Liberal Forum

Blackvegetable » 15 Jun 2022, 9:22 pm » wrote: ↑

15 Jun 2022, 9:22 pm

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-o ... o-powerful

The unromantic reality of increasingly industrialized war wasn’t likely to capture the public imagination, and so, in ads, dime-store novels, and movies, gun companies proposed a self-serving alternative history. Though Southern Plains tribes like the Comanches had been decimated less by firearms than by disease, Winchester described its Model 73 repeating rifle—a specially promoted gun that had been used by Billy the Kid and Buffalo Bill—as “the gun that won the West”; this legend helped the company to sell almost thirty times as many guns in 1914 as it had in 1875. Blending the military and civilian domains, Winchester advertised its weapons as “For Military and Sporting Purposes”; Colt marketed its Single Action Army model as “the Peacemaker,” a weapon “for all who travel among dangerous communities.” The Thompson machine gun, developed as a trench-clearing tool during the First World War, was advertised through images showing cowboys defending their ranches against marauders; ads proclaimed the machine gun “the ideal weapon for the protection of large estates, ranches, plantations, etc.” A deadly but inaccurate weapon of industrialized war was recast as a precision instrument for taming the supposedly savage frontier.