Americans have always had a romantic notion about the frontier, how we arrived with our guns and honor, and settled the land in a fair fight. The passion extends to firearms themselves, which seem to possess a magic power to turn us into sharp-shooting heroes defending the homestead from any danger. But today our relationship with guns is in turmoil, as the bleak reality impinges on the myths we’ve come to hold dear.
“The better the weaponry, the more people started dying in the Old West.”
After the Autry National Center, a museum dedicated to the American West, was gifted a collection of some of the finest American firearms from the 19th century, the news broke of yet another mass shooting. Overnight, the ethical implications of showcasing and celebrating guns began to weigh heavy on the museum’s curators.
“Firearms were such an important part of the history of the American West, so they have always been featured quite prominently within the museum,” says Jeffrey Richardson, the curator of the new “Western Frontiers: Stories of Fact and Fiction” exhibition, which opened July 27, 2013. “In the past, the museum had treated firearms no differently than any other object, be it a saddle, spurs, or a painting. But as we move forward, we’ve begun to question that particular thinking. The reasoning being that every so often, we have a terrible tragedy that occurs in America, and it gets us debating these national issues about gun control and gun rights.”
Read Full Article »