Gun Culture and the American Nightmare of Violence

[marmar]

Henry A. Giroux | Gun Culture and the American Nightmare of Violence

Sunday, 10 January 2016 00:00
By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | News Analysis


Gun violence in the United States has produced a culture soaked in blood - a culture that threatens everyone and extends from accidental deaths, suicides and domestic violence to mass shootings. In late December, a woman in St. Cloud, Florida, fatally shot her own daughter after mistaking her for an intruder. Less than a month earlier, on December 2, in San Bernardino, California, was the mass shooting that left 14 people dead and more than 20 wounded. And just two months before that, on October 1, nine people were killed and seven wounded in a mass shooting at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon.

Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them in Congress, it comes as no surprise that the culture of violence cannot be abstracted from either the culture of business or the corruption of politics. Violence runs through US society like an electric current offering instant pleasure from all cultural sources, whether it be the nightly news or a television series that glorifies serial killers.

At a policy level, violence drives the arms industry and a militaristic foreign policy, and is increasingly the punishing state's major tool to enforce its hyped-up brand of domestic terrorism, especially against Black youth. The United States is utterly wedded to a neoliberal culture in which cruelty is viewed as virtue, while mass incarceration is treated as the chief mechanism to "institutionalize obedience." At the same time, a shark-like mode of competition replaces any viable notion of solidarity, and a sabotaging notion of self-interest pushes society into the false lure of mass consumerism. The increasing number of mass shootings is symptomatic of a society engulfed in racism, fear, militarism, bigotry and massive inequities in wealth and power.

Over 270 mass shootings have taken place in the United States in 2015 alone, proving once again that the economic, political and social conditions that underlie such violence are not being addressed. Sadly, these shootings are not isolated incidents. For example, one child under 12 years old has been killed every other day by a firearm, which amounts to 555 children killed by guns in three years. An even more frightening statistic and example of a shocking moral and political perversity was noted in data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which states that "2,525 children and teens died by gunfire in [the United States] in 2014; one child or teen death every 3 hours and 28 minutes, nearly 7 a day, 48 a week." Such figures indicate that too many youth in the United States occupy what might be called war zones in which guns and violence proliferate. In this scenario, guns and the hypermasculine culture of violence are given more support than young people and life itself. ..................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34349-gun-culture-and-the-american-nightmare-of-violence

[flamin lib]

1. This is a very good read.

As is ARMS the Culture and Credo of the Gun by A.J. Somerset.

Somerset makes a compelling case that Veronica J. Rutledge, the woman shot by her two year old in a Walmart in Idaho was killed not by her toddler son but by the culture that made carrying a gun everywhere the norm. She was in a low crime environment and under any circumstances would not need a gun for self defense, yet she carried a gun at all times.

He also makes the case that there are subcultures withing the Gun Culture that often deride each other.

Like MADD we need to defeat the culture in any way possible. Shame them, make fun of them and point out the silliness of their actions and culture.

[Doctor_J]

2. Excellent read

rec