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White men with guns

EG

So, ludlow expressed some confusion over the intent of this post. Here’s the story:

The most embarrassing thing to me about it is that I used the wrong word. Should be “rein.”

The post was originally supposed to be a modest proposal to tag Christian white guys, with the phrase “a modest proposal” in it as a tip-off. But by the time I got done finding all the links I was actually too upset to actually maintain the requisite tone, and it spilled over into just feeling bitter and tired and powerless. So there you go. It’s somewhat facetious, but genuinely upset.

White cis Christian men with guns are simply too big a threat to the rest of us. They gun down black church-goers. They shoot up Planned Parenthood, injuring several cops (and still get taken alive, because apparently that’s not as big a threat as a 12-year-old black kid with a toy gun). They kill people for no discernible reason. When they have badges, and even when they don’t, they kill unarmed black men and women. They kill waitresses for asking them not to smoke. They kill random people because they can’t get laid. They shoot up their schools. They kill their own children and former wives. And then members of that group, that same group, white cis Christian men who are pro-gun, have the balls to publicly question the morality and motives of other people.

And I’m so tired of it. I’m tired of following these news stories. I’m tired of getting minute-by-minute news on Twitter. I’m tired of seeing innocent people turned into hashtags. But if white, Christian, pro-gun, cis men can go on TV and question the integrity of Syrian refugees and US Muslims on the basis of nothing rational whatsoever, if France feels justified using its state of emergency to police environmental groups, then I feel perfectly justified here in calling white Christian men with guns out as the menace they are. Because they exist at the perfect intersection of a number of self-satisfied, entitled, rage-filled streets, and they do these things and then their brethren have the nerve to call the rest of us irrational, emotional, dangerous, subhuman.

And somehow in movies and on TV, we still pretend they’re the good guys. It’s sickening. I’ve always been anti-gun. And I know some regular commenters on this site have always argued strongly for the importance of gun ownership. I’m beginning to think they’re right. Guns aren’t the problem. White cis Christian men having them is the problem.

Fair warning: I’m going to completely wipe any comment accusing me of reverse racism, misandry, cisphobia, or any such imaginary nonsense. I’m tired and angry. You don’t like this characterization? Then reign in the men who keep making the news.

66 thoughts on White men with guns

  1. Fair warning: I’m going to completely wipe any comment accusing me of reverse racism

    Fair enough. How about just plain old racism then?

    2. Actual question: Is there a generally accepted word for “is prejudiced against certain people specifically because of their race” that doesn’t step on the toes of the “racism is prejudice+power” crowd that we could use for this kind of thought process? Maybe one EG personally prefers?

      1. Oh, go read the bit at the top of the post and think hard about the phrase “a modest proposal.”

        And then note the “with guns” part. If you really want a word, you can go with “gunnist,” I suppose.

      2. I believe the word you want is “bigot,” though I would suggest that you not only look up “a modest proposal” in the note appended to the top of the post (which was there when you made your comment, by the way), but also the word “facetious.”

      3. I was actually looking for something race-specific. Bigotry applies to all sorts of things, from race to gender to sexuality to religion etc. Thanks for the effort, though. 🙂

        Also, I’m actually pretty familiar with facetious (aka “ironic”) racial bigotry born out of frustration and a feeling of powerlessness. It’s pretty common, and I bet you dislike it most of the time yourself! 😀 As an aside, you might want to read/reread Swift’s piece sometime. You seem a bit muddled about what’s going on with it, and what you’re actually alluding to when invoking it.

      4. No worries; no effort.

        I’m not muddled. It’s just a poor post because I got distracted by being upset halfway, as I mentioned down-thread.

      5. The extent of effort was pretty clear. Thank you for the clarification all the same, though. Much appreciated.

      6. The extent of effort was pretty clear.

        I totally love when people say things that are this unnecessarily rude and condescending because it reinforces how great my life is that I don’t get off on trying to make people feel bad anymore.

      7. I’m more sort of intrigued by the general sense of, I don’t know, dissatisfaction that would lead to such a comment. I mean, I’ve agreed it was a lousy post in a couple of places now. Shouldn’t that mean that Actual has won? Shouldn’t ze be pleased? So why is ze still trying to take shots?

        Some people will never be happy.

      8. I realize this is totally random, but the conversation that sprouted from this article (and actually, this thread) made me wonder what I should call my boyfriend’s mom who dislikes me very, very much because I’m Polish and an atheist, and am ruining her son who is Jewish. Totally kept it to myself, but I realized that I’m happy there isn’t an easy term to describe her default dislike of me, because when you start characterizing someone as racist (or whatever the appropriate term here is, since obviously my people were – and frankly, continue to be – dicks to Jews), it has a dehumanizing effect which isn’t appropriate for someone (physically, womp) close to me.

        I hear you on this post being primarily borne of passion, but I do think the conversations had here were important.

