The Myths that Drive America’s Love of Guns

Americans love their guns – love them so much there are actually more guns in this country than there are people. Love them so much that, when dozens of people – mostly children – were slaughtered at an elementary school in Newtown, CT,  the media became filled with politicians and gun nuts defending lax gun control laws by claiming guns are an American heritage, an inherent right – why, even a God-given right. (I must have missed the part in the Bible about the Arsenal of Eden.)

Americans love their guns, though, not because it’s a right or heritage. They love their guns because of a mythology that has grown around them, a mythology inspired by cheap novels and cheaper movies. Most of what Americans think they know of their history is pure myth, and no where else in American history is there more mythology than the history of guns in this country.

Myth #1: The Second Amendment was written to protect the right to own guns.

Fact: The original intention of the Second Amendment was not to protect gun ownership, but to prohibit a standing army. Many of our Founding Fathers felt a standing army would tempt future leaders to indulge in foreign adventurism. In this they were right. Just think about Iraq.

Originally, the first line of the Second Amendment was worded something like, “Congress will make no provision for a standing army, but will rely on the militia of the states for the country’s defense.” Because of this reliance on militias, it continued, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The amendment, as originally written, was strongly opposed by George Washington and his lieutenants. Washington was well aware of the failings of the militia. In 1754, when Washington was a colonial militia officer, undisciplined militiamen under his command killed a French envoy, setting off the French and Indian War. Nor did the performance of rebel militia during the Revolution change his mind.

Because of Washington’s opposition, the wording prohibiting a standing army was removed from the Second Amendment, leaving just the last enigmatic line: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

In the end, the Founders believed each state would maintain its own militia by requiring each male citizen to serve a certain number of years in the organized militia. It was essentially a military draft of sorts. Today, however, there is no mandatory military service in the United States. Less than one percent of Americans ever serve in the military, so a “well regulated Militia” cannot be the answer to America’s love for guns.

Myth #2: A ragtag Patriot militia beat the most powerful fighting force in the world, the British Army.

Fact: After the battles at Lexington-Concord and Bunker Hill, the militia played at best a minor role in the Revolution. It was a well-trained, professional Continental Army led by George Washington – and backed up by the French army and navy – that defeated the British.

Contrary to popular belief, Minutemen were not born of the American Revolution, but were part of colonial forces since the mid-1650s. They were not ordinary militia, but an elite force of well-trained military reservists capable of responding instantly to attacks from hostile Indians or Frenchmen. Some American rebel militia usurped the name “Minutemen” in the months leading up to the Revolution, but the real pre-Revolution Minutemen actually ended up on both sides of the war.

Most Americans are unaware there were both rebel and loyalist militia in the Revolution. According to Thomas B. Allen, author of “Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War,” both sides had roughly equal numbers of militiamen at their disposal, though the Tory militiamen were better armed, uniformed and trained. One of the best-known Tory militia units was the British Legion, a vicious, rampaging force commanded by the British officer Banastre Tarleton and, ironically, portrayed in Mel Gibson’s movie “The Patriot” as a British army troop.

The Patriot militia, on the other hand, was much less effective. In a 1776 letter to the president of the Congress, Washington wrote: “To place any dependence upon militia is assuredly resting upon a broken staff. Men just dragged from the tender scenes of domestic life, unaccustomed to the din of arms, totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill ... makes them timid and ready to fly from their own shadows.”

And fly they did – frequently. At the Battle of Camden, the militia that made up half the Patriot force broke and ran at the first shot, causing a defeat for Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates. Such performance was so much the norm that in the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina, Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan used it to lure British forces, including Tarleton’s legion, into a trap.

Morgan placed his greenest militia at the front of his lines and, knowing they would break and run, pleaded with them to fire just two volleys before retreating. Tarleton’s forces chased the militia into the teeth of Morgan’s lines, composed of Continental soldiers, including the general’s famed Morgan’s Rifles, and more experience militia. Tarleton’s forces were annihilated.

In his article, “Militia or Regular Army,” published in the European Journal of American Studies, historian Tal Tovy points out that Washington’s early strategy of hit-and-run tactics was based entirely on his need to rely on militia with unreliable fighting abilities. It was only after he had time to develop a professionally-trained Continental Army that Washington began confronting the British head-on.

It was that Continental Army, with the backing of several thousand French troops, which brought about the surrender of the British Army at Yorktown, VA.

Myth #3: Our Founding Fathers believed an armed citizenry was needed to defend liberty against a tyrannical government.

Fact: As discussed earlier, Washington and his lieutenants convinced Congress that militias could not be relied on alone to defend the country against foreign invaders. Why then would they think the same unreliable force would be able to defend the Constitution against their own government, tyrannical or otherwise?

