The Murderous Difference Between Gun Rights and Gun Culture

Americans like to believe that they’re a special people. Every waking hour in the U.S. of A., we try to spin new yarns into the gargantuan American mythology quilt, trying to add new patches that somehow reiterate the idea that America is a better place than anywhere else in the world. We’re the Land of the Free;™ the Home of The Brave.™ But the reality is that the United States of America is prone to many of the same vices that have characterized humanity for centuries, especially violence. If you want evidence of this, you need look no further than the blood-consecrated national death cult that is American gun culture.

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The Isla Vista Shooting, Misogyny, and the Dark Legacy of American Manhood

A makeshift memorial for victims of the Isla Vista shooting: a tragedy brought about by insanity, a sick gun festish culture, and some seriously twisted ideas about masculinity.

A makeshift memorial for victims of the Isla Vista shooting: a tragedy brought about by insanity, a sick gun fetish culture, and some seriously twisted ideas about masculinity.

When an overprivileged, mentally disturbed, misogynistic asshat named Elliot Rodger gunned down seven people and wounded thirteen others in Isla Vista, California on May 23, 2014, the United States once again descended into a deep, meditative reflection on how our culture in many ways still treats women as subordinates and how America’s obsession with all things firearms might be an impediment to many citizens’ rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

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American Guns, American Tradition

The Battle of Little Big Horn, also known as Custer's last stand, epitomizes the role of guns in shaping an expantionist American identity.

The Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand, epitomizes the role of guns in shaping an expansionist American identity.

Amidst news of yet another mass shooting on American soil, this time at a naval yard in Washington D.C., the calls for more examinations of the prevalence of gun violence in American culture are being made once again. These calls will float around the cultural atmosphere long enough to gain a few approving nods, mostly from the suffering victims of gun violence, before they are quietly plugged back into the mysterious black hole of moral ambiguity dug by the NRA and its supporters in government. Indeed, following a stunningly successful recall in Colorado of Democratic state senators who supported additional gun control, and only a few days after the Atlantic announced the sad Death of Gun Control, the idea that we could have any rational debate about guns in American culture seems ludicrous on its face.

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