Gun Culture
In his article, "America as a Gun Culture," historian Richard Hofstadter popularized the phrase gun culture to describe the long-held affections for firearms within America, many citizens embracing and celebrating the association of guns and America's heritage. The right to own a gun and defend oneself is considered by some, especially those in the West and South, as a central tenet of the American identity. This stems in part from the nation's frontier history, where guns were integral to westward expansion, enabling settlers to guard themselves from Native Americans, animals and foreign armies, frontier citizens often assuming responsibility for self-protection. The importance of guns also derives from the role of hunting in American culture, which remains popular as a sport in the country today.
The viewpoint that firearms were an integral part of the settling of the United States has the least level of support in urban and industrialized regions, where a cultural tradition of conflating violence and associating gun ownership with the "redneck" stereotype has played a part in promoting the support of gun regulation.
In 1995, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, whose employees routinely carry such weapons in the line of duty, estimated that the number of firearms available in the US was 223 million. About 25% of the adults in the United States personally own a gun, the vast majority of them men. About half of the adult U.S. population lived in households with guns.
Guns are prominent in contemporary U.S. popular culture as well, appearing frequently in movies, television, music, books, and magazines.
Read more about this topic: Gun Politics In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words gun and/or culture:
“What cannot stand must fall; and the measure of our sincerity and therefore of the respect of men, is the amount of health and wealth we will hazard in the defence of our right. An old farmer, my neighbor across the fence, when I ask him if he is not going to town-meeting, says: “No, ‘t is no use balloting, for it will not stay; but what you do with the gun will stay so.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)