Furthermore, when the Whiskey Rebellion erupted in 1791 – just three years after the Constitution was ratified – it was harshly put down by an army composed of federalized state militia led by President George Washington. The harsh response to the rebellion was applauded by Americans and proved the new U.S. government would brook no unrest among the states.

Several more such rebellions were similarly suppressed. Most notable was John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry, also put down by well-trained federal forces (U.S. Marines) led by U.S. Army Col. Robert E. Lee.

Myth #4: Gun control is a modern liberal plot to take weapons away from honest citizen gun owners.

Reenactment of the Gunfight at OK Corral.
(c. James G. Howes, 2008)

Fact: Gun control laws date back to at least the 1820s, and they were widespread in the western frontier.  In fact, gun violence was far less tolerated in the Old West than most people think. After all, shootouts were not good for business.

Far fewer cowboys carried guns on the trail than you might expect. In fact, many cattle barons prohibited their cow hands from carrying personal weapons to avoid violence among their workers, and also to prevent an accidental gunshot that could stampede the cattle.

Still, it was conceivable that out on the range, a gun might be a necessity. But once in town those guns had to be turned into the local sheriff’s office. Even in towns without gun control laws, saloons normally wouldn’t serve you until you first turned over your gun to the bartender.

Gunfights, in fact, were relatively rare in the not so Wild West because of these strict gun control laws. The most famous shootout, the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, AZ, ironically was fought over Tombstone’s gun control law. The Clanton gang refused to turn in their guns and the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday set out to force the issue.

Gun laws in old Tombstone, in fact, were stricter than they are in Arizona today where citizens are allowed to carry handguns nearly everywhere they go. It makes you wonder if the Clanton gang hadn’t actually won the OK Corral gunfight.

So where did all this Old West gun lore come from? Dime novels written in the late 1800s to entertain tenderfoots in the East were notorious for exaggerating the myth of the cowboy and his six shooter. Self-serving books written by or about legendary lawmen like Wyatt Earp and Pat Garrett added to the mythology. A fledgling Hollywood added to it by making idealized cowboy movies a mainstay of its early films.

But the worst perpetrator of these gun myths is the National Rifle Association. The NRA and the gun manufacturers it represents have pushed these myths down the throat of Americans for decades. They call weapons like the Colt .45 revolver and the Winchester repeating rifle the guns that won the West. And the massive amounts of money they give to politicians make many a lawmaker a true believer.

In fact, relatively few people in the Old West owned handguns. They were expensive and hard to shoot accurately. Repeating rifles were also too expensive for most folks. Rejected by the U.S. Army, repeating rifles largely ended up in the hands of hostile Native American warriors. The most widely used gun the in the Old West, in fact, was the unglamorous double-barrel shotgun.

But the NRA has succeeded in making too many Americans believe you can’t be a good American unless you’re heavily armed at all times. And that puts the lie to the last great gun myth.

That the good guys always win.

Why the South Cannot Rise Again

I have often argued that had the Confederacy successfully seceded from the Union, the American South today would be part of Mexico. The South was never in a strong position for war. It was an agricultural region with little capability for manufacturing war materiel. Had it been sprung from the Union, the French Army occupying neighboring Mexico would have marched into the South in such a way as to make Sherman’s March to the Sea look like an afternoon hike.

In the aftermath of President Barrack Obama's election, a bunch of Obama-hating post-election dead-enders passed around petitions in all 50 states calling for secession from the Union. Most of the action, of course, was in the Red states, those that vote most often for Republicans. And most of those Red states are in the Old South. Since Donald Trump took up domicile in the White House, his racist-bating rhetoric has only encouraged those same dead-enders.

I stand by my conjecture above. If secession succeeded today, the result would be the same as it would have a century and a half ago—the South would still end up part of Mexico.

But it won’t succeed. It won’t even get a start. Bigotry might still be alive in Dixie, but the sociological

conditions that allowed the secession of the South in 1860 simply don’t exist today.

A Rich Man’s Movement

The southern secession movement in the mid-1800s was largely a rich man’s movement. The South has always been more oligarchic than the North. Plantations owners wielded great political power. They used their wealth to finance “filibusters,” mercenaries armies sent to take over Latin American countries to turn them into future slave states. Abolition threatened their cheap source of labor and that, in turn, threatened their profit margins.

The average southern man, however, was simply poor and ill-educated. He had little knowledge of the Union, or anything beyond a few square miles of the state in which he lived. Typically, he had no concern about slavery one way or another. To him, his state was his country. The idea of blue coats marching into his state was simply an act of aggression against his country. As a result, southern men were easily fooled into becoming cannon fodder for slave owners looking to save their profits.

To begin with, African Americans are no longer an enslaved people in the South. Minorities of all races are becoming the majority in the United States. Unlike the 1800s, they have a voice—a strong voice. And they vote.

