A couple weeks ago, in a sleepy hilltop hamlet, (Pie Town, New Mexico), I was served a slice of pretty good pie by a big white dude packing a gun. Forty-something, 6’2″ or taller and weighing at least 250, I kinda had to wonder what exactly he was so afraid of that he needed a revolver ready on his hip to serve … pie and coffee to tourists?
In our now thoroughly-ritualized reaction to what have become daily mass shootings in the USA, (literally, folks), we hear the same exasperated demands for Congress to “do something”. “Exasperated” because we know with absolute certainty that Congress will do nothing, because Mitch McConnell will not allow Congress to do anything.
When the net result of a guy killing 20 grade-schoolers and six teachers was states and McConnell’s Congress further relaxing gun laws, we all know we’re living in a bizarro world where quaint notions like majority rule and common decency carry no weight.
“What to do” about America’s gun-worshipping insanity has never been too difficult. There is no end of ideas, ranging from the modest — “red flags” allowing judges to confiscate guns from certifiable crazies — to the definitive — making private gun ownership illegal. Given a Congress — and a state poitical environment — that actually represented the thinking of the majority, something would have been done long before this. But we aren’t living in that world.
One of the ideas that keeps rattling around my alleged brain is a television campaign describing gun owners … to themselves and their neighbors. Think of billionaire Tom Steyer’s PSA avalanche demanding Trump’s impeachment. Then redirect that to a series of deadly serious but also semi-comic ads spotlighting the painfully obvious racial, sexual and gender issues motivating “gun enthusiasts”.
I don’t anything about the big pie guy’s fear factor, but I do know our up north neighbor, who I’ll call “Steve”. He’s lived his entire life 20 miles from town, out in the woods along your classic burbling creek. Peace, quiet and fresh air. He worked construction until he retired (union pension) and was without question a devoted caregiver to his invalid wife for 15 years before she passed away.
But as his retirement years have gone on his sense of threat and vulnerability has steadiy increased, to the point that now, even while walking his dog through the woods, he packs a gun. Shooting, in fact, is his default activity. It’s his primary social recreation with his backwoods pals.
Steve’s the kind of guy who regularly drops the line, “Now, I’m not prejudiced … ,” as a starter to a conversation about some black guy’s mug shot he’s seen on the evening news. Not to mention his “this proves what I’m saying” riff on three black guys he saw in line at the Walgreen’s pharmacy down there in town.
Now mind you, in the 25 years we’ve had a place near Steve, nothing has ever happened. A window was broken once 20 years ago, but nothing was stolen. The biggest threat to anyone’s life and limb are the occasional drunks — all of them local and white — careening up and down the highways and gravel roads.
Point being, Steve embodies everything we understand about conservative rural America.
Fear of some relatively high degree is what kept them within miles of where they were born. Hence, they’ve had no real, routine person-to-person interaction with blacks and other minorities — other than what they see on television, TV being their primary if not sole source of news, just as pulp entertainment has informed their role-modeling since they were children.
Then you compound all those anxieties with the physical deterioration and sense of vulnerability that comes with age. The result is a profoundly fear-based psychology for which a relatively inexpensive arsenal of guns salves almost all their wounds. Several of Steve’s buddies have upgraded their “collection” to include AR-15s, “an AR” in the vernacular. Steve may have, too. I don’t know.
The time came long, long ago when responsible politicians and media “leaders” needed to not only call white nationalist terrorism “terrorism”, but lay out for the public what so many reputable studies have shown about the roots of some people’s affinity for guns. And it ain’t video games.
As this study shows, racial animus is umbilically linked to gun ownership, certainly gun fetishism. Then there’s the virility surrogate effect of weaponry and the status-enhancing/rejuvenating effect that comes with gun ownership. And, as we’ve seen with the explosion of the internet, the powerful “community” effect on people who for whatever reason — lives lived apart from urban-style diversity or this bizarre INCEL culture — feel psychologically isolated and rejected.
A prime TV campaign featuring the science of gun affinity as well as the rancid money game behind the manufacturers, the NRA and the Russians would at least spark a different conversation, one that America’s conservative thought leaders — the hosts of “Fox & Friends” and Rush Limbaugh — would have to respond to.
Or we can express “thoughts and prayers” that Kentucky’s rural militia will rise up and vote Mitch McConnell out of office next year.
