I gained a stunning insight into just how long the American Gun culture has been reinforced by the media last night.
I was breaking in my new streaming TV box, and I started watching an old "Singing Cowboy" western with the late Gene Autry, "Get Along Little Doggies" from 1937.
The plot isn't important to my point here, but rather it's about one of the early scenes.
A woman driving a car drives by Autry and splashes him as it goes through a puddle. Autry's response is to pull out his gun and shoot out a tire. (!!!) The movie presents this as a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and Autry and the woman chat and flirt as though he hadn't just committed a violent and psychopathic act.
This got me thinking about how deeply ingrained the gun culture has been in American life for a very long time, and how for some people at least, this sort of behavior is still considered reasonable.
jtg
12:46 PM PT: Addendum, Autry not only jerked out his gun and shot out his tires, he first chased her down on his horse, and THEN shot out her tires, thus magnifying his psychopathic act.