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Romina-Nicoleta Andra

Professor Daniel Darvay

American Culture and Civilization Course

April 23, 2019

The Significance of Fear and the Frontier in America’s Gun Laws

One of the most highly debated topics in the last centuries regarding American culture

and civilization remains American Gun Laws, different from the laws of any other state through

their permissiveness. With several studies and strong opinions on both sides of the matter, the

“right to bear arms” stipulated in the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution still

constitutes to this day the subject of many important studies, worth analyzing and contemplated

from its many angles, some of the most important being the sociological, historical, political and

moral aspects of the problem.

After a close reading of Frederik J. Turner’s The Significance of the Frontier in American

History, the reader will most likely immediately discover between the lines an important element

linked to the fondness for guns, or rather causing it unconsciously – fear. The thesis of the

present paper argues on the link between the fear factor, present in the early colonizers of the

“free land”, constantly facing the wilderness behind the frontier in the quest of taming it, and its

deeply-rooted effects and manifestations, visible today particularly in the Gun Laws of America,

a country with violence and criminality rates higher than desired.

In order to reach a better understanding of the term itself, Arthur Westermayr’s article

proves relevant, since it offers a brief and useful definition: “fear is the great force that prompts

to acts of self-preservation and operates as effectively in the brute as in the human animal” (1).

In other words, fear is an instinct, one that enables humans and animals alike to survive when a
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dangerous situation is likely to occur. It is safe to say that this was an indispensable quality much

needed for survival back in the days of the first colonists, an “expanding people”, Turner

pointing out “the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in

developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of

the frontier” (1).

In the same article, Westermayr mentions fear as a key principle in “the preservation of

species and that it ranks in importance with the "survival of the fittest" and "the struggle for

existence."” (2), which was the case in the conquering of the “Great West” – in order to survive

and meet their goal, the colonists had to maintain high levels of fear, considering the possible

threats posed by the unknown, by wild beasts, enemies or natural forces. The following

paragraph best supports this idea:

The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. (…) It finds

him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. (…) He

must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish (…) Little by little he

transforms the wilderness, but the outcome is not the old Europe (…) The fact is,

that here is a new product that is American. (2-3)

The American identity is thus brought into discussion, and the process of

‘Americanization’ is suggested to have at its basis and foundation this element of fear, that

shapes the survivors into people of “coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and

inquisitiveness; (…) practical, (…) restless, nervous energy.” (9). But how is this original fear

still relevant and more importantly, how is it linked to the problem of violence and Gun Laws?

Writer Michael Kocsis, in his philosophical essay on the topic of Gun Laws in America,

introduces this idea and argues its relevance:


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The prevalence of fear is likely the most significant rationale for gun ownership.

Will Hauser and Gary Kleck have determined that guns and fear are related

“asymmetrically”; in other words, “higher fear among nonowners encourages

them to become gun owners, but lower fear among gun owners does not

encourage gun relinquishment” (Hauser and Kleck 2013: 271). Indeed, numerous

studies confirm that victimization and perceived risk of victimization increase the

likelihood of a person owning a gun for self-protection. (15-16)

The first argument of the thesis is represented by fear present in the very desire to be able

to protect oneself, which the American people seem to cherish more than anything – so much so

that it has become a fundamental right, equaled with the word freedom. Coming down a long line

of generations, the desire to know that you are safe is best illustrated through the words of an

American person, from Abigail Kohn’s Shooters:

[The idea] is that you can live your life, you can be whatever you want to be,

absolutely anything. (…) But when it comes down to it, when an emergency

occurs, none of those things make any difference. (… ) And so this handgun gives

anyone in any profession, in any capability, at any age, at any sex, any race, (…)

the ability to be themselves, to not be victims, to not be prey. . . . But to me it’s

something that’s very important. (72)

The very use of the word ‘prey’ in a contemporary situation may seem irrelevant, perhaps

only a figure of speech, but in fact it demonstrates that the relationship between the hunter and

the prey, despite the many years that have passed since the days of the colonialists, is still a part

of their society, it is still a way of seeing the world, of understanding it and relating to it. Fear

and the frontier become close to synonyms.


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The second argument continues the first one, projecting the fear to a smaller scale,

considering the increased anxiety of modern society, blended with the feeling of fear. It is not

only the wish to be safe from criminals and possible threats that is fulfilled by the possession of

guns, but also the small events and situations, dramatized and given enormous proportions by the

media. The enemy is no longer a wild beast hiding into the forests, not even only a criminal or a

brutal attacker, the real threat is the fact that it could be anyone – the friendly neighbor, new or

old friends, a member of the family. As the years went on and the Great West was conquered, the

enemy became smaller and smaller, until it remained in the minds of the people.

Talking about this phenomenon, Claude Fischer explains in Made in America that:

There is a yet more pessimistic view of modern Americans’ sense of security. (…)

“Western man in the middle of the twentieth century is tense, uncertain, adrift.

We look upon our epoch as a time of troubles, an age of anxiety,” wrote historian

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 1948—a statement that has remained prominent decades

later. (67)

The need for such weapons is so strong, that certain situations that other nations consider

outrageous are created and considered normal. For example, the readers learn from the Open

Society Institute’s Comparative Survey that in North Carolina, it is not unusual for a boy of 12

years of age to require parental permission to play baseball in Little League, but not for

possession of a rifle. (3) The American Law then only sanctions the persons that commit certain

crimes using different guns and weapons, not seeking to ‘cut the evil’ from its root, this way

supporting and continuing over time a dangerous principle.

The third and perhaps most important argument is mentioned in Turner’s text in a

straightforward manner, mirroring the personality and approach of the American spirit:
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individualism. “the frontier is productive of individualism. Complex society is precipitated by

the wilderness into a kind of primitive organization based on the family. The tendency is anti-

social. It produces antipathy to control, and particularly to any direct control.” (6) Control and

anti-social behaviors in this context arise from the same fear of being exposed to certain threats,

of letting one’s guard down and suffer the consequences. The family was always and remains to

this day supposed to be the safest environment, where one is protected and has nothing to fear.

But even so, it is always better to be safe than sorry.

In his documentary entitled Bowling for Columbine, director Michael Moore offers an

image of the typical American families and their traditions, including ownership of firearms,

shotguns, and rifles that are not strangers to children of any ages. In the same documentary, it is

presented just how individualism works until the safety of more than one person is threatened

(for example, school shootings) and people slowly come to understand the truth: only united they

can reduce the number of killings by guns, the number of terrorist attacks, suicides, homicides or

other such acts.

Nowadays’ society is no longer facing the frontier, and no great wilderness that needs to

be conquered lies behind it. Fear has become a great stimulus for commerce – the more afraid the

people are, the more guns are sold, and the more afraid they are, the more the industries such as

the media, the guns industry, the healthcare system even, thrive – a terrible but real truth that

American capitalism keeps in mind. Masking everything behind the ideals of a nation, behind the

fundamental right of a society that has grown too fond of its traditions to let go, the pro-guns

supporters could ask, is it not tradition that makes us who we are?

But the ultimate question remains, what is the final price we pay for being who we are?
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Works Cited

1. Fischer, Claude S. Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and

Character. The University of Chicago Press, 2010.

2. Lund, Nelson and Winkler Adam. “The Second Amendment”. George Mason University,

Legal Studies Research Paper Series. 18 September 2015, ssrn.com/abstract=2662700.

Accessed 21 March 2019.

3. Moore, Michael, director. Bowling for Columbine. Alliance Atlantis, 2002.

4. Open Society Institute’s Center on Crime, Communities & Culture and the Funders’

Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention Project. Gun Control in the United States. A

Comparative Survey of State Firearm Laws. Open Society Institute, 2000,

http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/L-External-

publications/2000/2000%20OSI%20Gun%20control%20US.pdf . Accessed 15 April

2019.

5. Kocsis, Michael. "Gun Ownership and Gun Culture in the United States of America,"

Essays in Philosophy, vol. 16: Iss. 2, Article 2, 7 July 2015, pp. 154-179, DOI:

http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/1526-0569.1530

6. Kohn, Abigail A. Shooters: Myths and Realities of America’s Gun Cultures. Oxford

University Press, 2004.

7. Westermayr, Arthur J. The Psychology of Fear. The Open Court, Vol. 1915, Iss. 4 ,

Article 5, https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/ocj/vol1915/iss4/5. Accessed 18 April 2019.

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