This past summer I was interning at a law firm in another state. Thankfully, I had distant family living close to where I was working so I moved in with them and lived there for about 3 months.
The reason I bring this up is that the family I moved in with was more vehemently anti-gun than anyone I had ever met. Concerns about home security, protection from tyranny, and protecting one’s own physical body did not shake their resolution in the least. They did not view firearms as a value-neutral purpose-driven tool; they viewed them as a magnitudinous evil. They even refused to let anyone who carried a weapon into their house, even if they were family or long-time friends.
Recently coming out of this personal environment truly made the attitude of the movie towards guns stand out to me. Shane is the perfect example of how, even after the civil war, American’s new that the Second Amendment protected the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. Every character in the movie owned multiple guns and had them ready to use to defend themselves at a moment’s notice. Joe Starret and his friends are the militia the founders were referring to. The word at the time simply meant all male citizens of a certain age.
I think that the characters of Shane would practically scoff at the four justices of the Supreme Court who descented in Heller v. D.C and wonder how they did not recognize the ability to own firearms as a fundamental Constitutional right. I also think they would be baffled by people who thought like the relatives I moved in with over the summer, especially by the fact that they would openly refuse to allow an uncle or an old family friend into their house if they had the audacity to exercise their constitutional rights. The movie Shane is chock-full of overtures to family and community, and I believe that people who place politics above even those ideals would shock the characters in the movie most of all.