killing was their business

Gun manufacturers like Colt and Winchester, after all, understood that killing was their business. In Florida in 1838, Colonel William Harney massacred the local population of Seminoles, leaving their bodies in “conspicuous places on the trees as a warning to others,” and credited Colt’s pistols with his success.  Colt, however, was wary; as he later said, Harney’s victory, “though very glorious for the Government, was exactly the reverse for [me], for by exterminating the Indians, and bringing the war rapidly to an end, the market for the arms was destroyed.”

Perhaps the fascination with Sarah Winchester and her Mystery House comes out of a desperate need for some kind of public mourning, some public monument, to assuage our collective gun guilt and memorialize the heavy death toll of the United States’s firearms industry. So strong is that need for someone — anyone — to account for the deaths of millions at the hands of the Winchester rifle, that even otherwise perspicuous scholars are apparently willing to accept myth rather than fact.  Because Sarah Winchester did not speak up for herself, it would seem, we have decided to speak for her.

HERE: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/oliver-and-sarah-the-story-of-the-winchesters/#!