Pro-Gun Rhetoric Is Pro-Mass Shooting
Oct. 4th, 2017 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastI'm struggling to find something to say that hasn't been said before and I don't think I've found it here. But, in the wake of yet another high-profile mass shooting, there's always a set of rhetoric that doesn't just argue against a measure that would help curtail just this thing. It actively makes the next mass shooting more likely, regardless of gun legislation.
When it was the Newtown shooting or Robert Deer in a Planned Parenthood, one of the first places to go as an alternative to gun legislation was blaming the matter on mental health. When it was the shooting in the Pulse night club, Islam was quickly to blame. In the most recent shooting in Las Vegas, there was a perfunctory attempt to blame it on atheism.
The point has already repeatedly been made that people who suffer from mental health disorders are far more at threat from the general public than vice versa. But, the point has also been made that Muslims, in America, tend to be just as accepting of homosexuality and feminism as the population at large. As factors of responsibility go, these aren't valid.
Focusing on them does effectively separate and isolate. Humans killing humans isn't natural. You have to dehumanize, first. Rhetoric like referring to providers of abortion as "baby killers" is a part of that. So is rhetoric that treats Muslims as uniquely more violent than anybody else in similar circumstances. Separate people out, make them the other, make them a monolith rather than a diverse group, and it's so much easier to end a life.
That's the minor matter.
The biggest factor is in the dream of using a gun to defend oneself.
Sean Hannity had his fantasy of responding to a mass shooting that required A. he be in the same room, B. the shooter, and C. the shooter having a moment to reload between firing. The fact that the shooter was thirty-two stories up and had several loaded guns at the ready hardly made a difference to Sean Hannity's preferred scenario.
In the wake of the shooting in Charleston, on facebook, I saw someone make the claim that, if they were there when Dylan Roof opened fire, they'd have taken cover, drawn their weapon, aimed, and fired between the first shot and the second.
This is supplemental to the dreams of fighting off a mugger or a home invader. It's all a power fantasy mistaken for reality. It's a fantasy of power achieved via the easy means of buying a weapon and taking a class in its use.
This makes power, maybe the power to accomplish something or maybe the power just to have power, something in easy reach for last resort. If all else fails you, you can have that final stand and, in the last moment, be powerful.
One mass shooting that made a big splash and then quickly faded from social memory happened in a sorority. A male college student had come to college with big sexual-expectations. He expected that he'd go to college and find himself a world of experimentation and exploration, a world where it would be easier to find a woman with whom to have sex. He didn't.
In that failure to achieve what he'd been told was one of the essential accomplishments of being a man, getting laid, he blamed the women. They didn't appreciate him for his value. He was angry about that. And, in the absence of the power to get women to have sex with him, he certainly had the power to end lives, scar others, and die (somewhat) remembered.
Now, there's a lot more to that story than just the access to guns. There are elements at play that factor into what we call rape culture. But, the factor I want to focus on is that this was someone reaching for easy, if high-cost power at the expense of all other power. The power to take a life is ultimate and, with the ready availability of guns and modifications to extend and enhance their killing capacity, easily at hand.
This is being sold, in the wake of every mass shooting, as reliable and available power. The pro-gun narrative tells of guns being the ultimate in power. That's presented as the power to stop bad people, but the power that can be used to end the life of an unambiguously bad person can be used to end the life of anybody else. And, who knows who's standards of "unambiguously bad"?
That which sells guns as the answer to the problem of mass shootings sells the narrative that legitimizes mass shootings.
When it was the Newtown shooting or Robert Deer in a Planned Parenthood, one of the first places to go as an alternative to gun legislation was blaming the matter on mental health. When it was the shooting in the Pulse night club, Islam was quickly to blame. In the most recent shooting in Las Vegas, there was a perfunctory attempt to blame it on atheism.
The point has already repeatedly been made that people who suffer from mental health disorders are far more at threat from the general public than vice versa. But, the point has also been made that Muslims, in America, tend to be just as accepting of homosexuality and feminism as the population at large. As factors of responsibility go, these aren't valid.
Focusing on them does effectively separate and isolate. Humans killing humans isn't natural. You have to dehumanize, first. Rhetoric like referring to providers of abortion as "baby killers" is a part of that. So is rhetoric that treats Muslims as uniquely more violent than anybody else in similar circumstances. Separate people out, make them the other, make them a monolith rather than a diverse group, and it's so much easier to end a life.
That's the minor matter.
The biggest factor is in the dream of using a gun to defend oneself.
Sean Hannity had his fantasy of responding to a mass shooting that required A. he be in the same room, B. the shooter, and C. the shooter having a moment to reload between firing. The fact that the shooter was thirty-two stories up and had several loaded guns at the ready hardly made a difference to Sean Hannity's preferred scenario.
In the wake of the shooting in Charleston, on facebook, I saw someone make the claim that, if they were there when Dylan Roof opened fire, they'd have taken cover, drawn their weapon, aimed, and fired between the first shot and the second.
This is supplemental to the dreams of fighting off a mugger or a home invader. It's all a power fantasy mistaken for reality. It's a fantasy of power achieved via the easy means of buying a weapon and taking a class in its use.
This makes power, maybe the power to accomplish something or maybe the power just to have power, something in easy reach for last resort. If all else fails you, you can have that final stand and, in the last moment, be powerful.
One mass shooting that made a big splash and then quickly faded from social memory happened in a sorority. A male college student had come to college with big sexual-expectations. He expected that he'd go to college and find himself a world of experimentation and exploration, a world where it would be easier to find a woman with whom to have sex. He didn't.
In that failure to achieve what he'd been told was one of the essential accomplishments of being a man, getting laid, he blamed the women. They didn't appreciate him for his value. He was angry about that. And, in the absence of the power to get women to have sex with him, he certainly had the power to end lives, scar others, and die (somewhat) remembered.
Now, there's a lot more to that story than just the access to guns. There are elements at play that factor into what we call rape culture. But, the factor I want to focus on is that this was someone reaching for easy, if high-cost power at the expense of all other power. The power to take a life is ultimate and, with the ready availability of guns and modifications to extend and enhance their killing capacity, easily at hand.
This is being sold, in the wake of every mass shooting, as reliable and available power. The pro-gun narrative tells of guns being the ultimate in power. That's presented as the power to stop bad people, but the power that can be used to end the life of an unambiguously bad person can be used to end the life of anybody else. And, who knows who's standards of "unambiguously bad"?
That which sells guns as the answer to the problem of mass shootings sells the narrative that legitimizes mass shootings.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-05 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-05 01:50 am (UTC)No, I'm not arguing for such excessive pacifism. I am arguing that the rhetoric used to oppose gun control, particularly in the wake of mass shootings, is rhetoric that, regardless of gun laws, encourages the factors that enable mass shootings.
Those being 1. dehumanization of the other and 2. purveying a fantasy of easy power through ownership and use of easy killing power.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-05 10:30 am (UTC)