A Certain Model of an Ideal Man
Kind of how we got to today’s environment of protecting various types of bullet-spewing-weapons.
May 26, 2022
Professor Heather Cox Richardson
One of the key things that drove the rise of the current Republican Party was the celebration of a certain model of an ideal man, patterned on the image of the American cowboy. Republicans claimed to be defending individual men who could protect their families if only the federal government would stop interfering with them. Beginning in the 1950s, those opposed to government regulation and civil rights decisions pushed the imagery of the cowboy, who ran cattle on the Great Plains from 1866 to about 1886 and who, in legend, was a white man who worked hard, fought hard against Indigenous Americans, and wanted only for the government to leave him alone.
That image was not true to the real cowboys, at least a third of whom were Black or men of color, or to the reality of government intervention in the Great Plains, which was more extensive there than in any other region of the country. It was a reaction to federal laws after the Civil War defending Black rights in the post–Civil War South, laws white racists said were federal overreach that could only lead to what they insisted was “socialism.”
In the 1950s, the idea of an individual hardworking man taking care of his family and beholden to no one was an attractive image to those who disliked government protection of civil rights, and politicians who wanted to dissolve business regulation pulled them into the Republican Party by playing to the mythology of movie heroes like John Wayne. Part of that mythology, of course, was the idea that men with guns could defend their families, religion, and freedom against a government trying to crush them. By the 1980s, the National Rifle Association had abandoned its traditional stance promoting gun safety and was defending “gun rights” and the Republican Party; in the 1990s, talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh fed the militia movement with inflammatory warnings that the government was coming for a man’s guns, destroying his ability to protect his family.
That cowboy image has stoked an obsession with guns and with military hardware and war training in police departments. It feeds a conviction that true men dominate situations, both at home and abroad, with violence. That dominance, in turn, is supposed to protect society’s vulnerable women and children.
In 2008, in the District of Columbia v. Heller decision, the Supreme Court said that individuals have a right to own firearms outside of membership in a militia or for traditional purposes such as hunting or self-defense, and dramatically limited federal regulation of them. Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority decision, was a leading “originalist” on the court, eager to erase the decisions of the post-WWII courts that upheld business regulation and civil rights.
In 2004, a ten-year federal ban on assault weapons expired, and since then. mass shootings have tripled. Zusha Elinson, who is writing a history of the bestselling AR-15 military style weapon used in many mass shootings, notes that there were about 400,000 AR-15 style rifles in America before the assault weapons ban went into effect in 1994. Today, there are 20 million.
For years now, Republicans have stood firmly against measures to guard Americans against gun violence, even as a majority of Americans support commonsense measures like background checks. Notably, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012, when a gunman murdered 20 six- and seven-year-old students and 6 staff members, Republicans in the Senate filibustered a bipartisan bill sponsored by Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) that would have expanded background checks, killing it despite the 55 votes in favor of it.
Since Sandy Hook, the nation has suffered more than 3500 mass shootings, and Republicans have excused them by claiming they didn’t actually happen, or by insisting we need more guns so there will be “a good guy with a gun” to take out a shooter, or that we need to “harden targets,” or that we need more police in the schools (which has simply led to more student arrests), or as Senator Ted Cruz said today, to limit the number of doors in schools, or, as a guest on Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity’s show said, to put “mantraps” and trip wires in the schools.
The initial story of what happened on Tuesday in Uvalde fit the Republican myth. Police spokespeople told reporters that a school district police officer confronted the shooter outside the building before he barricaded himself in a classroom, killing 19 and wounding 22 others in his rampage.
But as more details are emerging today, they are undermining the myth itself.
Robb Elementary School, where the murders took place, had already been “hardened” with the town investing more than $650,000 in security enhancements, but the shooter apparently entered through an unlocked door. The Uvalde police department consumes 40% of the town’s budget and has its own Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit. And yet, the stories that are emerging from Uvalde suggest that the shooter fired shots outside the school for 12 minutes before entering it and that he was not, in fact, confronted outside. Police officers arrived at the same time he entered the school, but they did not go in until after he had been in the building for four minutes. Seven officers then entered, but the lone gunman apparently drove them out with gunfire, and they stayed outside, holding back frantic parents, until Border Patrol tactical officers arrived a full hour later.
