How would losing the American Revolution affect American gun culture?

I'll grant some of what you're saying, but MANY phases of settlement by US folks (or colonials) were cases of people knowingly stepping out "beyond the pale", beyond the accepted boundaries of the colony, state, etc. Most of the people who did felt that they could simply fend for themselves against natives, robbers, animals, etc. Quite often, then, the government "caught up" with the new reality that there were people living out there and moved their accepted border to (again) encircle them.

And yet the population of the West was about zero until the railroads came, with only a handful of exceptions like in California. So, okay, if gold is discovered somewhere, people will rush there regardless of whether there's a functioning state. That's not a specifically American feature - Canada had gold rushes, just like the US. That's why Yukon separated from the Northwest Territories.

Even your point about mine owners "becoming their own law" demonstrates this -- they went to where there was no established law and set up their own systems (guards, etc) to defend their claims.

That's not really what happened, though. What happened is that powerful people bought the law. For example, in California, the Gang of Four controlled the state in the early Gilded Age. It didn't create the state or set up its own system where there was none; it took over the state using money.

That is certainly true of the latter half of the 19th century, but beforehand, the government control of settlement was scant at best, and this led to things like Texas and California overthrowing the Mexicans and declaring independence, as well as all of the violence and strife that stemmed from the fur trade.

The settlement of Texas was very far from rugged individualism, too. It was a concerted effort by the Southern plantation owners to expand slavery to the west, secure in the knowledge that the federal government would soon bail them out, which it indeed did in going to war with Mexico. The Texians did not invent Manifest Destiny. The instigating force was civil society rather than the government, but it's still not the same as the image of the lone settler bringing civilization to the west.

As far as the Indians go, their population was so diminished by the time of actual Western expansion (modern estimates indicate that at least 90% of the population perished from disease in the centuries dating from first contact with the Spanish) that actual Indians wars were more of an invention by American moviemakers than anything else.

That's completely untrue. First, it's not really true that modern estimates say what you think they say. There's an ongoing debate between high and low counters about the population of the Americas in 1492; the numbers converge by about 1600, and if you believe the high counters, there was 90% population loss in the 16c, largely from disease.

However, there was still a sizable indigenous population in the Western US that survived to the 19c, and was wiped out then. For example, California went from 300,000 people when Spain started settling it seriously in the late 18c to 100,000 on the eve of the Gold Rush and then to 25,000 by the early 20c. This was not about virgin soil epidemics - unlike in the 16c, there were enough white settlers to kill off the population, with documented acts of dispossession, wars of conquest, bounties established by states for Indian scalps, etc. In the Plains, there were Indians until the railroads came, and ethnically cleansing them from where white people wanted to settle required bringing in the Army, repeatedly.
 
Would abolition of slavery in 1833 impact these tensions?

Not much, and abolition right on schedule in 1833 (really 1838) would be very unlikely in my opinion. You'd have a slaveholding lobby twice as powerful as the OTL one in the British Empire, one with major ties to the textile manufacturers. Would abolition happen eventually? Oh yeah, but probably not in 1838.

I'll grant some of what you're saying, but MANY phases of settlement by US folks (or colonials) were cases of people knowingly stepping out "beyond the pale", beyond the accepted boundaries of the colony, state, etc. Most of the people who did felt that they could simply fend for themselves against natives, robbers, animals, etc. Quite often, then, the government "caught up" with the new reality that there were people living out there and moved their accepted border to (again) encircle them.

Virtually all of the time of the time settlers lived "beyond the pale" in Indian territory for less than a decade before the boundary was moved to encompass them, and prior to the late 19th century (by which point there were whites everywhere and the Indians already confined to reservations) squatters settled just outside of the boundary and safety, not deep into hostile territory. There weren't wild communities of Americans living outside of the law for any length of time, with the exception of the Mormons. The only whites who truly lived beyond government control for any significant length of time were migratory fur trappers.
 
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Ranchers/cattle companies too. They killed for grass and water.

Same as the Sudan during this century.

Many Hollywood movies glorify the conflict between cattle ranchers and plow men.
Half the Hollywood western movies are about horse-thieves or cattle-rustlers. How does this differ from the Asian plains a thousand years earlier?????
 
I think it could be argued modern gun culture is perhaps more a result of 20th century life than that of the open frontier?

I don't own guns myself but I find them interesting and sometimes frequent the online videos and forums and it seems to me there is somewhat of an obsession and parnoia with the fear of home invasions and how one needs to be armed due to the fact that you and you're family is in danger of this.

