Yes actually I am referring to the earlier eras. As a kid in the 60s, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett were on TV and movies, and I had a coonskin hat and a toy flintlock that fired caps when I maybe 5-7. I had those Classic Comics of the Last of the Mohicans and similar stuff. Don't forget F- Troop.
Our national identity and myths were based on settling a new continent. I visited some French and Indian War battlesites as well then. Of course the old west is rife it too. From the pioneering defending themselves against 'savages', massacres, gunfighters, and so on, it is just part of the history we're taught and in entertainment we consumed. Westerns and WW2 movies dominated. They were hero figures. The Civil War of course is huge, but oddly not from a glorification of the fighting standpoint. Maybe more of an aloof view of battles, strategies, and slavery. Post Vietnam, maybe things changed as we entered the information age.
I talking in gross generalities. I was outer suburban kid from a family that was very outdoorsy. My grandparents hunted deer and gamebirds. They never kept a trophy, just froze what they didn't right away for when we visited. I fished with them every summer. My friends and I all had bb guns for plinking things in the surrounding countryside. My dad took me to a gun safety course when I was in junior high. Maybe more urban kids would have had different experiences.
But I have to maintain that gun are deeply a part of at least the earlier generations subconscious. Maybe millennials and younger, through more choices, received different cultural training.
As to the amendments, my take is that 2nd is now a deeply politicized issue with little chance of anything being done either way. However, if a political group decide to make the 7th a hot topic, like what happened to abortions and guns, then maybe they will be hot to change it.
I've posted before on the topic; I have many friends with guns. They have all been responsible owners as far I have seen, mostly support a lot of the proposed restrictions. Even the guys with ARs and AKs, who have them purely because they could, are not the 'from my cold, dead hands' types. They are just boys with bb guns grown up. Instead of fixing up old cars, they go out to ranges or the open prairie and shoot at targets.
Its a numbers game to me. There will always be a certain number of people who lose their s**t and act out in some violent way. Having more guns around means the higher likelihood they will be used is those situations, to deadlier effect than say a knife or hammer. Fewer guns, few casualties. The problems as I stated before, you will never be able to get them back now. They need to target the manufacture and trade in the military types, the smaller machine pistils types, etc. Try to at least get back to only hunting and sport target shooting types.
