BamaD
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
quote:
ORIGINAL: Kirata
Thinkprogress? That's your idea of a reliable source? Heh. Here's what Thinkprogress didn't report...
To try to further speculate on the prevalence of mass shootings in the U.S. and to look beyond firearm ownership rates, Lankford turned to his own and others’ previous research to ask: Is there something about American culture that incubates more mass shooters?
"At least one explanation" about violence in the U.S. has suggested that "crime and deviance occur when there’s an unhealthy gap between people’s dreams and aspirations and their ability to reach those dreams," Lankford explains. In the U.S. in particular, he writes, success and fame are idolized. "Everybody is shaped by culture in a way," says Lankford. "Our culture has people reaching for the stars and slipping and falling probably more often."
It may be that there is a lot of merit in the argument that there is something in American culture that is at least in part related, possibly causally related, to the high numbers of gun related fatalities.
There may well be merit in the view offered in the text you quoted that these high numbers are related to the gap between aspirations and reality but my suspicion is that there is a more fundamental relationship.
The gun occupies an exalted place in US history. It is commonly held to be the reason why the West was 'won' or more accurately why native American opposition to European expansion was unsuccessful. Gun slingers share this exalted position, Every American boy grows up hearing stories about legendary outlaws such as Jesse James. This ambivalence towards gun slingers and outlaws continues through the years right up to our age through figures like Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde and John Gotti.
There is also a tradition of self reliance and the notion that guns are effective conflict resolution mechanisms, both of which encourage the use of guns to defend oneself and to settle problems as opposed to reliance on a State legal system to have rights enforced and conflicts resolved. There is also the widely held view that an armed population is the only effective guarantee of avoiding government tyranny. The gun occupies a central place in the mythology* of the USA.
I am not in a position to assess how valid (historically accurate) some of these myths are but it is clear that they are accepted in various sectors of the US population. Nor do I know of any scholarly research focussing on this perspective. I would like to see some if anyone has any links.
The relevance of these myths to today's world is questionable. I rather suspect that until Americans have a discussion reassessing the role and place of the gun in their history, culture and society, the current high levels of gun related violence and fatalities will continue.
* I am using the term 'myth' in its anthropological sense which treats the truth value of a myth as irrelevant or more accurately accepts that if enough people believe a myth to be true, then it takes on a truth value purely as a consequence of its popular acceptance and regardless of its objective truth value.
The obsession you and Europeans have with the "American gun culture" ignores that American society is as different from European society as Mexican society is from American. To the north Canada has tight gun control and a low crime rate.
To the south Mexico has even tighter gun control and an astronomical crime rate. In the middle the U S has less gun control (but more than foreigners seem to think we do) and a crime rate much closer to Canada than Mexico.
This seems to point to the fact that it is not the guns so much as the societies.
You, as a group also ignore that the US has a higher murder rate with knives than England has total. Again pointing to the fact that it isn't guns.
_____________________________
Government ranges from a necessary evil to an intolerable one. Thomas Paine
People don't believe they can defend themselves because they have guns, they have guns because they believe they can defend themselves.
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RE: TV news reporter and cameraman shot and killed. - 
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