman. It’s certainly a film about the life of one man; but family, community, and teamwork are essential and emphasised from start to finish. A key sentiment recurring throughout is how family is the most important thing. That’s just as hard to miss as the fact that when briefly alone the protagonist is a miserable and wayward soul. Also, this is far from being an anti-government, anti-law, or anti-regulation film. Not only is Wyatt’s father (Hackman) a police constable who later becomes a Justice of the Peace, but Wyatt (Costner) studies law and he and his brother become law enforcement as well. Wyatt was appointed to the city police in Wichita, Kansas and later made assistant city marshal in Dodge City, Kansas. A key theme of the film is Wyatt and his team of lawmen enforcing a no firearm policy – “Give up your guns, boys!” – to maintain civility in Dodge City. Just as essential to the story is that the good guys end up fighting an unruly gang called “The Cowboys.” It’s impossible, as a result, to see this story as being pro-gun or pro-cowboy either. Further, I counted 22 scenes of violent conflict or threats of such by protagonists. I noted only one such event was obviously directed toward a possible, though ambiguous, minority (who was part of the Cowboy gang.) Like Star Wars, I read Wyatt Earp as effectively the opposite of what Cox Richarson says was the essential brainwashing being foisted upon America around this time.

Next on the list was the 1992 film Unforgiven, starring Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, and Gene Hackman. Now, as we all know, Clint Eastwood has been a paragon of white American masculinity for fifty years, is a life-long Republican and recent Libertarian convert, and also a gun enthusiast. Eastwood also directed this film. So where does all this get us in terms of the film’s alignment with the professor’s narrative on cowboys and the NRA takeover of political identity? Well, this story is about how two cowboys arrive in the town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming and brutally and senselessly harm a prostitute. The local sheriff (Hackman, the antagonist) effectively does nothing and so the women at the brothel offer a hefty bounty to have the men killed. Another man, ‘the Kid,’ arrives on the scene and is determined to collect but has no experience with such things and so seeks the help of an elder. The elder, Will (Eastwood), sad and frail, is a retired outlaw and widower (not unwed) raising two children alone. Also feeling out of his depth, Will recruits his buddy Ned (Freeman). Already this doesn’t feel like a lone hero flick. This gang of good guys (?) arrives in town and Will winds up in the saloon. The sheriff and his men confront the stranger. For the crime of carrying a pistol on his person they beat him up and kick him out of town. Will’s friends revive him. (You get the strong impression he may not have made it without folks caring for him.) Eventually these men find their targets. Ned shoots and kills one of the men’s horses which causes him to realize he doesn’t want to kill anyone or anything else and departs. Later, the Kid kills his target but becomes distraught, revealing to Will what is already known: that he’d never shot anyone. The Kid declares he’ll never kill again and quickly returns to Kansas with his reward. At the same time, Will learns the sheriff tracked down and killed Ned for belonging to this crew of extrajudicial assassins. Will returns to town for revenge, killing the sheriff and his men. He also warns the townsfolk that he will return if any other women are harmed again. The epilogue explains that Will then took his children to San Francisco and prospered trading in dry goods.

So, like the previous film, Unforgiven has law enforcement maintaining a local, in-town anti-gun ordinance; however, unlike the previous film, you could argue the bad guys are upholding this law. That said, it's not so obvious that the protagonists are good or ones to be emulated or that the firearms ban is bad. Moreover, the messaging that contradicts professor Cox Richardson's narrative are far more abundant than anything vaguely supportive. For example, there isn't one hero loner but a crew of 'good guys,' (who do not present as heroes at all) and a third of them are Black; far from having their way with women, the protagonists don't just give them what they want but do so at tremendous personal cost; all fights initiated by these protagonists are against non-minorities, and all seem to renounce guns and violence; and then the main protagonist moves with his kids from the relative independence of the ranch to the big city (so, not alone and into, not away from, the clutching hands of government to exploit its ample and readily available amenities.) As such, to me, Unforgiven fits the professor’s narrative as well as Wyatt Earp does.

After that, I watched Silverado, the 1985 Western featuring Scott Glenn, Kevin Costner, Danny Glover, and Kevin Kline, along with John Cleese, Linda Hunt, Brian Dennehy, and Jeff Goldblum. The story is largely about a group of four men (Klien, Glover, Glenn, and Costner) who join up to fight corruption in the fledgling town of Silverado. The formidable female saloon owner (Hunt) is also a key figure. The four men run afoul of the corrupt local law and escape a posse who are after them, eventually bringing justice to the town. When the job is done, the two brothers depart for California, another protagonist reunites with his sister to rebuild the family homestead, and the other becomes sheriff of Silverado. As in the other films, though visible minorities are present as townsfolk, labourers, and landowners, none of the twelve scenes including violence or threats of violence show protagonists attacking them. The racism that features is also clearly presented as bizarrely cruel and unjust and those who exhibit such (only bad guys) get what is coming to them. It is not a movie about a lone, ethno-nationalist or libertarian hero fighting government regulation.