The populace of the South today is also much better educated and much more aware of the rest of the country, if not the world. Far more of them were raised in other states, or studied in other states. They have a world view that just didn’t exist in the 19th century.

Moreover, those better educated Southerners are well aware that their very livelihoods depend on spending from Washington, D.C.

Dependent on Washington

Federal spending on such programs as defense, aerospace, agriculture, energy, Social Security, and Medicare is heaviest in the Red states. As much as some of their citizens might think of themselves as independent and self-reliant, they are actually the biggest “takers,” receiving far more federal funds per person than they send to Washington in taxes.

According to research conducted by the business website 24/7 Wall St., Red states make up eight of the top 10 states receiving the most federal dollars: North Dakota, West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, New Mexico, Maryland, Virginia, and Alaska. Connecticut and Hawaii were the only Blue states in the top 10. Research by the Washington Post found similar results.

The fact is this Union is held together by an economic spider web of federal spending. Any attempt by a state to break away would result in an immediate economic collapse in that state. Large corporations with federal contracts – whose only loyalty lies with the source of their profits – would quickly pull up roots and relocate to a loyal state to keep those contracts. Subcontractors working for those corporations would do likewise or wither. Housing markets in secession states would collapse as workers moved to Union states to keep their jobs, and construction jobs would soon disappear.

Breakaway states where the economy relies on imported and exported products would be unable to do either. The federal government not only controls all the air corridors crisscrossing the nation, but also all the intrastate waterways. Without the FAA to regulate air traffic, or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to maintain ports or rivers like the Mississippi and the Missouri, commerce would come to a standstill.

Defenseless

Seceding states would be left defenseless from outside aggression. In 1860, state militias were funded entirely by the states. When the Civil War started, they were able to raise an army from state-funded militia. But it didn't last. The Confederate states were unable – perhaps unwilling – to raise enough tax revenue to fund the rebel army. By the end of the war, the Confederate Army was short of everything needed by its troops—clothing, shoes, food, ammunition. Johnny Reb fought much of the war barefoot and starving.

Had the South successfully seceded, its army would have been no match for the French army in Mexico. Napoleon III was keen on recapturing land the first Napoleon reluctantly sold to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Throughout the Civil War, French troops stood ready to invade the American south had the opportunity arose.

Today, Washington, DC pays 95 percent of the costs to maintain each state’s National Guard, the modern day organized state militia. Since Red states today are as reluctant to raise taxes as their Civil War predecessors, it would be impossible for them to maintain their state militias. Any border state that secedes from the Union would see its state militia fall apart, leaving the state vulnerable to invasion from more powerful countries such as Mexico, Canada or, in the case of Alaska, Russia.

When our Founding Fathers created this country in the 18th century, they originally founded a confederation of states. The loose bounds of that confederacy made governance nearly impossible, so our Founders created the Union.

In 1860, the seceding states also created a confederation. It worked no better than the original confederation. Despite early rebel battle victories, the Confederacy could not support its army or maintain itself as a country.

There is no reason to believe a third try would be the charm.

 

The Myth of Republican National Security Prowess

Each election year, Americans are bombarded with Republican claims that the Democrats are weak on defense, and only the GOP can protect America. Historically, however, the Republican Party has been pathetically weak on national security – so bad in fact, we came close to losing more than one war.

After the end of the American Civil War, the Republican Party opposed maintaining an  army of any appreciable strength. As soon as the war ended, the GOP-controlled Congress reduced the U.S. Army to a bare shadow of its wartime strength. They did this despite the fact that a very clear and present danger existed at the country’s southern border. At that point in history, the much larger French Army occupied Mexico. French dictator, Napoleon III, openly harbored  a desire to wrestle control of France’s former Louisiana Territory back from the United States. 

Nevertheless, Republicans repeatedly cut the army’s strength. Throughout the late 1800s, during which the GOP held virtual one-party rule, the American army’s strength dropped to 27,000 regular troops. What troops we did have were poorly trained and poorly armed. While the rest of the world’s armies were adopting modern magazine-fed repeating rifles, the U.S. Army was still armed with archaic single-shot Springfield “Trapdoor” rifles, many of them simply remanufactured from Civil War muzzle loading guns. 

During the Indian Campaigns of that period, many of the Native American tribes were better armed than the average army regiment. Col. George Custer and the men who met their fate with him at the Little Bighorn did so not only because they were outnumbered, but they were out-gunned, too. Armed with their single-shot Springfields, Custer’s men could not match the intensity of fire offered by Sitting Bull’s forces, many of whom were armed with repeating rifles like the Henry, the Spencer, and the Winchester. 

Out Gunned by the Spaniards 

Many of our troops were still armed with Trapdoors during the Spanish American War in 1898. Those who were issued modern Krag-Jorgensen magazine-fed, bolt-action rifles complained that because of the lack of funds for ammunition, the army had  disabled the magazines, requiring soldiers to reload the weapon after each shot. The rifles also still used black power, which revealed the shooter’s position with a massive cloud of smoke. 

