Thank you. I cannot find it on Snopes.com, and a closer look at the website says Nuusparodie.

Not everyone in the US is gun crazy, I do not own one. Although, my Mom bought one for me for a birthday, maybe my 10th. She took me into the desert and we practiced shooting rocks, cans and bottles, whatever we found laying around. A few times we shot a rabbit, and took it home to eat. After I left home, my shooting days were over, had no desire for it. Now, I'm vegan and don't even kill wasps in the yard. Every being has its place in the environment, and that's good.

@EdEarl Most of us in Kenya knew how to use a rifle. We all also had air-guns in our teens. But the air guns were used for target practice, along with catapults, or for clearing mouse birds from crops. The rifles were for security in the bush, and took second place to our cameras. If someone had carried one in town, we would have assumed it was going for repair. Otherwise, the bearer would have been ridiculed. They were never a status symbol, for anyone

@HippieChick58 But your "wild west" history is mainly fiction, promoted by movie makers and magazines. Education is another factor, indeed.

@Petter This was a revelation for me - realizing that the "wild west" stories of gun battles and "rugged individualism" were mainly fiction. These things are heavily promoted, along with other "nostalgia" for things that are mainly fiction (such as the allegedly-idyllic fifties).

A great book on the topic is "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap," which dissects these myths with statistics, historical fact, and hypotheses about why these myths are so widely believed.

@AmyTheBruce Thanks for mentioning the book. I'll look it up.