The Art of the English Trade Gun in North America

The Art of the English Trade Gun in North America
Author: Nathan E. Bender
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2018-07-02
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 0786471158

Symbolic ornamentation inspired by ancient Greek and Roman art is a long-standing Western tradition. The author explores the designs of 18th century English gunsmiths who engraved classical ornamental patterns on firearms gifted or traded to American Indians. A system of allegory is found that symbolized the Americas of the New World in general, and that enshrined the American Indian peoples as "noble savages." The same allegorical context was drawn upon for symbols of national liberty in the early American republic. Inadvertently, many of the symbolic designs used on the trade guns strongly resonated with several Native American spiritual traditions.

Gunlore

Gunlore
Author: Robert Glenn Howard
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2024-08-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1496850947

Contributions by Sandra Bartlett Atwood, Nathan E. Bender, London Brickley, Eric A. Eliason, Noah D. Eliason, Tim Frandy, Robert Glenn Howard, Jay Mechling, Annamarie O'Brien Morel, Raymond Summerville, Tok Thompson, and Megan L. Zahay Guns are a ubiquitous part of life in the United States. Arguably more pervasive than physical guns is “gunlore,” which refers to the many folklore genres related to firearms. Gunlore: Firearms, Folkways, and Communities is the first book to engage with the many narratives, rituals, folk-speech, customs, art, and handicraft encompassed by gunlore. Like most expressive cultures, gunlore emerges from specific communities. Groups with a shared interest around firearms may form for many reasons—self-protection, hunting, crime, work, political or social identity signaling, the desire to creatively modify guns, and even the resolve to oppose gun use and ownership. This collection explores a range of gunlore genres and the “gunfolk” groups that give rise to them. Contributors examine topics that include the fetishization of firearms, “Moms Who Carry,” online discussion boards, alternative history cosplay, survivalist communities, gunsmiths and gun craft, and more. Gun owners and gun enthusiasts, in all their varieties, are one of the largest avocational groups in America. The essays in Gunlore seek to expand our understanding of these communities by looking at the various roles firearms play, have played, and can play in our world. Gunlore, for better or worse, is a powerful and pervasive method of self-expression. In examining the folklore around these controversial and politically charged tools, weapons, and symbols, we can begin to understand aspects of American culture that will remain prominent for the foreseeable future.

Thundersticks

Thundersticks
Author: David J. Silverman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2016-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674974743

The adoption of firearms by American Indians between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries marked a turning point in the history of North America’s indigenous peoples—a cultural earthquake so profound, says David Silverman, that its impact has yet to be adequately measured. Thundersticks reframes our understanding of Indians’ historical relationship with guns, arguing against the notion that they prized these weapons more for the pyrotechnic terror guns inspired than for their efficiency as tools of war. Native peoples fully recognized the potential of firearms to assist them in their struggles against colonial forces, and mostly against one another. The smoothbore, flintlock musket was Indians’ stock firearm, and its destructive potential transformed their lives. For the deer hunters east of the Mississippi, the gun evolved into an essential hunting tool. Most importantly, well-armed tribes were able to capture and enslave their neighbors, plunder wealth, and conquer territory. Arms races erupted across North America, intensifying intertribal rivalries and solidifying the importance of firearms in Indian politics and culture. Though American tribes grew dependent on guns manufactured in Europe and the United States, their dependence never prevented them from rising up against Euro-American power. The Seminoles, Blackfeet, Lakotas, and others remained formidably armed right up to the time of their subjugation. Far from being a Trojan horse for colonialism, firearms empowered American Indians to pursue their interests and defend their political and economic autonomy over two centuries.

