Hollywood vs The Old West

Via Ammo, a site I am hoping to delve into a little more in the future, comes a critical essay on how Hollywood has portrayed the Old West to aid in their gun control agenda:

Hollywood has a clever way of distorting our perspective on history, and a great example of this is Western film – a movie genre we've all come to love. Cattle rustlers, guns blazing, outlaws running loose, and vigilantes dishing out vengeance indiscriminately. These scenes have become more synonymous with the American Frontier than Winchester and their "Cartridge That Won the West." But these fictional tales have produced more than entertainment for over a century; they've also contributed to an ongoing, subtle push for gun control, all while making Hollywood millions.

Revisionist history books tell us that the “Wild West” was an anarchic period of time that was not conducive to human prosperity. Images of a Hobbesian nightmare – a life that is brutish and short – are ingrained in our consciousness thanks to decades of public schooling and violent images on the silver screen which are light on actual history and heavy on creative license.

It's a terrific read, follow the link above to read the whole piece. It's information worth knowing and understanding.