        Also, I think that’s the wrong use of borne, buuuut… /lazy

      9. That’s good! I’m glad something good came out of the post despite its misbegotten-ness.

        But I’m sorry to hear about the friction with your boyfriend’s mother. While I certainly do understand her historical and group issue (I have enough gut reaction myself that my ignoble visceral response to the Ukrainian-Russian clashes has been “fuck them both, what have they ever done to people like me but kill us, that’s why my family left”), it’s not kind to you to make you responsible for Polish anti-Semitism. And not fair, either.

      10. My shrink directed me to Ghosts in the Nursery, which is a couple case studies in generational trauma. It helps explain a lot of what I think is happening there (her mother specifically fled Poland during WWII and I don’t think there was a lot of family she brought over). When I tried to google more about the specific anti-Polish mindset (and the rest of this comment needs a trigger warning for violent anti-Semitism), I was met with roughly a million articles on current Polish anti-Semitism, so… I guess I get it. I’d feel uncomfortable too, if a relatively educated city in Poland recently had anti-Syrian refugee demonstrations (which is shitty enough, but #potcallingthekettleblack since the US is being shitty about it too), and they effing had a Jewish caricature effigy. So.

  2. It is a problem with White Christian cis men with guns, but it’s also specifically American (U.S.) White Christian cis men with guns. The U.S. has by far the highest number of guns per capita in the world, but even other nations with high rates of gun ownership by large White Christian cis-male populations but without the toxic U.S. gun culture and legal regime see much lower rates of firearm deaths and mass shootings.

    1. I don’t know how that could possibly be true given that only about 45% of shootings are carried out by white people, despite the fact that they make up 70% of the population.

      I’m all for tackling toxic masculinity and white supremacy and gun culture, but let’s not let ignore the facts, either. Gun crime in the US is primarily a symptom of poverty.

      1. Even that 45% number would constitute an abnormally high level of firearm violence from an international perspective, assuming it’s true. But the broader point is that variations in gun violence within the US may be symptoms of poverty, but the overall level of gun violence in the US as a whole is a symptom of gun laws and gun culture, and it’s unquestionably White Christian cis-men who are the most powerful advocates for that status quo.

      3. Can’t find it by both gender and race either (the FBI annual crime statistics are the go-to source for all of this), but let’s assume men commit 90.5% of shootings since they commit about 90.5% of murders. Obviously this assumption isn’t 100% accurate, but for the purposes of the discussion it should suffice (we’re also assuming that all races use non-gun methods of killing people equally often, and that women and men are equally likely to use a non-gun method of homicide, both of which are probably false; again, for the purposes of discussion).

        That would suggest that about 41% of shootings are carried out by white men, who represent about 31.5% of the population; black men account for about 47% of shootings and represent about 6.6% of the population. Given that, I’m not sure how you could possibly suggest gun violence is causally related to whiteness.

        I realize these facts are uncomfortable, because of how they’re often used to advance a very conservative, racist argument about black criminality, but that’s not the only reason one might bring them up; the vast majority of crime in the US is intraracial, and the victims of shootings carried out by black men are overwhelmingly also black men. Focusing on the tiny subset of shootings that make the news actively obscures the real victims and the real causes of America’s gun problem.

        But the broader point is that variations in gun violence within the US may be symptoms of poverty, but the overall level of gun violence in the US as a whole is a symptom of gun laws and gun culture,

        Cite? Because there are other countries with an equally high level of gun ownership that don’t have America’s massive rate of gun homicides. I’m in favor of restrictions on gun ownership for all kinds of reasons, but I don’t see much evidence that lack of gun control is the biggest underlying issue here (this is probably the single issue where looking at the data did the most to change my policy preferences).

      4. One big difference between the black-on-black shootings that form a lot of the poverty-related crime you talk about and the shootings by the White Christian cis males with guns is that the latter are committed by people who think their White Christian cis maleness and their possession of guns ENTITLES them to perform these executions. They view themselves as righteous wronged crusaders in a deviant world full of people who kill babies and sell their parts, black people who steal jobs and women and insist on being treated as human beings, b*****s who won’t date them. So I do agree with EG, and particularly with her point that their view of themselves as good guys is reinforced by the narrative we hear and that they use to justify their actions.

      5. One big difference between the black-on-black shootings that form a lot of the poverty-related crime you talk about and the shootings by the White Christian cis males with guns is that the latter are committed by people who think their White Christian cis maleness and their possession of guns ENTITLES them to perform these executions.

        I know that’s an article of faith among a lot of progressives, but I need to see some sort of empirical/medical/psychological study backing that up, because I’m not sure there’s a demonstrable causative relationship. Mass shootings occur roughly in proportion to the total racial demographics in the country (black people commit 19%, Asians 9%, White people 64%, Latinos 6%, other 2%).

      6. Are you wondering whether mass shootings are mostly done by people who feel entitled to do so or whether it’s not necessary to be white-male-cis to feel entitled?