The Spanish Army, on the other hand, was armed  with state-of-the-art Mauser repeating rifles and rapid firing Maxim machine guns, both firing smokeless powder. The only rapid fire weapon our troops had were Civil War-vintage Gatling Guns. 

The American Navy didn’t fare much better under Republican rule. In 1881 the London humor magazine Puck described the U.S. Navy as a force of "three mud-scows supplemented by a superannuated canal-boat." It wasn’t much of an exaggeration. 

The GOP-controlled Congress funded a naval shipbuilding program that began in 1890 and continued throughout the end of the century. But the funding they provided for training ship crews was so meager, sailors were rarely able to practice their gunnery. As a result, during the Spanish American War, U.S. naval gunnery was pathetic.  At the Battle of Manila Bay, American ships fired a total of 4,959 shells of various sizes. They scored only 72 hits. At the Naval  Battle of Santiago de Cuba, the U.S. Navy fired 1,300 shells; only 25 found their mark. 

In his memoir of the Spanish American War, Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican himself, condemned his own party’s failure to support the army and navy with adequate funding. In the end, the U.S. won the Spanish American War only by  the courage of its soldiers and sailors, and the fact the Spanish never wanted to fight a war over Cuba in the first place. 

TR tried to improve American military power during his presidency, but his policies were largely reversed by his own party after he left  the White House. 

When a European war broke out in 1914, it was the isolationist Republican Party that led the movement to keep America out of it. It would be up to a peace-loving Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, to see the dangers posed to this country by a collapse of Britain and France and build up our military in preparation to sending them “over there.” Still, America’s military equipment was so limited that the bulk of U.S. troops in WWI were armed with British Enfield rifles, French-made Chauchat machine guns, and French- and British-built aircraft. 

When Republicans again controlled the government in the interwar years, U.S. military strength again shrank and stagnated. Important legislation passed in 1920 established the framework for an improved, professional army. However, because Republicans controlled both houses from 1920 to the early 1930s, lack of appropriate funding prevented the reforms from being fully implemented. The U.S. Army so stagnated that some career officers remained junior officers like lieutenants and captains for nearly their whole careers. 

Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt and his fellow Democrats in Congress began the  rebuilding of the American military in the early 1930s, despite  opposition from isolationist – and in many cases, pro-fascist – Republican legislators. 

Establishment of the Defense Industry 

World War II was followed by years of decline in conventional forces, as the atomic bomb  was considered the weapon of the future.  Outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, however,  brought with it the need for a massive buildup of conventional American forces and equipment. When US manufacturers balked at retooling for war, President Harry Truman made a momentous decision that would impact the U.S. for the rest of history – with passage of the Defense Production Act of 1950,  he created the defense industry. 

Once the defense industry became a permanent form of business in the  United States, the Republican attitude to military spending changed. From that point on, the pro-corporation Republican Party would push as much money as possible to the defense contractors. 

But spending on the defense industry doesn’t necessarily equate to making America strong.  Massive defense spending during the Reagan administration did little more than triple our national debt and turn the U.S. from a creditor nation to a debtor nation.  With defense manufacturers overcharging  million of dollars for such follies as “crash-proof” coffee makers and the so-called “Star Wars” missile defense system, there was literally little money left for maintenance. 

As a result, some older Navy ships were unable to leave port due to mechanical breakdowns. Entire squadrons of aircraft reportedly were cannibalized for spare parts. At the time, I served in a Navy reserve ground combat unit that, despite being part of the country’s Rapid Response Force, had no weapons; Reagan had sent them to El Salvador and there was no money to  buy replacements. 

Defense from Terrorists 

In 1999, the Clinton administration received a single warning of a pending Al Qaeda attack on the U.S. President Bill Clinton immediately placed the country’s entire law enforcement apparatus on alert. As a result, the so-called Millennium Plot was thwarted when the intended bomber was caught trying to cross into the U.S. from Canada. 

In 2001, the Bush administration received some 40 separate warnings from American and foreign intelligence agencies that Al Qaeda was planning an imminent attack. George Bush ignored all of them.  On September 11, more than 2,000 Americans paid the price for Bush’s national security incompetence. 

Less than two years later, in March of 2002, Bush told reporters he was no longer concerned with finding the organizer of that attack, Osama Bin Laden. Bush eventually closed down the CIA office dedicated to tracking and capturing or killing Bin Laden. Two useless and unnecessary wars later, the Al Qaeda mastermind was still at large when Bush left office in 2008. 

It would be left to Bush’s Democratic successor, Barack Obama, to reopen the search for Bin Laden and launch the covert operation that finally made him pay for his treachery. 

So much for Republican prowess on national security.