Though just three films, the actors, plot, and style of these Westerns all feel perfectly representative to me. And if I think of other popular films from the time and go watch their trailers and read their plots I don’t find anything different. Who then, I’d love to know, was pressing out this essential cowboy messaging the professor speaks of – and doing so at a scale and in a manner more accessible and impactful than Hollywood? Moreover, how do you transform the national mythology along with a whole political and cultural reality without such significant, regular, and overt messaging? The professor highlights cowboys and film, she doesn't suggest covert NRA lobbying was actually the impressive force manipulating civilization. And since she brought up popular film, I thought I would go read about the rest of the major cowboy pictures (all of those not on Netflix at the moment) arriving immediately after she tells us the image of the lone, racist/sexist, libertarian cowboy took over the culture.

THE ENTIRE MODERN WESTERN CANON

The highest earning Western of the ‘80s was Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider, from 1985. Here, a preacher (Eastwood) protects a humble prospecting community from a greedy mining company, led by an evil baron who's encroaching on their land and who eventually dams their creek. While this does appear to be a lone hero film, there is a notable absence of government or regulation and the protagonist is directly opposed to monied interests having their way. His enemy thus seems a stark contrast to the demographics of Cox Richardson’s cowboy stereotype. In her interview she explained that, “the image of Reagan in his cowboy hat … it solidifies a political movement that pushes against business regulation primarily.” How does her assessment square with the reality of this most popular early ‘80s film, starring this Republican and premier machismo cowboy? If only to me, all this makes Pale Rider feel closer to a potent counter-example.

Another popular ‘80s Western, one which opened at the top of the box office and I recall seeing with my brother at the time, is Young Guns. Starring Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Kiefer Sutherland, the movie retells part of the story of the Lincoln County War along with the related adventures of famous outlaw Billy the Kid. The main conflict is between an educated Englishman who runs a cattle ranch in New Mexico and a nearby Irish cattle rancher. The Englishman hires six gunfighters (one of whom is a visible minority, played by Lou Diamond Philips) to work on his ranch. There are regular conflicts between them and men from the other ranch. When the conflict escalates, the Englishman is killed. The group of six consult a lawyer who gets them deputized and grants them warrants to arrest of the Irishman’s murderous gang. The six arrest some of the men but their leader, the Kid, also kills some. This puts them on the wrong side of the law. They go on the run and the US Army is then charged with bringing the men to justice. There’s a big shootout and some are killed. The film ends with a voice-over explaining that one of their widows forced a congressional investigation into the Lincoln County War, another took work on a farm in California, and another moved to New York and married Yen Sun, the woman he rescued from the clutches of the evil Irishman. No lone hero, no nationalist libertarians, and no grasping government, inappropriate corporate regulation, nor any evil minorities. In fact, the protagonist who acts on his own as he wishes, killing the bad guys rather than bringing them to justice, is clearly seen as chaotic, selfish, and carelessly putting the wider community at risk. The whole film is really just another strong counter-example. (Are there any examples?)

1993 gave us Tombstone, featuring Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, and Sam Elliot (with a cameo by Charlton Heston, that long-time face of the NRA who famously pronounced, thrusting his flintlock into the air, "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!”) This is another film about Wyatt Earp, and one that became a cult classic. It tells the story of Earp’s attempt at a peaceful and anonymous retirement from law enforcement in the town of Tombstone, Arizona. As in Wyatt Earp, his plans are disrupted by outlaws called “The Cowboys.” What ensues is the attempt of a team of “peace officers” to bring law and order to the town. This leads to the legendary 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral' and the 'Earp Vendetta Ride,' in which Deputy US marshal, Wyatt Earp, takes his federal posse to track down the bad Cowboys. Here again we have marshals, good guys and the local embodiment of government, imposing weapons bans on criminals. Once more there are no lone heroes, no government overreach, and no evil Chinese-American or Indigenous enemies. And again, it’s hard to understand this film as part of a disinformation campaign to manufacture broad consent for maximalist gun freedoms.

