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Funny you should mention this, I thought about this myself over the last few days.
I just happened to catch the 1962 movie, "How The West Was Won." It's odd how your perception changes over time. (The same thing happened to me over the decades in judging Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.)
When my Dad first took me to see the film in 1962, I identified with the George Peppard character. The villian of the piece was Richard Midmark, who sacrificed the rights of Indians to build a railroad.
I am now older than both of those acters when they made the movie. I see the changes in my country, but I also see why the expansion and settling of my country was ensured by firearms.
As a boy of 12, I just assumed that 'the wild west' needed guns, and somehow that idea had diminished as the world grew. The problem is the world never ran out of people like 'Charlie Gant,' and that tragic fact was all too clear.
It was during this period that my view of the world shifted from the joy of "toy guns" to how the world worked, and the people who populated it.
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