I'm not saying that this doesn't happen but some of these people who probably live out in the suburbs talk as if they are living in Somalia or maybe more apt South Africa.

I feel there is some sort of connection involved with this and the whole white-flight movement of the 1950's and 60's.
 
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I'll not speculate on the certainty of whether a larger BNA would be more or less gun-friendly than OTL, other than to point out two things;

1) I think how exactly the Revolution is lost would factor in. To whit, if a negotiated settlement is part of why the Cause is lost, I don't think you'll see much change in attitudes towards gun ownership, one way or another (given the non-trivial existence of armed Loyalist militias in that war and the Seven Years' War, after all). On the other hand, if it's a straight-up military victory then some legislation towards control might get passed, a la Canada's OTL response to ownership in the NW Territory post-Red River Rebellion. Which brings me to my second point,

2) Overall, gun control support in the British Commonwealth (insofar as actual confiscation and widespread prohibition) only goes back to the second half of the 20th. Century, esp. in Canada and Australia, and in both cases what laws existed often were as varied from one province/state to another as between different countries. To say that the Commonwealth must inherently be pro-gun control ignores a lot of events that took place in that century (with objective gun ownership+usage in those countries actually being relatively high), and honestly reeks of determinism to an extent.

I 100% agree with jahenders reasons. I would just
Ad one more.

The old west. I think that we became a gun culture.
Prior to that I think it was more of a utilteran role. Most folks
Who we think of typically old west where veterans of
Either army and quite not so much nice guys, look at
The Earps.

Both of these are good points, and I'd add that many of the same additional stresses(fights over slavery, racial strife, etc.), will still be present ITTL, at least to one extent or the other.

And yet the population of the West was about zero until the railroads came, with only a handful of exceptions like in California. So, okay, if gold is discovered somewhere, people will rush there regardless of whether there's a functioning state. That's not a specifically American feature - Canada had gold rushes, just like the US. That's why Yukon separated from the Northwest Territories.

Right, and so did Australia at about the same time as California.

The settlement of Texas was very far from rugged individualism, too. It was a concerted effort by the Southern plantation owners to expand slavery to the west, secure in the knowledge that the federal government would soon bail them out, which it indeed did in going to war with Mexico. The Texians did not invent Manifest Destiny. The instigating force was civil society rather than the government, but it's still not the same as the image of the lone settler bringing civilization to the west.

Erm.....I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you a bit, re: Texas, having actually done some extensive studying of Texas history-it was actually rather more complicated than that.

Sure, the plantation owners played their own role(that is not in dispute), but there were a lot of independent farmers who came to settle in Texas, too(some who may have owned slaves, and a few who didn't), including even a few Northerners. And then there were a fair number of Germans, Czechs, etc. who starting coming in the later 1830s and 1840s, most of whom were not exactly amenable to slavery(in fact, a good number of these folks, later on, openly opposed the Confederate insurrectionists at the outbreak of the Civil War, leading to dozens of them being murdered). And that's not even taking the actions of Tejanos like Juan Seguin into account.
 
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An exception exists with the Comanche, who one held a vast and powerful empire and truly did have the ability to wipe out or force back the line of settlement in Texas. But they were the exception, not the rule.

Was that success having a lot to do with the American Civil War?

Confederate forces were stripped from the frontier, leaving little more than large constabulary forces. IIRC, the Natives were able by 1865 to drive the Texans all the way back to their pre-1850 borders, and even greater victory than enjoyed by the Lakota after Red Cloud's War.

Did the Kiowa also get involved in this "counter-offensive" in Texas?:confused:

In the Plains, there were Indians until the railroads came, and ethnically cleansing them from where white people wanted to settle required bringing in the Army, repeatedly.
Didn't the near-extinction of the Buffalo have much to do with this as well?

I don't own guns myself but I find them interesting and sometimes frequent the online videos and forums and it seems to me there is somewhat of an obsession and parnoia with the fear of home invasions and how one needs to be armed due to the fact that you and you're family is in danger of this.

Have a gun in the home and you're all but certain to see it used against a loved one, even if by accident. That includes yourself. Plus, last time I checked, one third of all handgun shooting deaths were self-inflicted suicides by over fifty males who'd never been married. Like "bachelor" elephant seals, they just gave up ever finding someone.:( Reason #1 why I'll never own a gun.

