Why do Americans Love Guns? |
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by Pamela Haag
When I am in other countries I sometimes get asked why Americans love guns so much. Of course, it’s worth remembering that not all or even most Americans do. As several historians have described, we’ve had forms of gun control for as long as we’ve had guns in the US, and guns have never been ubiquitous household items. The trend in the 1950s was for more households—around half—to have one gun, but the trend today is for fewer households—around one-third—to own multiple guns.
As for the American gun mystique, such as it is, there are many reasons behind it, and no single cause could explain it entirely.
However, the most consistently ignored reason for the gun mystique is corporate America itself. This forgotten origins story isn’t about the frontier or the Revolutionary War, but about the unexceptional commercial forces of industry and marketing in the early-twentieth century when the US was modernizing and becoming more urban, settled and sedentary, and the gun, perhaps, might have assumed a more obscure place in our culture.
The archives of the gun titans, including Winchester and Colt, reveal change over time in how guns were sold and their uses conceptualized. In the nineteenth century the gun comes across as something that was needed but not necessarily loved.
At the turn of the century this began to change. Gun manufacturers shifted from talking about how their guns worked to how they made you feel. The gun shifted, as well, from something that was needed, but not necessarily loved to something that was loved but not necessarily needed.
With this transition, the gun industry was following a marketing trend to create desire for their product rather than simply satisfy pre-existing demand. Winchester even dispatched gun “missionaries” to carnivals to stimulate gun interest. And in this respect, guns were no different from mouthwash, tiddlywinks, or shoes—except, of course, that they kill.
We can see evidence of this shift everywhere. At the turn of the century, gun advertisements changed from technical descriptions to impassioned narratives about the intangible value and emotions the gun could conjure. The gun industry began explicitly to associate guns with masculinity — “The real boy” wants a gun, advertised Winchester. It amounted to a “natural yearning,” such that a boy would “get a hold of one sooner or later.” A 1921 Literary Digest ad extolled, “You know [your son] wants a gun. But you don’t know how much he wants it. He can’t tell you. It’s beyond words.”
In its internal sales bulletins to dealers, Winchester described the best ritual to hand a gun to the customer “the right way to stimulate desire.” They invited the dealer to imagine the customer feeling the gun’s “comfortable cuddle to his shoulder, its smooth brown stock to his cheek...”
This marketing and advertising reveal the modern gun mystique in formation: The gun was becoming a love story. It was changing from tool to totem—and would become much more so later in the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.
To some extent, Americans love guns because we were invited to do so by the post-frontier gun industry itself. This shift from gun utility to gun love didn’t require a corporate conspiracy to invent a gun mystique. It required only that each gun manufacturer follow the marketing and commercial imperatives of its time—to find new values for its product, to keep its product relevant, to stimulate desire for it, and to sell guns. That the gun mystique emerged partly out of these unexceptional commercial forces is perhaps the more disquieting conclusion still.
Pamela Haag is an award-winning nonfiction writer, essayist, cultural commentator, and historian. She has a Ph.D. in history from Yale. She is the author of The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture.
Image: Winchester Corp.
When I am in other countries I sometimes get asked why Americans love guns so much. Of course, it’s worth remembering that not all or even most Americans do. As several historians have described, we’ve had forms of gun control for as long as we’ve had guns in the US, and guns have never been ubiquitous household items. The trend in the 1950s was for more households—around half—to have one gun, but the trend today is for fewer households—around one-third—to own multiple guns.
As for the American gun mystique, such as it is, there are many reasons behind it, and no single cause could explain it entirely.
However, the most consistently ignored reason for the gun mystique is corporate America itself. This forgotten origins story isn’t about the frontier or the Revolutionary War, but about the unexceptional commercial forces of industry and marketing in the early-twentieth century when the US was modernizing and becoming more urban, settled and sedentary, and the gun, perhaps, might have assumed a more obscure place in our culture.
The archives of the gun titans, including Winchester and Colt, reveal change over time in how guns were sold and their uses conceptualized. In the nineteenth century the gun comes across as something that was needed but not necessarily loved.
At the turn of the century this began to change. Gun manufacturers shifted from talking about how their guns worked to how they made you feel. The gun shifted, as well, from something that was needed, but not necessarily loved to something that was loved but not necessarily needed.
With this transition, the gun industry was following a marketing trend to create desire for their product rather than simply satisfy pre-existing demand. Winchester even dispatched gun “missionaries” to carnivals to stimulate gun interest. And in this respect, guns were no different from mouthwash, tiddlywinks, or shoes—except, of course, that they kill.
We can see evidence of this shift everywhere. At the turn of the century, gun advertisements changed from technical descriptions to impassioned narratives about the intangible value and emotions the gun could conjure. The gun industry began explicitly to associate guns with masculinity — “The real boy” wants a gun, advertised Winchester. It amounted to a “natural yearning,” such that a boy would “get a hold of one sooner or later.” A 1921 Literary Digest ad extolled, “You know [your son] wants a gun. But you don’t know how much he wants it. He can’t tell you. It’s beyond words.”
In its internal sales bulletins to dealers, Winchester described the best ritual to hand a gun to the customer “the right way to stimulate desire.” They invited the dealer to imagine the customer feeling the gun’s “comfortable cuddle to his shoulder, its smooth brown stock to his cheek...”
This marketing and advertising reveal the modern gun mystique in formation: The gun was becoming a love story. It was changing from tool to totem—and would become much more so later in the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.
To some extent, Americans love guns because we were invited to do so by the post-frontier gun industry itself. This shift from gun utility to gun love didn’t require a corporate conspiracy to invent a gun mystique. It required only that each gun manufacturer follow the marketing and commercial imperatives of its time—to find new values for its product, to keep its product relevant, to stimulate desire for it, and to sell guns. That the gun mystique emerged partly out of these unexceptional commercial forces is perhaps the more disquieting conclusion still.
Pamela Haag is an award-winning nonfiction writer, essayist, cultural commentator, and historian. She has a Ph.D. in history from Yale. She is the author of The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture.
Image: Winchester Corp.