You point out that colonial Americans preferred rifles to muskets. How do they differ?
The primary advantages of a musket are that it loads quickly, hits hard and is very easy to learn to use. The whole point of 18th-century tactics was to bunch your guys together and send the proverbial hail of lead toward the enemy. But the rifle, from the very beginning, was the tool of specialists. It was made by craftsmen and used by an individual. To use it properly, you had to spend many hours, weeks and months practicing.
George Washington, the essential founding father, as early as the French and Indian War and during the Revolution, was carrying a rifle. This is at a time when nobody else in the world was using rifles. There were specialized units of riflemen operating and by the time of Andrew Jackson and the War of 1812, you're getting these national myths created of the American frontiersman and his sturdy rifle. So it's really embedded in America's genes.
And frontier warfare favored the more accurate weapon?
If you were at the top of a mountain, then obviously the rifle's longer range would be great. And if you're in the wilderness, in a place where you can barely see 20 paces and your enemy is flitting between trees, you need to hit and kill with one shot. This was an American Indian way of fighting, individual on individual. Another reason for the adoption of the rifle was the need to conserve gunpowder and make more efficient use of lead.
Did this emphasis on accuracy survive to the modern era?
The American army was, shot for shot, the most lethal force on earth from the 1870s onward. U.S. troops, even now, are trained to place their shots more accurately than are other countries'. Even with the advent of the machine gun, artillery and tanks, the American army retains an emphasis on riflemen being cool and accurate.
To be a good rifleman--to be a good shot--you have to be able to hold your breath, be calm and in control. These are all manly virtues: "I am the master of nature. I can control things."
So we've got this culture of the individual rifleman that survives to the modern day in America, in spite of technological innovations. How did it survive?
American military history can be divided into a debate between two sides: You've got the advocates of accuracy, and you've got the pharisees of firepower. In many countries, firepower rules. And by firepower I mean a massed amount of projectiles heading toward the enemy. Basically, brutal assaults, lots of lead flying about--which the machine gun exemplifies. Just a lot of bullets coming out of there, even if you waste 99.9 percent of the bullets because you're shooting all over the place. But the accuracy guys still have a strong presence: U.S. troops, even now, are trained to a much greater extent to place their shots accurately than in other countries.
What happened when U.S. riflemen faced insurgents in Iraqi cities equipped with "spray and pray" AK-47s?
The AK-47 is legendary, because you can throw it in a mud bath for six months and it won't clog. That's why there's a correlation between AK-47 use and mass conscript armies, toy armies belonging to dictators, child militias in Africa and terrorist outfits. These guys can send out more bullets, but the fact is that U.S. troops work better, in small teams, placing their shots more accurately. I think the insurgents realized this, and they switched to improvised explosive devices so they wouldn't be facing direct U.S. fire.
That's why it's actually quite an important thing when, last year sometime, the new Iraqi army recruits handed in their AK-47s--the tool of the Baathists and the Sadaam Hussein types, anyone who was funded by the Soviets--and they got brand-new M-16s. Originally they just picked them up [and shot them like AKs] and the Marines stepped in and said something like, "This is a precision weapon. You've got to know how to place your shot." There's no difference between that and what they were saying, what Washington was saying, in 1760.