There will be no gun control: For many white Americans, the idea of the gun is all they have left

[marmar]

There will be no gun control: For many white Americans, the idea of the gun is all they have left
White Americans cling to the gun as a symbol of strength and independence. They see its loss as a final, fatal blow

By CHRIS HEDGES
PUBLISHED JUNE 7, 2022 6:30AM


Guns were a ubiquitous part of my childhood. My grandfather, who had been a master sergeant in the Army, had a small arsenal in his house in Mechanic Falls, Maine. He gave me a bolt-action Springfield rifle when I was 7. By the time I was 10, I had graduated to a Winchester lever-action 30-30. I moved my way up the National Rifle Association's (NRA) Marksmanship Qualification Program, helped along by a summer camp where riflery was mandatory. Like many boys in rural America, I was fascinated by guns, although I disliked hunting. Two decades as a reporter in war zones, however, resulted in a deep aversion to weapons. I saw what they did to human bodies. I inherited my grandfather's guns and gave them to my uncle.

Guns made my family, lower working-class people in Maine, feel powerful, even when they were not. Take away their guns and what was left? Decaying small towns, shuttered textile and paper mills, dead-end jobs, seedy bars where veterans — and nearly all the men in my family were veterans — drank away their trauma. Take away the guns, and the brute force of squalor, decline, and abandonment hit you in the face like a tidal wave.

Yes, the gun lobby and weapons manufacturers fuel the violence with easily available assault-style weapons, whose small caliber 5.56 mm cartridges make them largely useless for hunting. Yes, the lax gun laws and risible background checks are partially to blame. But America also fetishizes guns. This fetish has intensified among white working-class men, who have seen everything slip beyond their grasp: economic stability, a sense of place within the society, hope for the future and political empowerment. The fear of losing the gun is the final crushing blow to self-esteem and dignity, a surrender to the economic and political forces that have destroyed their lives. They cling to the gun as an idea, a belief that with it they are strong, unassailable and independent. The shifting sands of demographics, with white people projected to become a minority in the U.S. by 2045, intensifies this primal desire — they would say need — to own a weapon.

There have been more than 200 mass shootings this year. There are nearly 400 million guns in the U.S., some 120 guns for every 100 Americans. Half of the privately-owned guns are owned by 3 percent of the population, according to a 2016 study. Our neighbor in Maine had 23 guns. Restrictive gun laws, and gun laws that are inequitably enforced, block gun ownership for many Black people, especially in urban neighborhoods. Federal law, for example, prohibits gun ownership for most people with felony convictions, effectively barring legal gun ownership for a third of Black men. The outlawing of guns for Blacks is part of a long continuum. Black people were denied the right to own guns under the antebellum Slave Codes, the post-Civil War Black Codes and the Jim Crow laws.

....(snip)....

The Second Amendment, as the historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes in "Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment," was designed to solidify the rights, often demanded under state law, of whites to carry weapons. Southern white men were not only required to own guns but to serve in slave patrols. These weapons were used to exterminate the indigenous population, hunt down enslaved people who escaped bondage and violently crush slave revolts, strikes and other uprisings by oppressed groups. Vigilante violence is wired into our DNA. ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/06/07/there-will-be-no-control-for-many-americans-the-idea-of-the-is-all-they-have-left/

[empedocles]

1. Fear, is a force.

'' . . . They cling to the gun as an idea, a belief that with it they are strong, unassailable and independent. The shifting sands of demographics, with white people projected to become a minority in the U.S. by 2045, intensifies this primal desire — they would say need — to own a weapon. . . ''

They fear a brown, or brown leaning, governments.

[Midnight Writer]

2. Nobody in power is talking about taking away people's guns.

There are no legislative bills proposing taking away guns, and there is zero chance of any such bill passing.

The only politician I have heard propose taking away people's guns was Donald Trump, who said something along the lines of "Let's take their guns away now and worry about due process later". Why the Democrats did not use the video of him saying that in the election is beyond me.

The gun lobbyists and their GOP thralls have been very successful in framing this narrative as jack-booted government thugs going door to door taking people's guns away from them (cold, dead fingers). There is no truth in it.