Whether or not it bears any relationship to reality, many Americans feel that they are living in a world of “Cowboy settlers” who need to be armed to the teeth in order to survive in a harsh and forbidding land. Never mind that this harsh, forbidding land is now mostly filled with paved roads, strip malls, and Starbucks coffee shops on virtually every corner! Still, the mythology seems to run that since the white settlers who colonized America carried guns, guns must be an integral component of our success. That if guns were regulated in the United States, the country would cease to be successful or special. The gun is seen as part of the sacred “special sauce” that has allowed American culture to be so dominant. This has led to strikingly lax gun laws in most of the country.

XREF: Connects to broader American exceptionalism and frontier thesis debates about national identity formation.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 105