AMERICA’S GUN FETISH
Guns, more popular in our country than the iPhone and a Big Mac combined yet responsible for the deaths of scores of our innocent civilians every single day across this great nation. They are so popular that people value them over the lives that they take and that includes our elected leaders, they defend guns over the people impacted by those guns and that is shameful.
My fellow Americans love their guns and their 2nd amendment “rights” and will do anything to convince you why you should too. I put rights in quotations as these people will remind us in a loud and often volatile way that we cannot do anything about gun violence as it’s their “Constitutional right”. We will get into my thoughts on that complex and often annoying part of the gun debate later in the book as it is certainly a major factor in how we got where we are and what we can do to bring change regarding guns and gun violence.
What was it that I was saying?
Ah yes, Americans love their precious guns and have a strong bond to them, they openly admit this time and time again. This love and affection that they have for firearms is nowhere more evident than in the southern states of the United States where guns truly are in every hand of these “patriots”. The south is probably the place in this country that has the greatest love affair with these inanimate objects, it is truly part of their culture, right along with biscuits and gravy and confederate flags. However, the love of guns goes much deeper than in the deep south, it has spread from region to region and state to state over the years and does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon. This begs the question, why do my countrymen love these weapons so much that they would choose them over their wives, children, or even their own lives? Yes, I said over their own lives as they often say they will die before they give up their precious firearms, and they mean it as
scary as that is.
So, again … why does this country have such a disturbing obsession with guns? To understand this, perhaps it is worth noting that guns have been a part of the American experience pretty much since the “birth” of this nation, although can we really call what we did the Native American people as “birth”? The answer is very simple, no we can’t but that is an entirely different topic for a different day, and a different post. Back to this gun obsession, I know that I get sidetracked at times so my apologies. This gun obsession that Americans have comes from the pesky and often misunderstood 2nd amendment and the “right to bear arms” that was written into the bill of rights more than two centuries ago. Yes, we are to blame for this obsession with guns and the consequences of that obsession. When I say “we”, I do not mean you and we as citizens but our founding fathers take the blame for America’s addiction to guns and everything that goes with it. The fathers were not clear in writing that amendment and used very vague language in its creation, but how could they have known what was to come?
Despite repeated statements by the gun lovers, the founding fathers did intend for single shot muskets when they drafted this document, not the destructive weapons being used today. They did not want people to be able to have the ability to shoot 13.3 rounds per second like many of these guns are capable of today and they certainly did not think we would find ourselves in a nation where guns make us less free and less safe, not more.
They wrote the 2nd amendment with the goal of protecting against a takeover of their newly founded independent nation and from the potential tyranny of that time.I don’t know about you but do you see our government in the year 2017 becoming “tyrannical” and killing us all? Wait, if you are one of the gun extremists then you most likely do, hence why we have the massive firestorm of push back when we mention gun control at all. Most of us do not believe our government would do this, it is just not plausible in our current nation and has not been for quite some time.
I am sure that you can get some idea where this obsession came from, the men who wrote the Constitution did have our best interests in mind but should have been more specific in their wording or at least left it open to discussion, they created the gun culture and obsession with guns and caused a lot of harm in doing so. More than an obsession with guns, many Americans have an obsession with the bill of rights, but not every one of those rights, just amendment #2. They seem to be perfectly fine with LGBT people being denied the right to marry and have equal protection under the law, prisoners held without due process in detention camps, or women being denied equality in the workplace and with control of their own healthcare choices. Just don’t try to take away their guns, if you do these people truly go into psychotic breakdown mode. I am sure that you can see how this is not a healthy obsession, it is a dangerous and borderline insane preoccupation that has well documented deadly consequences.
Anytime people bring up the issue of gun laws and how we can reduce gun violence this obsession kicks in and the usual talking points begin. They will go into the usual myths and repeat what the gun lobby tells them to believe and in doing this they try to force these beliefs on you and me. They go into a state of mania similar to those whom bipolar and will go on and on for hours with how the 2nd amendment is “untouchable’ and their right to bear arms is written in stone.
