American Shooter: A Personal History of Gun Culture in the United States

262 Pages·2012·1.36 MB·English

by  Gerry Souter

AMERICAN SHOOTER
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AMERICAN SHOOTER
A PERSONAL HISTORY OF GUN CULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES
GERRY SOUTER
Copyright © 2012 by Potomac Books, Inc.
Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Souter, Gerry.
American shooter : a personal history of gun culture in the United States /
Gerry Souter. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-59797-690-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-59797-872-9 (electronic edition)
1. Firearms ownership—United States—History. 2. Firearms—United States
—History. 3. Firearms—Social aspects—United States—History. 4. Souter,
Gerry. I. Title.
HV8059.S63 2011
683.400973—dc23
2011041758
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the
American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.
Potomac Books
22841 Quicksilver Drive
Dulles, Virginia 20166
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the four great loves of my life:
Janet, Damienne, Allison, and Collin
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
1 A New Culture Shaped by Old Fears
2 Heading West: Prophets of Individualism
3 It’s a SmallBore World after All
4 “A Simply Operated Machine Gun . . .”
5 A-Hunting We Did Go
6 World War II: The Game Changer
7 Gathering the Reins in a Runaway World
8 The Me Generation under Fire
9 Put the Gloves on the Bosses and Let ’em Duke It Out
Appendix A. National Shooting Sports League
Appendix B. Exhibition Shooters
Appendix C. Hitting the Target
Appendix D. Guns in a Big, Dark Room
Appendix E. Them’s Fightin’ Words: Video Games
Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
Foreword
Gerry Souter’s American Shooter: A Personal History of Gun Culture in
America is an informative and enjoyable excursion, both historical and personal.
Souter sets out the problem of the polarization in public debate about guns. He
seeks to separate “myths and truth” and “insights and blunders.” This book is not
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about the Second Amendment controversy. Yet Souter explores the nature of
our gun culture and how deeply ingrained it is, both personally and individually,
and broadly throughout American society.
The first chapter opens with America’s colonial heritage, the regulation of
firearms, smoothbore inaccuracy, the evolution of rifles, and shooting contests.
Souter interjects a personal story of his father winning a turkey shoot and the
beginning of a rivalry. For a shooter who got his first gun from his grandfather at
age five, this chapter resonated powerfully. My son, Elwood, now the carotid
specialist for his string of neck shots on deer and elk, has surpassed his father in
the field. Souter then tells of the militia system and the soldiers of the American
Revolution and the War of 1812. His discussion of the Battle of New Orleans
echoes Robert V. Remini’s telling of the question of who killed Col. Robert
Rennie in the battle. A man named Withers claimed the kill, declaring, “If he
isn’t hit above the eyebrows, it wasn’t my shot.” They rolled the body over and
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“sure enough the fatal shot had caught the officer just over the eyebrows.”
Accurate rifle fire carried the day.
As Americans moved west, manufacturers and shade-tree mechanics were
improving weapons. Pistols designed for specific uses, and for specific clients,
appeared. Souter debunks the “myth of the gunfighters.” We were not a
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“gunfighter nation.” In fact, many of the cow towns in the American West
restricted the carrying of weapons in the city limits. Souter maintains the reality
was that “the handgun became the trademark of individualism, self-reliance,
dimwitted bravado, crutches for low esteem, and a status symbol with little
justification. Nothing much has changed.”
Souter also explores the rise of marksmanship and the development of
competition. The 1874 Creedmoor competition revealed that the U.S. team only
won on the last shot against an Irish team. On the frontier, Billy Dixon made a
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1,538-yard shot at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls. Yet in the American
military, marksmanship declined with military appropriations after the Civil War.