December 18, 2015

Guns are central to America

White guys are killing us: Toxic, cowardly masculinity, our unhealable national illness

Race, guns and gender--the common denominator at the heart of so many problems--are what we need to talk about

By Chauncey DeVega
[T]here is another little-discussed factor that helps to explain America’s obsessive and near pathological gun culture, unwillingness to treat gun violence as a public health crisis, Right-wing domestic terrorism, and propensity for mass shootings. It transcends all of those issues. But this factor is usually treated as verboten, something to not be unspoken of, because of the rage, threats of violence, and animus it inspires.

The common denominator is white masculinity and the particular ways that it is connected to American gun culture and the color line.


Guns helped White America to commit genocide against First Nations peoples and to steal land under the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. The gun maintained Southern society as a white over black racial military dictatorship. The gun was also a tool for white elites to control the working classes and poor.
Comment:  For more on gun control, see Guns as Penis Substitutes and Conservatives Let Mass Shootings Happen.

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