Modern Day Idaho Makes Wild West Look Like A Water Balloon Fight
Lawlessness is the best word to describe America's Wild West period from the middle to late eighteen hundreds. Nowadays, instead of checking pistols at the door, people are spraying rounds from AR-15 rifles in the South Hills on a regular basis.
We love our guns in America. Maybe, a bit too much.
I own multiple firearms but seldom shoot them; I'm waiting for a home intruder in the middle of the night for my next opportunity.
The Wild West and all the famous outlaws that knocked off stagecoaches and raised hell in other ways during this time in American history like Billy The Kid, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy is often romanticized on the big screen. There was nothing romantic about cavities killing people, uncontrollable illness, extreme poverty, and taking a bullet in the head with no repercussion for the trigger man because someone wanted to show off. Well, actually the latter still happens in this country.
I own an old pistol that was handed down to me previously owned by my great-grandfather. That makes the gun pretty old. This thing is tiny, silly looking, and fired a .22 caliber round. When you compare these weapons to modern-day guns, we'd have slaughtered any city law enforcement posse the nineteenth century ever created.
I was visiting an area bar the other day with my wife and a sign hung in the entryway that read, "Check your guns at the door." I couldn't help but laugh at how that sign would be received in modern-day Idaho. Just think of how many guns are on the streets now compared to 1874; there would be O.K. Corral-style shootouts every two minutes if modern-day gun ownership existed back then.