Is it the year? Most definitely! In fact, it’s the year! The year in which Mr. Browning unveiled his most prolific weapon ever… the 1911 pistol.
In very long standing (over a hundred years now), the 1911 remains one of the finest handguns ever created and has a real history in American culture. From World War I, World War II, Korea, as well as Vietnam it has garnered the faith and trust of many American soldiers.
Developed by the son of a gunsmith, John Moses Browning (as I understand it), got the idea of wanting to harness and use the gases produced from the firing of a weapon to actually cock the gun, thus creating a faster firing rate. While out hunting with a friend one day, Mr. Browning noticed that every time his friend fired, the long grass around him would bend from the muzzle blast. The idea was stuck in his head, and working in part with Colt went on to develop what has now become the standard in semi-automatic handguns.
I have always had a general understanding of what the “gun culture” is and from where it originated, but I have never had to actually put it into words before, so I did a little research. America was born after the invention of the gun, so the earliest settlers in America coming to a strange land had already embraced the gun as a means of both survival and procurement of food. As the settlements grew into colonies and then into states and eventually a super-power nation, firearms made that possible through basic survival, personal defense and even revolution. In our infancy as a nation, a standing army was practically non-existent, so the “citizen soldier” or militia was our form of national defense. That concept was so ingrained in our founding that it resulted in the writing of the 2nd Amendment, which protects our right to keep and bear arms as individual citizens. Our nation was born out of revolt against tyranny and in their wisdom, our founding fathers recognized that an armed citizenry was essential to the protection of a free nation from enemies, both foreign and domestic. So, the “gun culture” has been a part of America since before it was born.