Myths Quotes
This quotation is often provided by historians studying the gun culture of America. Even conservatives like Ames did not see a gun or an armed citizenry as important to America’s survival or well being. Contrary to popular belief, even the State Militias’ whose rights to bear arms was written into the Second Amendment did not bother to do so. In 1803 only three state militias had rifle companies. Firearms of the time were expensive, difficult to maintain, and hard to use. Unless one needed them for defense, it was too much of a bother. Even in the aftermath of the War of 1812 only 30% of Massachusetts adult men owned guns; by 1839, the rate was below 10%. It was on the frontier where guns were popular and necessary. See {613080}.
Myths include the then accepted scientific, political, and religious teachings.
3rd Earl Russell of Kingston
Despite the fact that there is no scientific data that even suggests that sex weakens men, the Armed Services promulgated this and other absurd and false information in order to try and minimize the amount of sex in which GIs would participate. The same myth was carried over into sports and athletics where many people still believe it.
The scientist insists on verification; the religious theologian does not; the philosopher sometimes does and sometimes does not.
The image of early America where the new nation’s men were all skilled marksmen with a rifle was a myth as this quotation shows. It took much more skill to maintain and use a rifle as opposed to a musket. There were few gun makers in America at the time, and it was very difficult to rifle a steel barrel. As a result, rifles were quite expensive and few could afford them.
Blight was referring to one classic example where the myth developed in the South and spread to the rest of the country, that the Civil war motivation was not to maintain slavery but a noble fight for freedom and states rights. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the seceding states had a legislative declaration of secession and all of them stated maintaining slavery was the cause of the war and secession. None mentioned a general principle of states’ rights. As a matter of fact the State’s rights issue went the other way. It was the Northern states that refused to obey the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court to return fugitive slaves. The Northern states claimed State’s rights and the South responded that states had no right to nullify a Federal Law that had been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. The historical myths that nations create, puts a more acceptable veneer on disreputable behavior of the past. The United States does this but other nations do as well, and some of the myths cause conflict and violence hundreds of years later as with the Balkans where each ethnic subgroup has its own myths all of which are wrong but believed.
