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In colonial southern Africa there were plenty of guns and plenty of skilled shooters, or so it seems. South Africa's "gun society" originated in the seventeenth century, when the Dutch East India Company encouraged the European settlers of the Cape of Good Hope to procure firearms and to serve in the

ilitia. The European farmers (called Boers) who crossed the colonial boundaries into the African interior distributed guns to Africans, in spite of company regulations fo

Everyday practice as it related to firearms, as well as the representation of everyday practice, was highly ideological, as may be seen in the efforts of those who wished to regulate the spread o

On the other hand, and here the confusion began to seep in, it was not at all clear that the possession of guns by American Indians or Africans was inherently bad.

Thus, it was notoriously the fact, in South Africa at least, that missionaries were not reticent in encouraging the tribes to acquire guns

As in other frontier societies, guns were integral to South African society