Parents tried to get the police to go in but instead found themselves under attack for interfering with an investigation. One man was thrown to the ground and pepper sprayed. U.S. Marshals arrested and handcuffed Angeli Rose Gomez, whose children were in the school and who had had time to drive 40 miles to get to them, for interfering as she demanded they do something. Gomez got local officers she knew to talk the Marshals into releasing her. Then she jumped the school fence, ran in, grabbed her two kids, and ran out.
A Texas Department of Safety official told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer tonight that the law enforcement officers at the school were reluctant to engage the gunman because “they could’ve been shot, they could’ve been killed.”
There are still many, many questions about what happened in Uvalde, but it seems clear that the heroes protecting the children were not the guys with guns, but the moms and the dads and the two female teachers who died trying to protect their students: Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia. News reports today say that Garcia’s husband, Joseph, died this morning of a heart attack, leaving four children.
Last week, in the aftermath of the deadly attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, Democrats in the House of Representatives quickly passed a a domestic terrorism bill. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tried to get the Senate to take it up today. It would have sparked a debate on gun safety. Republicans blocked it. In the aftermath of Tuesday’s massacre, only five Republicans have said they are willing to consider background checks for gun purchases. That is not enough to break a filibuster.
Last night, Texas candidate for governor Beto O’Rourke confronted Texas governor Greg Abbott at a press conference. Last year, Abbott signed at least seven new laws to make it easier to obtain guns, and after the Uvalde murders, he said tougher gun laws are not “a real solution.” O’Rourke offered a different vision for defending our children than stocking up on guns. “The time to stop the next shooting is right now, and you are doing nothing,” O’Rourke said, standing in front of a dais at which Abbott sat. “You said this is not predictable…. This is totally predictable…. This is on you, until you choose to do something different…. This will continue to happen. Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed, just like they were killed in Uvalde yesterday.”
Uvalde mayor Don McLaughlin shouted profanities at O’Rourke; Texas Republican lieutenant governorDan Patrick told the former congressman, “You’re out of line and an embarrassment”; and Senator Ted Cruz told him, “Sit down.”
But this evening the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays announced they would use their social media channels not to cover tonight’s game but to share facts about gun violence. “The devastating events that have taken place in Uvalde, Buffalo and countless other communities across our nation are tragedies that are intolerable.”
Share with me some totally idiotic thoughts about bipartisanship needed to help with these murders.
“Bueller? Bueller?”
The GOP War on Civil Virtue
NY Times – Paul Krugman – May 26
It seems to me that the GOP ideology, such as it is, is that free-will is paramount.
The guv’mint must not impede the right of citizens to carry out heinous acts.
An example of how such interference goes wrong can be found in Philip K Dick’s ‘Minority Report’, where the PreCrime agency was responsible for detecting and preventing so-called crime from occurring before it happened. This is, of course, what Dems are striving to achieve.
Philip K Dick – Minority Report
(It’s a satire, folks.)
Somehow, in some way that’s acceptable to all, it is necessary to figure out how to instill (again?) in the brains of Americans that is is flat-out wrong to be shooting up any public places one can think of. Including parks, churches, theaters, schools, stadiums, arenas, markets, hospitals, libraries, museums. Feel free to add to this list.
As a registered Dem (since 2020) I guess I must be advocating the establishment of mandatory reeducation centers, where non-violence can be instilled in any would-be malefactors. So be it.
BTW, the point of ‘Minority Report’ is not that in the future this is bound to happen, only that it would be pretty good if it did happen.
Except that it can go wrong. (Maybe not so wrong that we wouldn’t keep doing it.)
Otherwise, wouldn’t it be cool if we could benignly prevent people from committing terrible acts, acting on their worst impulses, which is happening with increasing frequency.
An ideal man can chamber their own rounds. Semiautomatic weapons are effeminate. Bolt action, lever action, revolvers, pumps, and breach load are butch.
I believe the 2nd Amendment was designed to apply to breech-loading flintlocks,
Ideally, of the ‘Kentucky rifle’ variety.
The long rifle, also known as longrifle, Kentucky rifle, Pennsylvania rifle, or American longrifle
one of the first commonly used rifles for hunting and warfare. It is characterized by an unusually long barrel, a development in American rifles that was uncommon in European rifles of the same period. … (Wikipedia)
The long rifle is an early example of a firearm using rifling … This increased the stability of its trajectory and dramatically improved accuracy over contemporary smooth bore muskets, which were cheaper and more common.