I'm not saying that this doesn't happen but some of these people who probably live out in the suburbs talk as if they are living in Somalia or maybe more apt South Africa.
Deep rural areas I could understand, up in the Continental Divide I learned that if you are going to have a residence up there (with children) you have to have a surrounding wall six feet high (or so my sister told me when her husband tried to dragoon her up there). The wall was to keep mountain lions from attacking children. But the chances of running into some crazed "mountain man"/predatory survivalist are as remote as being attacked by the NWO's "black helicopters".:rolleyes:

I feel there is some sort of connection involved with this and the whole white-flight movement of the 1950's and 60's and 70s and 80s and 90s and '2000s and '2010s and '2020s and '2030's and etc, etc, etc.
Fixed it for you.:(

And then there were a fair number of Germans, Czechs, etc. who starting coming in the later 1830s and 1840s, most of whom were not exactly amenable to slavery(in fact, a good number of these folks, later on, openly opposed the Confederate insurrectionists at the outbreak of the Civil War, leading to dozens of them being murdered).

Germans really hated the whole concept of confederacies too, since as Germans they saw their country (outside of Prussia and Austria) as the laughingstock of Europe. Mainly on the grounds that they couldn't unite themselves thanks to the tyranny of local princes and barons. So Germans as a whole tended to flock to the Union cause. Lincoln himself in one of his speeches praised the German-American community for its loyalty.

The worst factor in that massacre of German Texans was that IIRC the Germans were at the time they were slaughtered only trying to escape to the Arizona Territory (New Mexico). I guess between pure hatred and the desire to prevent them from escaping to join Union general Canby's forces in New Mexico they decided to use the Black Flag. But there was justice for these victims. After the CSA troops were driven back from their campaign against Sante Fe, Canby (the Union's best expert in desert warfare), forced the rebels to retreat not along their original lines of advance, but deep into the desert, with little or no water sources in their path clean to El Paso. Many fell to thirst and buzzards.:eek::mad:
 
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Have a gun in the home and you're all but certain to see it used against a loved one, even if by accident. That includes yourself. Plus, last time I checked, one third of all handgun shooting deaths were self-inflicted suicides by over fifty males who'd never been married. Like "bachelor" elephant seals, they just gave up ever finding someone.:( Reason #1 why I'll never own a gun.

Deep rural areas I could understand, up in the Continental Divide I learned that if you are going to have a residence up there (with children) you have to have a surrounding wall six feet high (or so my sister told me when her husband tried to dragoon her up there). The wall was to keep mountain lions from attacking children. But the chances of running into some crazed "mountain man"/predatory survivalist are as remote as being attacked by the NWO's "black helicopters".:rolleyes:

Fixed it for you.:(

Actually there has been somewhat of a regression to "white-flight" in terms of gentrifiction with more whites moving back into the city cores in cities like New York and DC but some have argued blacks are just getting priced out now...

As to your other point there yeah I actually just caught a story earlier tonight about a father who shot and killed his 14 year old son entering his house because he mistook him for an intruder, very sad.
 
Actually there has been somewhat of a regression to "white-flight" in terms of gentrifiction with more whites moving back into the city cores in cities like New York and DC but some have argued blacks are just getting priced out now...

This is because the crime rate is dropping again.

But I don't think it's crime, so much as fear of crime, that leads to the gun-ownership phenomena.

2) Overall, gun control support in the British Commonwealth (insofar as actual confiscation and widespread prohibition) only goes back to the second half of the 20th. Century, esp. in Canada and Australia, and in both cases what laws existed often were as varied from one province/state to another as between different countries. To say that the Commonwealth must inherently be pro-gun control ignores a lot of events that took place in that century (with objective gun ownership+usage in those countries actually being relatively high), and honestly reeks of determinism to an extent.

Yeah, I tend to agree with this. I think the subject of the thread is flawed; I don't think the outcome of the American Revolution would have much effect on gun culture either way except via butterflies.
 
This is because the crime rate is dropping again.

But I don't think it's crime, so much as fear of crime, that leads to the gun-ownership phenomena.

New York's white population kept dropping until about 2010. There's growth in the white population in inner neighborhoods like Harlem, but the outer parts of the city (Eastern Queens, Staten Island, the North Bronx) are still undergoing white flight.

And somehow, despite decades-long fear of black urban crime, New York-area whites were never really into guns. To Giuliani and Bloomberg voters, guns are for criminals, not for people protecting themselves from criminals. For protection for criminals, there's NYPD.
 
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