This obsession with guns and the founding documents is unique to this country as most countries do have gun rights enshrined in the constitution and the ones who do certainly do not have a population who is fixated on 200 plus year old words and policies or obsessed with an object, let alone an object responsible for the death of tens of thousands of their fellow citizens. I have travelled all around the world and the number one question I am asked is why are people in my country so obsessed and in love with guns. They ask why we love guns more than anything else and what is so great about these weapons. Of course these are sensible questions to ask, for a sane person.
I usually cannot answer these inquiries as it even baffles me, and I was born here and have lived here most of my life. People in other countries cannot believe and even grasp this passion for guns that many have in the U.S., especially with the record number of mass shootings and gun violence we experience on a daily basis. In order to understand America’s obsession with guns and our insane gun culture we must look at the gun culture (or lack) in other nations, it is truly eye opening. Let’s compare the U.S. and the U.K. for example, the vast difference in guns owned as well as gun fatalities tells the story. According to the CIA world fact book as well as sources like Everytown for Gun Safety research and Gun Violence Archive, the following numbers show us how this obsession we have as Americans has deadly outcomes.
In the United Kingdom, a nation of 65+ million people they have a total of 4.06 million legally owned firearms while here in the United States, a country of 315 million people we have over 275 million guns in the hands of civilians, not to mention the illegal ones owned. That equates to 88.9 guns per 100 U.S. residents and only 6.2 guns per 100 people in the hands of our U.K. friends. The pro-gun people like to compare the population of these nations to ours as one of their myths but you cannot compare as even nations with a lot of people have low gun violence, take Japan for example. In the nation of Japan they have less than 20 gun deaths per year yet have a population of 118–120 million people, this proves that more guns equal more death, every single time.
Population isn’t the number we need to focus on, that number is the firearms owned per 100 citizens of the two nations. That number clearly shows citizens of the U.S. have an obsession with guns while our allies do not. It should be noted that nations with a high gun civilian ownership rate naturally have a high rate of gun homicides and other deaths, more guns equal more death. This goes without saying as we look at those numbers, they are truly astounding. Some 13,286 people were killed by guns (excluding suicide) by guns here in the United States in 2015 while our British friends had just 144 deaths involving guns the last year a study was conducted (2013) while having an astonishingly low 23 gun murders.
We know what the deadly toll of U.S. gun violence is and we compare it to our peer nations time and time again to get the facts, I believe that it is important to look at this as a factor in America’s gun obsession. Our obsession with these deadly weapons plays a major role in the gun violence problem we face year after year, these other nations are not enamored with guns and therefor do not have even close to the amount of gun violence that we do here in the USA. The facts are clear that if we have less guns as well as a nation that is not obsessed with them then we will have less gun violence and live in a much safer country that works for all of us.
The whole idea that having a gun makes you “free” is outrageous and I say this because if guns made people free then nobody would die from them or lose family members from the senseless act of gun violence yet so many do. They continue to say this and I quote. “Free men own guns and free people do not need permission from the government to be armed” and they repeat these slogans over and over until they are blue in the face.
You do need permission from the government to have a gun and we call that the law, background checks, permits, and so on. They say that guns created this country and made this country the free nation that it is today but this also wrong as this country was founded by men and democracy is what made us free. Were we free when Native Americans were slaughtered so that America could be “founded” or when African Americans were held as slaves and abused throughout history?
No, guns do not make us free and had nothing to do with our freedom and I will always repeat this as it is the truth. The freedoms in the constitution that do not take lives equal freedom like freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom to practice your religion, and so on. Guns have nothing to do with freedom and are the opposite of freedom, if you need to carry a gun everywhere you go then you are far from free my friends. In this country freedom is something that is for everyone not just some people and if you have a gun and I don’t then who is free?
That is not equal and that is not fair, that is intimidation and I know that this is unpopular but it borders on terrorism as people carrying loaded weapons around with them in public where families go to practice true freedom endangers and takes away their freedom. If you need a gun again I say, you are not free and you are not brave and I know this may hit a nerve with some but I must tell it like it is. Guns take freedom away from those who just want to go about their day peacefully and safe from harm.