The Quick and the Dead hit theatres in 1995 and starred Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, and Leonardo DiCaprio. The story is of a female gunfighter, Ellen (Stone), known as “The Lady.” Arriving in the town of Redemption, she decides to participate in a duelling tournament sponsored by an evil man, Herod (Hackman), who rules the town. (“This is my town! If you live to see the dawn it’s because I allow it…” he assures the community at one point.) We learn that Ellen’s father was the town’s sheriff before Herod and his gang showed up, lynched him, and took over the place. The film ends with Ellen revealing her identity to Herod before killing him. The final scene has her declaring “The law’s come back to town.” So this film too seems to have diverged wildly from the Cox Richardson’s script: the protagonist has the wrong gender, the antagonist the wrong skin colour, and law and order is being reimposed after control was taken away from the evil minority of men who’d decided to impose their will by force and threats of force.

Again, I read all of this popular cultural messaging as antithetical to what we’re told about the Republican/NRA myth of the American cowboy and related themes. These films are not about lone unwed males, absent any women or people of colour, living in a "world of bromance" and free to "excercise dominance over women and people of colour", as the professor says, and needing government for nothing. That's just not what's here. There are modern American films full of guns and about independent white, male protagonists who are fighting against an oppressive government and/or non-white antagonists. Neither the most popular post-1980 cowboys nor anything in the Star Wars franchise appear to be that. So I wonder why the professor brought up film, cowboys, Luke Skywalker, and the'80s if what she really meant was that the NRA changed its stance and started to aggressively lobby government? Above this quick and loose media analysis, which suggests to me the professor is forwarding a fictitious narrative, I also think the professor's whole timeline is off by more than a decade while also missing critical, historic cultural moments, too.

THE NRA AND THE 1968 GUN CONTROL ACT

In the immediate aftermath of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy in 1968 and the nation-wide rioting that followed, the White House moved to implement mandatory gun licensing and a national gun registry. And the National Rifle Association blocked those tepid gun control provisions. President Lyndon Johnson publicly attacked the NRA for doing so, announcing that “The voices that blocked these safeguards were not the voices of an aroused nation: they were the voices of a powerful lobby, a gun lobby.” The law that was eventually passed only restricted mail-order gun sales, required traceable serial numbers on weapons, and barred addicts and the mentally ill from owning firearms. Of course, all of this was twelve years before the professor says a critical policy shift occurred within the NRA that led them down the road to opposing restrictions on ownership and influencing legislation.

Above that, the NRA seems to have taken the lead from and appropriated the language, policies, and political stance of the revolutionary Black nationalists of the '60s. Famous from that time is the 1964 speech by Malcolm X, titled The Ballot or the Bullet. Suggestive of its significance, leading scholars placed this speech among the top ten American speeches of the last century, above that of presidents and religious leaders – ahead of speeches on world wars and women's rights. (To me, in subject, tone, and cadence, it sounds very much like a Trump speech. But what do I know...) In it, along with acknowledging the denial of voting rights to his community, Malcolm X declared that his people were "faced not with a segregationist conspiracy, we're faced with a government conspiracy." It's a strongly anti-government sermon from start to finish, one that preaches Black nationalism while making all the same arguments around self-sufficiency and preparing for violence you hear from modern American libertarians. He says that, going forward, the choice must be between "the ballot or the bullet, liberty or death: it's freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody." In light of all the executions, bombings, and banal brutality, along with no level of government willing or able to defend this community, he says they should feel free to defend themselves. Most importantly, Malcolm explains, as an American:

Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle. This doesn’t mean you’re going to get a rifle and form battalions and go out looking for white folks, although you’d be within your rights—I mean, you’d be justified; but that would be illegal and we don’t do anything illegal... So, this doesn’t mean forming rifle clubs and going out looking for people, but it is time, in 1964, if you are a man, to let that man know. If he’s not going to do his job in running the government and providing you and me with the protection that our taxes are supposed to be for, since he spends all those billions for his defense budget, he certainly can’t begrudge you and me spending $12 or $15 for a single-shot, or double-action. I hope you understand.

Though perfectly coherent and reasoned, and nearly every word celebrated by his audience, the mainstream resoundingly condemned this speech. In response, Malcolm only doubled down, continually and passionately defending his stance that the dominant culture cannot be relied upon to do the minimum of protecting innocent Black lives (never mind upholding equal rights or enhancing the experience of a community not uncommonly treated as second-class or even sub-human...) Following these speeches, more like them, and the execution of Malcolm X (by his own former colleague from the Nation of Islam, Mujahid Abdul Aziz), the acceptance and enactment of a constitutional right to carry firearms became a key stated mission of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. In his book Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, Joshua Bloom references party founder Huey Newton as arguing that there can be no political power without military power and that all Black people must arm themselves “from house to house, block to block, community to community throughout the nation” if they are ever going to uplift themselves and other oppressed peoples.

