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Gun culture in the United States


The term gun culture in the United States encompasses the behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs about firearms and their usage by civilians. Gun ownership in the United States is constitutionally protected by the United States Bill of Rights. Firearms are widely used in the United States of America for self-defense, hunting, and recreational uses, such as target shooting. Gun politics is polarized between advocates of gun rights, typically conservative, and those who support stricter gun control, usually liberal. The gun culture of the United States can be considered unique among developed countries in terms of number of firearms owned by civilians, permissive regulations, and high levels of gun violence.

American attitudes on gun ownership date back to the American Revolutionary War, and find an origin also in the hunting/sporting ethos, and the militia/frontier ethos that draw from the country's early history.

The American hunting/sporting passion comes from a time when the United States was an agrarian, subsistence nation where hunting was a profession for some, an auxiliary source of food for some settlers, and also a deterrence to animal predators. A connection between shooting skills and survival among rural American men was in many cases a necessity and a 'rite of passage' for those entering manhood. Today, hunting survives as a central sentimental component of a gun culture as a way to control animal populations across the country, regardless of modern trends away from subsistence hunting and rural living.

The militia/frontiersman spirit derives from an early American dependence on arms to protect themselves from foreign armies and hostile Native Americans. Survival depended upon everyone being capable of using a weapon. Prior to the American Revolution there was neither budget nor manpower nor government desire to maintain a full-time army. Therefore, the armed citizen-soldier carried the responsibility. Service in militia, including providing one's own ammunition and weapons, was mandatory for all men—just as registering for military service upon turning eighteen is today. Yet, as early as the 1790s, the mandatory universal militia duty gave way to voluntary militia units and a reliance on a regular army. Throughout the 19th century the institution of the civilian militia began to decline.


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