Rifled firearms saw their first major combat use in the American colonies during the French and Indian War, and later the American Revolution in the eighteenth century, with increasing use in the War of 1812, Texan Revolution, and American Civil War. …
The long rifle was made popular by German gunsmiths who immigrated to America, bringing with them the technology of rifling from where it originated. The accuracy achieved by the long rifle made it an ideal tool for hunting wildlife for food in colonial America. … (Wikipedia)
(It might be a stretch, but the 2nd Amendment perhaps applies to your weapon of choice, the ‘shotgun’, which is of course unrifled. Sort of like a musket.))
A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece)
a long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge known as a shotshell, which usually discharges numerous small pellet-like spherical sub-projectiles called shot, or sometimes a single solid projectile called a slug. Shotguns are most commonly smoothbore firearms, meaning that their gun barrels have no rifling on the inner wall, but rifled barrels for shooting slugs (slug barrels) are also available.
…. Almost all are breechloading, and can be single-barreled, double-barreled, or in the form of a combination gun. …
Preceding smoothbore firearms (such as the musket) were widely used by armies in the 18th century. The muzzleloading blunderbuss, the direct ancestor of the shotgun, was also used in similar roles from self-defense to riot control. … (Wikipedia)
For 2nd Amendment purposes, citizens should be permitted to employ only muzzle loading weapons, so all modern firearms – including shotguns – would be excluded. Flintlock rifles – or muskets – and the muzzleloading blunderbuss only please.
I am pretty sure that the GOP approves (heartily) of rifling.
The National Rifle Association presumably insists of this.
“An ideal man can chamber their own rounds. Semiautomatic weapons are effeminate.”
An ideal man can probably make his own ammo, or at least re-load his own ammunition. The more ideal man would make his own gunpowder. From scratch.
What about the ladies?
Smith & Wesson used to sell purse guns, e.g. the Lady Smith.
Maybe they still do. These were revolvers. Is that acceptable?
Fred,
Mostly I was spitballing with the “real men” messaging aspect of this thread. However, for home defense applications there is no better firearm than a pump shotgun with a fully loaded (unplugged) magazine of bird shot.
Background checks are widely approved by the electorate. However, we really need more than that. If gun control advocates cannot get their message together without tripping over their own “real men” parts, then that will never happen. To do that, then those that know a lot about guns will provide a better lead than those that have never shot guns and are terrified by them. IOW, knee jerks make people jerks.
To not do background checks (for whatever reason) may not be sufficient to quell much violence, but we won’t know until it’s (universally?) tried.
The checks are objected too mostly because they are right at the top of that slippery slope you are well aware of. So the majority that approves of them will continue to be ignored.
In the end, it seems the key to ‘progress’ in most of these matters, oddly enough, is to do away with the Senate filibuster. However, since the supposed 50-50 split in the Senate (with VP Harris as the plus-one, which isn’t a real thing because of Manchin and/or Sinema) is likely to be disappearing this November so the Dems want to hang on to it…
Err, To do background checks may not be sufficient to quell much violence, but we won’t know until it’s (universally?) tried.
It’s still a slippery-slope issue however.
Next thing you know, ‘they’ will be banning assault rifles again.
BTW, the slippery-slope fallacy is critical to ensuring that nothing further is done to keep firearms out of the hands of people who should not own them.
One cannot exercise free will unless one is unfettered by onerous regulations.
For the longest time, it was widely held that ‘That guv’mint which governs least is one that governs best’ has become a cruel joke.
Fred,
There is no valid reason to not do background checks prior to gun purchases. That is the bare minimum that we should have done long ago, but better late than never. Most of all though, it now has the support of 90% of voters. It is only the campaign finance donors that have been holding it back; well that and the Republican Party need for votes from the least common denominator between themselves and the donor class.
Whatever is done, background-checks at a minimum, has got to be at the federal level. People are buying firearms in states where it’s easy to do so and carrying them across state-lines for re-sale (illegally) or just to shoot up neighborhoods.
As for Texas, maybe it’s those stupid f—–g hats.
Well Ken
They gotta be tall and broad brimmed hats. If they had to think for one moment of what they are proposing in their resistance to restricted access to bullet spewing weapons their brains would overheat.
“To Protect and Serve”
Police Officers swear to protect and serve, the same as knights from the medieval era were often sworn in and asked to “Protect the weak, defenseless, helpless, and fight for the general welfare of all.”