Idiot
Interesting about the connection between racism and gun fetishism, which makes total sense to me.
This also is interesting: “Then there’s the virility surrogate effect of weaponry and the status-enhancing/rejuvenating effect that comes with gun ownership.” I have often wondered about this connection between guns and virility. In early Spain and later throughout Latin America, the fighting weapon of choice was (and in some places still is) a folding blade fighting knife. My view is that knife fighting is way more ballsy than shooting someone from a distance with a gun — it’s much more up close and personal, with greater risk for severe personal injury. I’ve never seen a real knife fight, but I’ve seen a few Chuck Norris choreographed knife fights, and they are quite discomfiting to watch.
I’m not condoning engaging in any of the martial arts for anything more than sport, but really, if someone wants a weapon to enhance their sense of manliness, they should get a knife and learn how to use it, and dispense with the idea of the gun as a virile fashion accessory.
One doesn’t need to subscribe to all the canons of Freudian doctrines to perceive how accurate it is to recognize the phallic symbolism of firearms and the compensatory psychological gratification derived from gun fetishism. And I’d venture to say that the cultural context of this mass psychological aberration is also connected somehow to the peculiarly American addiction to retrograde Calvinistic religiosity.
But these are abstractions. Isn’t it frustrating that no political progress is possible to enact effective laws to restrain and reverse the physical presence of these death machines? Well, it does seem to be too late to do so through the mechanism of representative democracy and civic processes. Those institutions, and we unarmed citizens who have had faith in them, are now about to discern that our system and our citizens actually are now de facto hostages.
The Sunday Strib reported that since the assault weapon ban was lifted, an additional 20 million of them are now clutched in the horny hands of our hard-working, hard-playing, hard-riding, hard-wired blood-sport-spurting gun suckers . . . and more all the time. Those of them that I’ve known have always insisted they need them for self-defense–not so much against the stereotype “racial minority criminal”—-whom they’re eager to dispatch with handguns or shotguns—-but against “the government.”
I see some rather strained and grim irony in the realization that these same deluded self-proclaimed patriots in the not-too-distant future will, at the behest of the government, deploy their firepower against their fellow citizens. Tens of millions of military-type weapons, and virtually every one of them the pet possession of people who not only would applaud if Trump shot somebody in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue—-they would and will do the shooting themselves whenever their mighty Twitler tells them to. How else could it possibly end?
As the Walt Kelley comic strip character Simple Joe Malarkey explained: “Betsey, here, got six or seven votes in her alone.”
“Twitler”. That’s good. I did some on-line shopping the other day and discovered I could buy an AR-15 for roughly $800 and 100 rounds of ammo for 45 cents a bullet. Both those numbers are outrageous. With 300 million-plus guns already in circulation no new “ban” or background check is going to do much to stop our Great American Slaughter. But … my thinking, and as Elizabeth Warren mentioned last week — you might put some serious impediment to lunatics building arsenals if A: guns required both annually renewable licenses AND insurance. (The insurance industry could be trusted to calculate a real world number for the liability of gun ownership). Then, B: A fat federal tax on both firearms and ammo. If the tax on an AR-15 style weapon were something like 300% of retail cost and each round of ammo cost $10 instead 45 cents the “sport” factor for insecure men might cause a few to stick with fishing instead of barrel-waggling with their buddies. Big problem: Enforcement. What ATF agent would actually go to a gun range and check license and insurance?
Oh pardon my syntax screw-ups. Especially the vague and wandering antecedents, displacing or confusing the senses. “20 million” assault rifles, not 20 million “bans,” of course. And with the subsequent phrase “Those of them that I’ve known . . .” I meant to refer to guys (mostly) who’ve bought AR-15’s or other inexcusable engines of destruction, and not to the guns. But the way I the sentence, it looks strange and sounds awkward. Sorry about that.
And another: “But the way I [ wrote ] the sentence . . .”
Good Night.
You are writing seriously good shit these days, Brian. I am so glad I found you. What I like about the gun owners one is the direct truth of it. I like the way you don’t wince, or mince words. “This is what is, Folks.” My concern these days, among others, is the rampant-white-rage-with-guns thing that is going to happen AFTER trump is toppled. 42% of the population will be outraged, and 99% of the guns are owned by that 42%. White-rage-with-guns is going to invade the cities.
I’m just reading up a little bit… “Twitler” is very good.