Freedom is being able to go to the movies, the mall, school, or to a ballgame without fear of some whacko pulling out an assault rifle and mowing you down. Freedom is being able to go about your day and live your life without the worry that someone who has a gun is going to take your life, if you think guns equal freedom then you do not know the true meaning of the word but lucky for you, I am about to explain to you what real freedom is and it is the opposite of what pro-gun people say it is and it has nothing to do with being armed everywhere you go.
Freedom is not to be restrained or limited and some may argue that is what gun ownership is about but I beg to differ and challenge them to think about this, if being free is not being enslaved as the definition in the Webster dictionary says then how can you claim freedom if you are enslaved to a gun?
That is right, I truly believe that someone who needs a gun is not truly free as they are enslaved to needing something outside of themselves for so-called “defense”. That is not freedom my friends, freedom is to be free from the need for something, people who are free do not need something outside of themselves to claim that they are free, people who are truly free are free from restraint and in my view guns restrain you from being free while also endangering others and taking away their freedom.
Guns do not give people freedom and the lie that they make us free needs to be stopped and that is why I am writing a chapter on the topic as people need to know the truth and that is that guns or the “right” to have one has never been about “freedom”, it is about intimidation and fear mongering and that is what we need to focus on when discussing this issue.
The creator of the universe did not intend for people to be armed like they are and neither did the founding fathers who wanted people to have muskets and should have thought of that when they wrote the 2nd amendment, they did a great disservice to America by not being more specific.
The mythical line by pro-gun people is that guns equal freedom and we hear this line quite often but my question for them is this and I am being completely serious when I ask it. If people have “freedom” to have guns and carry them on our streets, in our malls, in our schools, and so forth then what about the freedom of people and their families not to be around those guns? It is a logical question, if people have freedom to bring guns into these places don’t people also have freedom not to be around these guns and to be safe from harm?
I know what they will tell me, they will say that we have a right to go different places but that isn’t freedom for all is it? Plus, where would people go? Our new president wants to get rid of “gun-free zones” and have guns everywhere, even in our schools. Shouldn’t parents have a say in the matter if they do not want their children to be in a school that has armed people?
I know that I would not want guns around my children and certainly would not feel comfortable sending my child to school knowing that the teachers or even parents picking up their kids could have guns on school grounds, no parent should feel comfortable with that.
Freedom is something that is equal for everyone and not something that should take freedom away from others and it never has been. Just look at this, if you have the right to marry someone as is case with same-sex and opposite-sex marriage then that is great because that right does not harm others and most freedom of speech doesn’t harm people either and we have restrictions on harmful speech like laws against threats and so forth but with guns it is not equal. The so-called “freedom” to carry a gun endangers people who don’t have guns and does harm others.
The pro-gun folks like to repeat the myth that guns are all about freedom yet they oppose other freedoms that we liberals support like the freedom for a woman to decide if she wants to go through with a pregnancy or not or the freedom to smoke marijuana and so forth. They want their freedoms but don’t want us to have ours and the ones we want do not kill people, guns do!
Think of it like this, a gun can cause things like internal bleeding, ballistic trauma, and death and depending on the gun or magazine size you can kill a lot of people very quickly. That isn’t freedom and does take away freedom from others and makes us all less safe, as I said in my last book on this topic, when we have 300+ mass shootings a year and experience 30,000 gun deaths on an annual basis then that is not freedom, that is terrifying and tragic. Freedom is equality, being able to go about your day without fear that someone who has a gun is going to shoot you and take your life.
We have a fetish for firearms in this country and guns do need give us freedom like they like to claim, not even close. This obsession or fetish is one that is unique to guns and something that we do not see in other areas in America or around the world. In a way, the fetish for guns is an addiction and should be addressed as such but our government enables gun violence by passively or sometimes actively participating in this gun fetish that we see daily in America.
This belief that “An armed society is a polite society”, could not be the furthest thing from the truth. Armed people are not polite and we see this by the countless incidents of gun violence that happen every single day in this nation. If we were so “polite” then we would not have hundreds of mass shootings a year or incidents of domestic violence gun deaths, gun suicides, gun accidents, and random shootings.
