America's gun culture was not born on the wild frontier or in Hollywood fantasies but here in the river valley towns of Connecticut, where some of the great names in firepower Colt, Winchester, Smith & Wesson got their start and where many are still located.
America has loved its guns since colonial times, unlike the lying Michael Bellesiles would have us believe.
Poorly worded and perhaps a veiled reference to Bellesiles' fabrication. But, it's unlikely that most people reading this sentence would recognize it.
I thought the intention was to point out that the Colt, et al, did all their manufacturing in the middle of what is now supposed to be a gun-free utopia -- supplying the firearms that were ubiquitous in the West.
However, it would be an interesting question: how much of production was shipped westward? I'm sure that some of it was sold to the residents of the Northeast.