9 April 2024By Ed Pilkington
Large numbers of Americans (click here) who have bought guns over the past four years or who regularly carry their loaded weapons in public are willing to engage in political violence, even to the extent of shooting a perceived opponent, a new mega-survey has found.
The study of almost 13,000 Americans, drawn from across the country and weighted for demographics, provides alarming evidence of the openness of certain types of gun owners to the idea – and possibly the practice – of violence as a political act....
Every American needs to ask themselves how we got here. We are in a violent paradigm within our democracy because the right political wing is the fringe. We are facing very bad leadership on the right and it was obtained by a group of extremists including those that publish tabloid journalism.
Quite unknowingly Americans that voted for Trump in 2016 were completely unaware of the influx of fringe Americans brought to vote for Trump by tabloid journalism. Don't get me wrong, every American should vote with every election, however, up to recent decades there were fairly standard mainstream voters. That changed with Trump to the point where the right wing has to dance on the head of a pin to please those voters, hence, extremists like Haley and Taylor-Greene.
There are large cultural differences between traditional American voters and the right wing fringe. That difference has existed in the shadows of the USA for a long time and fed by misinformation such as alien encounters, etc. I know there has been some truth telling that brought politicians to their knees as a result of tabloids, but, the majority of information found in those newsprints is false. I think it is called "infotainment." Media companies like FOX are very profitable due to all that mess, but, it has brought the USA to a difficult and delicate place socially.
Accompanying that fringe are draconian aspects of our society that look for wrongheaded profits like the gun lobby. But, this is a democracy and when voters can be found in the fringe that elect those that are mostly best left out of government there are dangerous cronies that fund elections that need to be fed after the vote count, i.e.: NRA with Russian money.
So, we have arrived in 2024 with huge numbers of guns floating throughout the country. It is a dangerous time for people that see guns as a sincere answer to their social anxiety and/or social prowess. Isn't that an oxymoron? Social clout means carrying guns. There is nothing social about guns. Nothing. Guns are a tool. They are tools to self-defense within our homes and tools to allow sports of a variety of kinds, including the Olympics (click here). I do not regard the relatively new gun laws such as the Castle Doctrine to be good law or even necessary in the USA.
In the USA if a person owns a gun they are often well practiced. If one owns a gun it needs to be used within the understanding of how best it operates for the purpose of self-defense and/or sport. So, I would expect Americans that own guns are well practiced and confident in their use. However, I do not see them using the guns for the purpose of developing social unrest resulting in an escalation of unsafe conditions which could become out of control in a war within the USA against unidentified entities. No uniforms, just mass murder.
I am not surprised we are at this juncture. And. Yes. I see it as a juncture.
On this blog there is considerable focus over the years of gun cultures and how when the NRA is involved those gun cultures became lucrative and out of control. Those gun cultures did not exist before the NRA either. They were nurtured in places like South America. On this blog there are well documented dynamics of other countries that allowed an indulgence of profiteers leading to domestic violence of unprecedented levels. This PATTERN is not unique, but, for as dangerous and predictable it is there seems to be no way to remove the violent component. Once the power and money of guns is realized in a society it stays there. In many of the countries where the NRA has been successful in selling guns and nurturing a violent culture law enforcement fails, i.e. as close as our neighbor to the south, Mexico.
So.
The juncture we face as a well educated and moral people is that we do have rational thought that can result in removing such dangers. Our democracy allows people to speak out however they wish to put facts before the electorate. Elections allow the education of the voter in a way that removes danger and returns a civil society.
This research as cited in "The Guardian" demands attention to those both being elected and those voting. This research is alarming. There is no doubt this is a wake up call to the American voter in understanding there are dynamics at play that either will damn our democracy to being subservient to violence or return rational thinking to maintain this country in a state of good law enforcement.
Being subservient to violence means our society is not safe and domestic peace is absent. It means people will practice political violence and our government will require bullet proof meeting rooms. It will bring about economic downturns as people rarely socialize and gangland will result as the over riding social event on a Saturday night.
And. Oh, by the way. Those lovely innocent children being raised all across the USA will now have to face whether they have to fight their way into adulthood and beyond because any social situation will incorporate gun violence as part of the behaviors that have to be adapted. If people think there are social divisions wait until the guns dominate the streets. There will be bullet proof schools and academies that guarantee your child will "arrive alive" to their adult dreams of an education and a quality of life. The only thing the bullet proof schools and universities won't be able to stop is the home invasions that could result in the loss of precious lives if Americans can't afford state of the art defense fences to protect them. If Americans think real estate is expensive now, they haven't even begun to incorporate all the munitions needed to survive day to day.
We are at a juncture. It is time to put the guns back where they belong and stop seeing them as a part of personal appeal and necessary.
END THE VIOLENCE.
There really is no other rational choice.
