Focusing
merely on mass shootings or the passing of gun legislation does not get to the
root of the systemic forces that produced the United State's love affair with violence.
BY HENRY GIROUX
 |
| Jaden Adams person look over a unloaded semi automatic handgun during a packed class to obtain the Utah concealed gun carry permit, at Range Master of Utah, on January 9, 2016 in Springville, Utah. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images) |
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.
Please continue this article here: http://billmoyers.com/story/gun-culture-and-the-american-nightmare-of-violence/#.VpsJVg7Ra3M.facebook
This post originally appeared at Truthout.
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