They always use this line when trying to convince people to support the “right” to have a gun or when open carry and other gun issues are discussed but when we look at the facts a different story is told and we can conclude that an armed society is not a polite society. This myth is another one that isn’t based on facts but is based on emotional opinion and is put out there to once again, show that gun people are the best people around and wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Thousands of dead and tens of thousands more injured every single year tell us that an armed society is a dangerous society and isn’t a “polite’ society. This cannot be denied no matter how hard the NRA and their supporters try and we have the facts and data to back us up. If an armed society was a polite society, then we would not have 300+ mass shootings a year and random gun violence daily. If it was so polite then we would not be gunning our fellow Americans down like we see every day and we would treat each other with respect and value life but we don’t.
The politest societies are the ones where people do not carry guns to the grocery store, the mall, or to the movies. These societies that do not have open or conceal carry are peaceful places with very low gun violence but the societies where people are allowed to carry guns wherever they go are not only rude, but they are dangerous and we see this by the proven studies that show states with the most gun deaths have the highest rate of gun ownership, proving that more guns always equal more deaths!
If you would call an average of one mass shooting per day and 91 Americans dying from gun violence daily polite then you are either not looking at things with the right perspective or quite likely insane because that doesn’t equate to being polite at all, it equates to a culture of violence that is perpetrated by a group of violent people who think it is okay to hurt others, mostly with guns.
A polite society would be one that believes in solving their problems with violence rather than walking away from them and choosing peace over violent aggression. The people who own guns largely believe that it is perfectly fine to intimidate others with guns and they use these guns to justify whatever action they deem fit to take when a confrontation occurs. Guns bring out our flaws and cause people to choose conflict over walking away. They teach our young people that it is okay to shoot and kill others if it is in “self-defense” and that is simply wrong.
We are a society that has a law like the Stand Your Ground law that was the reason accused murderer George Zimmerman was acquitted when he shot Trayvon Martin in cold blood back in 2012 in what he called self-defense but was obvious to the world that it was murder. It was the Stand Your Ground law that allowed him to legally shoot and kill that innocent young man and since similar laws have been popping up across this country.
A law like this isn’t something that supports the belief that an armed society is a polite one as polite people do not go around shooting people. In this case Zimmerman could have called the police and had them deal with it but instead he chose to take the law into his own hands and an innocent young man died that night as a result of his actions. Does this sound “polite” to you? No, it does not and that is because it is not! Guns in the hands of everyday citizens cause bad things to happen and as we can see by the daily toll of incidents of gun violence in this nation, an armed society is far from polite.
Still, the pro-gun movement repeats this myth and stands by their assertion that guns create peace when the truth is they create a culture of violence and aggression. Cases like the Martin case are becoming more and more common and that is because those at the National Rifle Association spread the lie that most gun owners are “law abiding citizens” and do nothing wrong,
The truth on this one is that many so-called law-abiding gun owners do commit gun crimes and do endanger the lives of the public. We see this every day in several cities and states in America, people who are legal gun owners and those who supposedly stay within the laws of the land end up for whatever reason killing people and committing gun violence.
They always claim that they are law abiding and that CCW holders do not commit gun crime, but this is not true, we have seen and continue to see that there are so many legal gun owners who commit mass shootings as well as kill their families, shoot random people, and even leave their firearms unsecured which usually results in the death of a curious child. Stand your ground laws are not polite and neither is carrying an AR into your local Walmart, the polite people in our society are the unarmed ones and this also we see simply by looking at the news or the statistics of violence across this country.
The point is this, an armed society is not a polite society, an armed society is a place where people are less safe, have a higher rate of anxiety and fear, and a place where people will resort to violence over trying to peacefully resolve conflicts. Make no mistake about it, an armed society is a dangerous and rude place and we as a nation need to wake up to this fact and do what we can to restrict guns to do as our current president says, make America safe again.
This fetish that they have truly endangers people and those lawmakers who enable these violent actions are extremely liable for their enabling behavior. In fact, some of these right-wing politicians themselves have this gun fetish and that is why they do not want to pass common-sense laws that will keep the public safe, they commit acts of treason if you ask me and they like the NRA have blood on their hands every time someone is shot in this nation.
