As someone who grew up near those wild west towns and have a lot of roots out here, yeah it’s a myth, most people I knew growing up didn’t even hunt, and most hunters I knew owned two guns tops and it WASN’T their personality, inviting you over to eat venison was their personality.
I spent a lot of my childhood in Arizona, and we did field trips in school to ‘ghost towns’ (e: the old west towns), Montezuma’s Castle (back when you could actually walk through it before vandals ruined it for everyone), and Pueblo ruins with indigenous living history reenactors.
I never even saw a modern gun in person until I was 16. It just wasn’t a thing. And yet we managed to survive.
Yeah, grandmother grew up in a family that had been poor farmers outwest, and midwest for a long time. They had like 10 guns, but that is because there was one rifle per person over the age of 12, plus a couple shotguns. Not for like having a shoot-out, but for killing problematic predators. Only my great grandfather had a hand gun, and he only had that because it was a gift from someone he did a bunch of work for. He rarely took it out of the box.
It’s not even a Wild West town, it’s conifer. It’s a rich person Mecca. Anyone that has a gun up there is most likely just using it to scare off wolves or bears, but not actually hunting (source, my in-laws live there).
As someone who grew up near those wild west towns and have a lot of roots out here, yeah it’s a myth, most people I knew growing up didn’t even hunt, and most hunters I knew owned two guns tops and it WASN’T their personality, inviting you over to eat venison was their personality.
I spent a lot of my childhood in Arizona, and we did field trips in school to ‘ghost towns’ (e: the old west towns), Montezuma’s Castle (back when you could actually walk through it before vandals ruined it for everyone), and Pueblo ruins with indigenous living history reenactors.
I never even saw a modern gun in person until I was 16. It just wasn’t a thing. And yet we managed to survive.
Yeah, grandmother grew up in a family that had been poor farmers outwest, and midwest for a long time. They had like 10 guns, but that is because there was one rifle per person over the age of 12, plus a couple shotguns. Not for like having a shoot-out, but for killing problematic predators. Only my great grandfather had a hand gun, and he only had that because it was a gift from someone he did a bunch of work for. He rarely took it out of the box.
It’s not even a Wild West town, it’s conifer. It’s a rich person Mecca. Anyone that has a gun up there is most likely just using it to scare off wolves or bears, but not actually hunting (source, my in-laws live there).
Or come help me butcher this boar and I’ll let you take home a couple pounds of sausage.