I hope the stories I am reading and the one Professor Heather tells are wrong. As it just reinforces people’s beliefs they must be able to protect themselves and family as the police will not engage with a shooter. This spawns more people owning bullet-spewing weapons as the police will stand around as it appears they did down in Texas . . . where the imaginary of the cowboy with the white broad-brimmed hat rescuing the women and children arose.
It appears the police waited till they had an army, specialists, and other assistance before engaging the shooter. They blocked parents from doing what any parent would do to protect their children. The stories being told of some police officers rescuing their own children from the building first. For sure I would have been tased and handcuffed after some of the things I would say without regard for politeness.
The theory goes, we turn to the police to protect us, family, and society from dangers beyond our capability. If they will not do so, it encourages more of the lone rangers amongst us to do so, and in turn they may cause unwilful harm to the innocents.
Supposedly the Uvalde police force sucks up a large percentage of the town’s budget. Supposedly, they had training for such events. From some of the pictures I have seen of the police with their Terminator shades on, a few of them need to reduce in size and back away from the lunch and dinner table for a while.
Hollywood cops like you see in the movies?
From what I read, their refusal to engage till the calvary arrives just reinforces the thought patterns of those who have bullet-spewing weapons and those who are now thinking they need them.
The police were better equipped with protective gear then those of us who served in the military in the late sixties. Neither was this a University of Texas – Austin moment where law enforcement was outgunned. They were prepared and did not engage a shooter or distract him enough to where the shooter had to pay attention to the police. Distract away from the children.
I would have been livid too.
According to what I watched on tv yesterday, armed authorities did not arrive at the school until an hour after tragic events started.
It took 14 minutes for the UValde Police to respond (present story which keeps changing) a distance of 1.1 miles. “Its time to Die.”
Old guy like me can do a 14 minute mile and sling a rifle.
I guess that’s when on-lookers began urging them to do something more than stand around waiting for more heavily armed forces to show up.
Meanwhile, here in the Bay State…
Massachusetts must act before the Supreme Court rolls back its gun control law
Boston Globe – editorial – May 27
A super good speech
Professor Heather Cox Richardson on Amanpour
“U.S. Politics “A Tyranny of the Minority”
Ken:
A good clip. Thanks for posting it.
Bill
I think the professor is missing an aspect of the imagery/identity that the right is using. The cowboy has morphed to a more powerful construct: Heartland. It invokes not just the independence of the cowboy west but that this character is the true chosen one by god. You can not refute god after all.
The media has helped promote and reinforce this image with their continued focus grouping from between the 2 mountain ranges. The cowboy was modernized to include truckers with the shows of the 70’s as the trucker hero. Remember the one where one of the characters was a lawyer turned trucker?
Today the heartland includes all those in agriculture between the mountain ranges, not just the cowboy.
Here’s the funny part though. The chosen land is being devastated by weather events. God’s chosen land and people.
Lastly what is missing from her analysis is the construction of GOPTV which was planned for in the Nixon era. The money combined with evangelicals gave us today’s Wall St and the Heartland myth.
It seems to me that guns are what Republicans give citizens instead of actual civic and economic power.
And then they slowly establish the elements of tyranny, while telling citizens that they need guns to oppose tyrants.
And then the 400M guns flooding the society destabilize civic norms, impose huge externalities, and generally weaken the ligaments of democracy.
From a right wing perspective, what’s not to like?
Noni:
Nothing and everything. It is a vast deception of reality. No bullet-spewing-weapon will keep them safe. it is their opioid numbing their senses to reality. And politicians keep lying to them about the safety they provide. Look at all the misinformation that was heaped on us. Fewer doors, armed teachers, police with military vehicles, etc.
A bullet-spewing weapon will not make anyone safer.
Noni,
Yep. It was too easy for Republican Party elites to be able to resist. They had a ready made force of gun-loving people-hating storm troopers forged from the ranks of white supremacists and anti-government paranoid maniacs. The Republican Party was already affiliated with the military arms business and the oil industry making it a natural fit for them along with their historical preference for limited “democracy,” which is not really the same as limited government.
gun in the Texas shooting came from a company known for pushing boundaries
NY Times – May 27
Gunman emerged from classroom closet firing at Border Patrol agents, official says
Washington Post – May 27
Seems like Trump & Ted Cruz & Greg Abbott should be advocating for elementary school students to be armed for their own protection, at least in Texas.
Fred:
I would have been angry too even if they were not mine.