Cox Richardson, professor of American history, sees these examples and the prominence and thrust of the civil rights movement they were part of, looks straight past this radical extremist minority (one using the US Constitution to defend their right to own guns, which also forms an essential identification for the most famous political arm of its nationalist movement) and suggests the appeal to the Second Amendment and any connection between gun ownership and identity was birthed almost two decades after Malcolm X and by white nationalists (or the NRA or maybe Reagan Republicans, or some combination thereof and all connected to cowboys and Star Wars, or something...) This, to me, is like arguing that jazz was invented by Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall in the late '30s. Sorry, no.

Also, what does Cox Richardson make of the Mulford Act – that gun control legislation signed in 1967 by Reagan in direct response to Black Panthers openly carrying weapons throughout Oakland and eventually into the California State Capitol? How does this fit the picture she paints?

WAIT, WHAT?

All of the above and what was by now a searing skepticism caused me to rewatch the professor's interview more critically. As a result, I came away not knowing what the professor was on about or to what end – like, at all. Does any of it make sense to anyone? Is that even possible?

Even the minor, taken-for-granted anecdote about gender? It didn't even hit me when I first heard it, but she seems to suggest there's a strong disparity between reality and the portrayal of women in the modern cowboy myth: that of women only being found as mothers, wives, and prostitutes in the burgeoning settlements of the Old West. This not what I find when I look at popular Westerns. Regardless, let's say she's right. If that's so, is Cox Richardson (this expert on nineteenth century American history) arguing that women actually had far more opportunities available to them? That does sound like her argument. How else is the typical representation unfair? Were women less commonly found in the home or brothel and more commonly found as railroad labourers, stagecoach hands, coal miners, blacksmiths, bricklayers, bankers, saloon owners, and marshals in the remote villages of pre-Industrial Kansas or New Mexico? Were Tombstone, Deadwood, Dodge City, or Amarillo home to vast cotton looms, America's largest public school system, a national college for midwives or nurses? If so, I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one who would love to read that hidden history.

Then the professor argues the enemy of the NRA and a mutually supportive Republican fringe minority, along with their misogynistic cowboy image they promote, is government and government regulation. Only, as I say, that’s not what is seen in popular modern Westerns or anything like an unambiguous undertone. And, of course, government prior, during, and after the transition period she notes was overwhelmingly Republican (and white and male, of course.) From 1968 to 1988 was the Nixon, Reagan, Bush era. But I thought the NRA became Republican? And I thought government was the evil other needing to be opposed? How does all this work? She speaks as if it is all so straightforward.

Yeah, well, the professor then flips her argument to claim the real enemy of the idealized protagonist, and the white American male who dreams of being him, are certain visible minorities (but curiously not Japanese- or Korean-Americans or folks with West Indian or East African heritage...) As I’ve suggested, there doesn’t seem to be great evidence for this in the very sources you might expect to see it most pronounced. And, of course, this kind of selective racism doesn't really make any sense on its face. (Do we find anti-Asian or anti-Muslim bigotry to be commonly directed at a particular language, ethnic, or national grouping? Or does this kind of ignorance tend to disregard what these communities consider to be essential distinctions?) Critically, the professor doesn’t offer any evidence other than a very late and perfectly non sequitur reference to, of all things, Star Wars. (What, are Stormtroopers understood in the popular imagination as Mexican or Indigenous-American? Were there secret ultra-popular '80s Westerns celebrating the extermination of Chinese-born railroad labourers or Hispanic ranch-owners?)

Perhaps worse than all of that, though Cox Richardson frames America as being taken hostage by a truly radical and minuscule minority, when I look for good polling I don’t actually find a group anything like what she describes. Nor do I find anything like an overwhelming majority in support of far greater gun restrictions. Why is that? Pew Research Center conducted a poll in April of 2021 showing only 53% of Americans, roughly a partisan split, would like to see stricter gun laws. Gallup found something similar. So, even as gun control groups spend more money than ever (more than $20 million in 2020) to get their message out, “Americans” do not appear to be overwhelmingly in favour of changing the status quo – that of gun homicides and suicides and weekly mass murders far exceeding other nations which are as free as America (or, given the absence of all these needless murders, far more so.)

In fact, support for gun control in America looks to be declining slightly while firearm purchases have simultaneously accelerated. Research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found 7.5 million Americans became first-time gun owners at the beginning of the pandemic. Around half of those were women and 40% were either Black or Hispanic. So the identity of eager new gun owners doesn't look anything like the stereotype on offer, either.

Further, such figures cause one to wonder what measures, short of a total ban, could put a dent in the numbers of guns that now saturate American life. It's hard to imagine even an aggressive and extremely generous national buy-back campaign, as was done in Australia in the 1990s, could counter the new annual gun purchases alone, never mind the 393,347,000 guns already out there.

Sadly (for Americans and also those of us who love them), America really is enamoured with her guns.