Guns of the American West

Guns of the American West
Author: Dennis Adler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 1353
Release: 2015-11-10
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1510709231

Dennis Adler, award-winning author and photographer, and contributing editor to Guns of the Old West magazine, has woven together enthralling tales of the guns and gunmen who made the Wild West wild. Beginning with the early western expansion and the California Gold Rush, Guns of the American West takes you through the development of America's most legendary handguns, rifles, and shotguns and the roles they played in our nation's history. As the Civil War erupts, the author follows the politics of a country divided and how North and South chose to arm their soldiers. In the aftermath of this great conflagration, Adler takes you step-by-step through the evolution of loose powder cap-and-ball revolvers, rifles, and shotguns to the conversion to self-contained metallic cartridges and the sweeping changes that resulted in firearms design. With a nation intent on its belief in Manifest Destiny, the author follows legendary lawmen, soldiers, and outlaws as America moves west in the 1870s and 1880s. Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for hunters and firearms enthusiasts. We publish books about shotguns, rifles, handguns, target shooting, gun collecting, self-defense, archery, ammunition, knives, gunsmithing, gun repair, and wilderness survival. We publish books on deer hunting, big game hunting, small game hunting, wing shooting, turkey hunting, deer stands, duck blinds, bowhunting, wing shooting, hunting dogs, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

American Gun

American Gun
Author: Chris Kyle
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2013-06-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0062242733

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING FOLLOW-UP TO AMERICAN SNIPER Join Chris Kyle on a journedy to discover “how 10 firearms changed United States history” (New York Times Book Review) Drawing on his legendary firearms knowledge and combat experience, U.S. Navy SEAL and #1 bestselling author of American Sniper Chris Kyle dramatically chronicles the story of America—from the Revolution to the present—through the lens of ten iconic guns and the remarkable heroes who used them to shape history: the American long rifle, Spencer repeater, Colt .45 revolver, Winchester 1873 rifle, Springfield M1903 rifle, M1911 pistol, Thompson submachine gun, M1 Garand, .38 Special police revolver, and the M16 rifle platform Kyle himself used. American Gun is a sweeping epic of bravery, adventure, invention, and sacrifice. Featuring a foreword and afterword by Taya Kyle and illustrated with more than 100 photographs, this new paperback edition features a bonus chapter, “The Eleventh Gun,” on shotguns, derringers, and the Browning M2 machine gun.

Blood Gun Money

Blood Gun Money
Author: Ioan Grillo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1635572797

“An eye-opening and riveting account of how guns make it into the black market and into the hands of criminals and drug lords.”--Adam Winkler From the author of El Narco and winner of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, a searing investigation into the enormous black market for firearms, essential to cartels and gangs in the drug trade and contributing to the epidemic of mass shootings. The gun control debate is revived with every mass shooting. But far more people die from gun deaths on the street corners of inner city America and across the border as Mexico's powerful cartels battle to control the drug trade. Guns and drugs aren't often connected in our heated discussions of gun control-but they should be. In Ioan Grillo's groundbreaking new work of investigative journalism, he shows us this connection by following the market for guns in the Americas and how it has made the continent the most murderous on earth. Grillo travels to gun manufacturers, strolls the aisles of gun shows and gun shops, talks to federal agents who have infiltrated biker gangs, hangs out on Baltimore street corners, and visits the ATF gun tracing center in West Virginia. Along the way, he details the many ways that legal guns can cross over into the black market and into the hands of criminals, fueling violence here and south of the border. Simple legislative measures would help close these loopholes, but America's powerful gun lobby is uncompromising in its defense of the hallowed Second Amendment. Perhaps, however, if guns were seen not as symbols of freedom, but as key accessories in our epidemics of addiction, the conversation would shift. Blood Gun Money is that conversation shifter.

Giving Up the Gun

Giving Up the Gun
Author: Noel Perrin
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
Total Pages: 140
Release: 1979
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780879237738

Lord Hideyoshi, the regent of Japan at the time, took the first step toward the control of firearms. It was a very small step, and it was not taken simply to protect feudal lords from being shot at by peasants but to get all weapons out of the hands of civilians. He said nothing about arms control. Instead, he announced that he was going to build a statue of Buddha that would make all existing statues look like midgets. It would be so enormous (the figure was about twice the scale of the Statue of Liberty), that many tons of iron would be needed just for the braces and bolts. Still more was required to erect the accompanying temple, which was to cover a piece of ground something over an eighth of a mile square. All farmers, ji-samurai, and monks were invited to contribute their swords and guns to the cause. They were, in fact, required to. -- from publisher description.

The Dial

The Dial
Author: Francis Fisher Browne
Publisher:
Total Pages: 426
Release: 1892
Genre: American literature
ISBN: