6 Ridiculous History Myths (You Probably Think Are True)

[TheWraith]

A gloriously mustached man sits at a card game in an old saloon, surrounded by cowboys and surprisingly fresh-faced prostitutes. He looks up, and notices that the player opposite him is hiding an extra card up his sleeve. He calls him on it, the word yellow is pronounced as 'yeller,' and pretty soon they're facing off in the city square. There's a long moment before the cheater moves for his hip holster, but he's not fast enough. Quick as lightning, the gambler draws his revolver and shoots the cheat dead between the eyes.

...

A hundred years of Westerns have taught us that this is how you lived and died in the Wild West. The quicker draw lived to gun-fight another day. It was essentially a roving single elimination rock, paper, scissors tournament that didn't end until you were dead.

But in Reality... How many murders do you suppose these old western towns saw a year? Let's say the bloodiest, gun-slingingest of the famous cattle towns with the cowboys doing quick-draws at high noon every other day. A hundred? More?

How about five? That was the most murders any old-west town saw in any one year. Ever. Most towns averaged about 1.5 murders a year, and not all of those were shooting. You were way more likely to be murdered in Baltimore in 2008 than you were in Tombstone in 1881, the year of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral (body count: three) and the town's most violent year ever.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18487_6-ridiculous-history-myths-you-probably-think-are-true.html

[Nye Bevan]

1. Interesting. There was certainly less gun control in the Old West than there is in Baltimore today.

This would suggest that less gun control leads to fewer murders.

[Johnny Rico]

3. "An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts

with his life."

---Robert A. Heinlein, "Beyond This Horizon" (1942)

[Fumesucker]

4. But in "Tunnel in the Sky" Heinlein had a survival school instructor tell a student to leave his gun

A survival course final exam involves being dropped on an uninhabited planet to live for a couple of weeks or so, the instructor tells the student he'll be safer without a firearm because "A gun will make you stand and shoot when you really should be running away."

The student takes the advice, leaves the gun and it saves his life when things go thoroughly pear shaped on the exam..

[Johnny Rico]

6. The protagonist in "Tunnel in the Sky" is in a very different situation than that in

"Beyond This Horizon".

He's given one of his two knives by his sister, who's a member of the military. In the discussion in which she gifts him the knife she mentions that, although she carries plenty of more powerful weaponry, she also carries the knife. At the end of the book, after his survival ordeal is over, the protagonist is last seen as head of a group going to colonise a primitive planet; while he has guns, his two knives still are part of his equipment.

The point being that the protagonist isn't even out of high school yet, and while he certainly has the choice to carry anything up to and including military-grade small arms, he's not particularly proficient with them (yet). It should also be noted that the guns of the other students come in quite handy while the ammo lasts....which, given that they unexpectedly stay on the planet for 2 or 3 years instead of 10 days, eventually runs out.

One of them should have brought a .22 pistol and a brick (5,000 rounds) of ammo for it. That would have taken out a few stobors!

[Fumesucker]

8. As I said, the test goes pear shaped..

And the real dangers are people, not the stobor.

A female relative of mine started carrying some time back, one day she stopped on a deserted road to harangue a group of young men she though did not belong there, if she didn't have the gun on her there is no way she would ever have done that.

She can about halfway shoot at the range, in an emergency situation she'd be about as likely to shoot herself or a bystander as an attacker.

My point being that having a gun will make a lot of people put themselves in more dangerous situations than they would otherwise, this is actually more true of men than women but both sexes are prone to it.

[Johnny Rico]

13. Not everyone should carry. No argument.

Youth and enthusiasm are no substitute for maturity and skill.

[malthaussen]

22. IIRC, though, Walker didn't give his sister two pennies

Details, details.

BTW, am I the only fool who thinks Tunnel was written as Heinlein's response to Golding's Lord of the Flies, with a subtext of "Good American children wouldn't act like those decadent British scum?"

-- Mal

[Johnny Rico]

25. There's a good case to be made that it's just a coincidence.

http://roborant42.appspot.com/show/entry/6023;jsessionid=ft1o0xhdie8o

Several reviewers around the internet seem to assume that, since Tunnel in the Sky was published in 1955 and Lord of the Flies was published in 1954, that Heinlein must have been responding to Golding. The fact is that Lord of the Flies was published in England by Faber and Faber in September, 1954. The novel didn't start out particularly popular and had sold only 3,000 copies by the end of 1955. Heinlein started writing Tunnel in the Sky in October of 1954 (according to letters to his agent) and probably had the story ideas worked out before then. He had just returned from an around-the-world trip (which came home through the Pacific, not the Atlantic) and had spent the summer writing a travel book (which didn't sell until after his death). There's almost no chance that he had read Lord of the Flies (which may not have actually made it to the US before 1955).

I don't quite follow your remark about Rod and his sister, though..."didn't give his sister two pennies"? As I read your remark, it's saying that Rod didn't give his sister's advice any credence, when it was quite the opposite.

[malthaussen]

33. When one receives a gift of a knife

One is supposed to give a penny in return. It "cuts friendship" otherwise.

Yeah, I'd thought about the time crush being pretty close. But I could see RAH picking up a copy of Golding and being outraged after he read it, then being inspired to write his own refutation. But it probably is just a coincindence, or another example of the Terry Pratchett theory of inspiration.

-- Mal

[Johnny Rico]

36. I've never heard of that custom before. n/t

[TheWraith]

29. I don't see how you get that.

"Tunnel" certainly has it's share of barbaric or semi-barbaric behavior.

[malthaussen]

34. Sure, some of the behavior is barbaric

But the kids in "Tunnel" manage to form a society that works and is peaceful and tolerant (after all the assholes are killed off), which is the contrary to what happens in "Flies."

-- Mal

[Johnny Rico]

35. Compared to "Lord of the Flies", though, the kids in "Tunnel" are the height of civilization.

[Paladin]

9. An Armed Society Is A Violent, Scared-Shitless Society.

Heinlein really had his head up his ass when he came up with that one. How sad that the gun militancy movement continues to quote such an inane statement as gospel.....

[Lurks Often]

24. An absurd post

crime is a function of social and economic pressures and the high crime areas are almost always around the major cities and their immediate suburbs. Crime is not based not the availability of firearms or states like Vermont or Montana or North Dakota, where guns are commonplace, would have much, much higher murder rates the gun free cities such as Chicago or Washington DC

[TheWraith]

28. Funny then that violent crime in the US is the lowest it's been since the '60s. nt

[LanternWaste]

19. Most bumper-stickers rarely survive a corollary.

I am indeed entertained when bumper sticker philosophies are brought out in an attempt encompass complex problems. I imagine though, that many bumper-stickers rarely survive their own corollary.

[Blue_Tires]

31. +1

[RC]

7. There were far fewer people in the Old West.

Less people, less guns, less gun violence. Gun control had noting to do with it.

[Lurks Often]

23. Less people yes, less gun violence, yes

less guns? Probably not. Almost all households would have had a rifle or shotgun, used for hunting and protection, since law enforcement and/or the military could be DAYS away.

Also consider that many of the men out West would have been veterans of the Civil War, familiar with firearms and not particularly inclined to tolerate criminals.


Basing our perception of Old West history based on movies or fictional books is a major mistake.

[provis99]

17. you are certainly wrong there.

Gun control was quite strict in the "Wild West", especially compared to the South at the time, where guns were least regulated, and murder rates were by far the highest.

[TheWraith]

18. Actually, you're the one who's wrong.

Firearms codes were fairly strict in the south from Reconstruction until the 1970s, mostly as a means to try and prevent black people or those sympathetic to black people from being able to own guns.

[LanternWaste]

20. A logical fallacy often referred to as post hoc ergo prompter hoc.

"This would suggest that less gun control leads to fewer murders...."

A logical fallacy often referred to as 'post hoc ergo prompter hoc', or, 'after this, therefore because of this.'

[hifiguy]

30. Somehow I doubt that the Old West had the population

density of today's Baltimore.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

2. Add 'Vietnam vets being spit on at airports' along with feminist bra burnings

as another rightwing myth of the '60s that didn't happen

[left on green only]

11. Yeah, and don't forget about "mellow yellow"

[mackattack]

26. So you know the life story

of every vietnam vet and you know, for a fact, that none were ever treated poorly?

Way awesome, thanks.

[ellisonz]

5. The reason there was a low rate of homicide...

...in old west towns was because they had strict gun control

Did the Wild West Have More Gun Control Than We Do Today?
Posted: 09/09/11 04:42 PM ET
Adam Winkler
Professor of Law, UCLA
Author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America

After a decision by the Supreme Court affirming the right of individuals to own guns, then-Chicago Mayor Richard Daley sarcastically said, "Then why don't we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West, you have a gun and I have a gun and we'll settle it in the streets?" This is a common refrain heard in the gun debate. Gun control advocates fear -- and gun rights proponents sometimes hope -- the Second Amendment will transform our cities into modern-day versions of Dodge.

Yet this is all based on a widely shared misunderstanding of the Wild West. Frontier towns -- places like Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge -- actually had the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation.

In fact, many of those same cities have far less burdensome gun control today then they did back in the 1800s.

Guns were obviously widespread on the frontier. Out in the untamed wilderness, you needed a gun to be safe from bandits, natives, and wildlife. In the cities and towns of the West, however, the law often prohibited people from toting their guns around. A visitor arriving in Wichita, Kansas in 1873, the heart of the Wild West era, would have seen signs declaring, "Leave Your Revolvers At Police Headquarters, and Get a Check."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/did-the-wild-west-have-mo_b_956035.html

[kemah]

10. Louis L'Amour more settlers killed by themselves than by Native Americans

He researched his novels very extensively and found that settlers were killed by accidents, getting lost, starving, than by Native Americans. In the movies the Natives are attacking encircled wagons, but the encircling of the wagons was to keep livestock in check.

[Gruntled Old Man]

12. George W. Bush won the 2000 election

That would be #7, though I've never believed it.

[zeemike]

14. The real cause of violence is not the guns

But what you teach your children...starting from an early age.
If a child grows up in a peaceful environment and his associations with people are peaceful then he will strive to be a peaceful adult.
If you raise him in violence and show him hours of violence on the TV and in movies and feed him with violence then that is what he will seek out in life.
In the "good old days "there was good reason not to become enamored with violence...it did not work because you needed the good will of people to survive and so a natural politeness was the norm....and that was why there were few murders in those days...they just could not afford it.
Today we don't need each other....we may want to use each other but we really don't need them....and we have plenty of time to entertain ourselves...and violence is really cheep entertainment
And so we grow up a generation of kids that have been taught the way to solve problems is with force and guns are just the tool for that.

[randome]

16. Not to dispute the facts but...

...there wasn't much in the way of communication or record-keeping back then, either. Were there more drifters, also? People may have been murdered and no one knew about it, although that probably would not account for many.

Still, it's interesting how much 'romance' we have applied to the Old West.

[Spider Jerusalem]

21. They're wrong about at least one of those things.

the "No Irish Need Apply" signs, for instance, and stipulations in hiring advertisements, may not have been common in the US, but they were quite common in Britain (where as recently as the 1950's or 1960's one could still see signs in places with rooms to rent that said "No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs&quot . Protip: America != the world. "Ridiculous American history myths", maybe.

History myth they missed: America didn't WWII single-handed (in Europe at least that'd be the Russians, mostly...and there were more British and Commonwealth troops landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day than Americans).

[mackattack]

27. Check your guns

Some towns in the old west it was required to "check your guns" when you cam into town. You would get them back when you left.

[RebelOne]

32. My mother was pregnant with me at the time of the War of the Worlds broadcast.

And she was terrified. I remember she told me that she hid under the bed. So I think many others were equally terrified.