I take these figures from a forthcoming book by historian Michael A. Bellesiles, The Origins of America s Gun Culture. He does more than rehearse depressing statistics. He shows, much to my surprise, that it has not always been so. Contrary to current rhetoric, the USA has not always been a nation of gun owners. Before 1860, for example, fewer than half the members of local militia were armed despite the fact that the federal government offered guns free to militia members.
People just weren t interested.
In all of Massachusetts in the three decades before the Civil War, there was an average of only nine murders a year. Two things, Bellesiles reports. First, Samuel Colt was an advertising genius. Beginning in the 1850s, despite low crime rates and urban police forces that felt they were well enough armed with billy clubs, Colt convinced America s urban male population that they needed guns to be real men. Secondly, the US Army found it cheaper to let Union soldiers take their guns home rather than to collect them.