Slotkin Discusses Mythology of Guns in America

In an interview with journalist Bill Moyers on the anniversary of the Newtown massacre, emeritus professor Richard Slotkin discusses the mythology around guns in America.

A cultural historian, Slotkin has spent his adult life studying the violence that has swirled through American history and taken root deep in our culture. In his acclaimed Regeneration through Violence, The Fatal Environment, Gunfighter Nation, and other works of history and fiction, Slotkin’s work tracks how everything from literature, movies and television to society and politics has been influenced by our violent past  ̶  including the gun culture that continues to dominate, wound and kill. And he outlines how America’s frantic expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific led us to embrace a mythology of gun-slinging white settlers taming the wilderness to justify a tragic record of subjugation and bloodshed.

“The myth holds,” Slotkin tells Moyers. “And it is stronger than the reality.  Because those guns, particularly the Colt, are associated with one of the most active phases  ̶  and most interesting phases  ̶  of expansion.  And therefore it has the magic of a tool  ̶  the gun that won the west, the guns that created the American democracy and made equality possible.”