Breaking the American Gun Culture Once and For All

[billh58]

An oldie but a goodie from Bob Cesca:

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But what specifically do I mean by "gun culture"?

There's an almost historical, genetic aspect of Americanism that's synonymous with guns. Somehow, perhaps because of our revolutionary founding or the glorification of war or the romance of Wild West or all of the above, guns have become embedded in our national DNA, perhaps more so than any other industrialized nation. Due to effective marketing and lobbying, gun ownership has evolved from being a frontier necessity to a creepy, penile, Freudian symbol of masculinity and power. American guns have become unmistakable displays of virility and strength -- of aggression, resolve and heroism. Hell, even the up-and-coming congressional Republicans like Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor have been nicknamed "The Young Guns." (Ugh.)

It was the latter half of the 20th century, spanning the Greatest Generation and the baby boomers, when gun ownership became almost inextricably entrenched in our culture. I hasten to note that I'm not saying every American raised in those generations is individually to blame, but we shouldn't overlook the national history of the post-World War II years when, for the first time, we kept a standing army and developed the infamous military-industrial complex, with its lifeblood drawn from the pervasive notion that more firearms (in this context, weapons of war including nuclear warheads) were necessary for national security against the Soviet Union and its successor, Islamic terrorists. Indeed, by the 1980s and on through the George W. Bush post-9/11 era, American patriotism -- our basic love of country -- was defined by our aggression toward our enemies and our arsenal of weaponry defiantly engaged against them. Meanwhile, our national history is often timestamped based on what war was occurring at that time. (When was the last time you watched a documentary about the 20th century that wasn't based on our succession of wars?)

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This is the American gun culture.

Despite what pro-gun operatives such as LaPierre have been suggesting as a means of distracting from the real issue of the gun culture, breaking the nightmarishly escalating wave of mass murders requires considerably more than just targeting video games or television violence; it's about breaking this dominant cultural attitude that aggression and weaponry are the only bulwarks standing between us and doomsday, even though it's difficult to observe tragedies like Sandy Hook and not regard them as the latest in a long line of doomsdays.

To extricate the gun culture from American society, we have to engage in a tenaciously ongoing effort to, 1) pass serious and unprecedented gun control regulations, and 2) disconnect the association between masculinity/virility/power/patriotism with gun ownership.

Everything else is secondary to regulating the guns and undermining the visceral, hormonal desire to use them. If we can limit both the supply and the fetishistic demand for guns, we can begin to roll back the gun culture. The campaign against Big Tobacco, for example, has been highly successful on both fronts: cigarettes are more difficult to purchase (advertising has disappeared and prices have skyrocketed, though not enough), and the very act of smoking has become increasingly stigmatized, with smokers banished outside to huddle like societal pariahs under awnings and in bus shelters. It's absolutely possible to accomplish the same goals with firearms.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/breaking-the-american-gun_b_2348282.html

Best explanation of the spawning of the American Gun Culture, and the right-wing mentality that feeds it that I've run across -- ever.

[Hoyt]

1. The sooner we do something about the gun culture the better for future generations.

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