      7. Are you wondering whether mass shootings are mostly done by people who feel entitled to do so or whether it’s not necessary to be white-male-cis to feel entitled?

        I’m questioning the assertion that mass shootings are usually related to feelings of entitlement, more so than other violent crimes. If this is true, and we accept the premise that white men are particularly likely to feel entitled, then we should expect white Christian men to perform more mass shootings than other demographics; in reality, the racial distribution of mass shootings is almost identical to the racial makeup of the country.

        In other words, maleness is absolutely directly correlated with mass shootings, but whiteness isn’t. Neither is cisgenderness (sp?); 99.8 percent of Americans identify as cis and 100% of mass shooters are cis (to my knowledge), which is statistically identical.

        Just because we in the pro-social-justice world don’t approve of transphobia, Christian supremacy, or white supremacy doesn’t mean throwing those identities into the discussion of every single social problem is appropriate, accurate, or useful. In this case, they’re total non-sequitors, based on the data.

      8. I’d be interested in seeing the definition of mass shootings used in the statistics you reproduce.

        Do you not think that there is a big difference between gang-related shootings or disputes/vengeance killings that may involve multiple victims and those in which the killer feels *morally* justified in doing what he does? I think it would be difficult to separate these scenarios in any compilation of statistics, but in one case the privilege of the shooter confers a sense of entitlement and moral justification, and in the other it’s quite the opposite: the lack of privilege and the feeling of nothing-to-lose or kill-or-be-killed may be a contributing factor. I don’t think this argument is being woolly, it’s just difficult to back up with statistics without further slicing and dicing of definitions.

      9. Without getting too much into it, I’d like to prod people to seek parity in the statistics they cite. For example, there’s a meme going around about the “more than one/day mass shootings” statistic. If you’re at peace with that figure, cool, but please base all your other postings about race/religion/gender around the figures from that statistic, rather than the more conservative statistics born of sampling a smaller number of shootings.

  3. If this is only meant as a sarcastic counterpoint to the idea we should be scared of Syrian refugees due to a small number of violent acts, then bravo, spot on.

    If it’s meant seriously, however, it’s remarkably inept, unless you want to apply the same logic to Muslims. In other words: either the violent actions of a tiny percentage of a demographic group are a valid reason to be suspicious of said group as a whole, or not. And since white people don’t even commit the majority of gun violence in the US, despite being about 70% of the population, I really have no clue how you’d supporting such an assertion anyways.

    (Signed a pro-gun-control Asian female, before the knives come out)

    1. If you think this is satire and spot-on, turn to page 35.
      If you think this is serious and remarkably inept, turn to page 70.

      Choose your own EG adventure!

  4. You don’t like this characterization? Then reign in the men who keep making the news.

    So, I bet no one likes this characterization. What’s to like? So how do we go about reigning in the people who are making the news? I’m angry too, but I also just don’t know what to do to change it.

    1. Yep. I see comments like this all the time on social-justice-oriented sites, but I have no idea how that soundbyte translates into action. My roommate is white- how should I instruct him to go about stopping future mass shooters? Does he need to infiltrate some white supremacist groups?

      Pretty sure it’s just a punchy way to close out a thoughtpiece.

    2. The most embarrassing thing to me is that I used the wrong word. Should be “rein.”

      It’s a poor line from a somewhat misbegotten post, is the answer. The post was originally supposed to be a modest proposal to tag Christian white guys, with the phrase “a modest proposal” in it as a tip-off. But by the time I got done finding all the links I was actually too upset to actually maintain the requisite tone, and it spilled over into just feeling bitter and tired and powerless, which is where that line came from. Believe me, if I had any bright ideas that I thought would actually work in the US, the post would’ve been about them.

      1. There is really no way to rein in a whole demographic, which is why I find myself on other sites arguing with racists who indict blacks for not reining in their criminals (or with islamophobes who claim moderate muslims should rein in “their” extremists).

        Until there is national legislation on guns (like stricter regulations and background checks) that is seriously enforced, we are going to have more shootings. We need nationalized regulations because even when states have strict gun laws, neighboring states with lax laws allow gun trafficking into the stricter states.

      2. The post was originally supposed to be a modest proposal to tag Christian white guys, with the phrase “a modest proposal” in it as a tip-off. But by the time I got done finding all the links I was actually too upset to actually maintain the requisite tone, and it spilled over into just feeling bitter and tired and powerless, which is where that line came from.

        I think that’s why I felt lost with the satire/seriousness point I made above. I tend to figure out what I think as I write too, though, so I totally get what you mean.

      3. Yeah, I mostly write two kinds of posts. One kind I have in the works for weeks if not months, I study and plan and outline and spend loads of time on, and I’m almost always happy with how those turn out (which makes sense, I guess–it would be really depressing otherwise). The other kind I put up as a kind of general response to some recent event(s) and those are more hit and miss. This one was more miss. But, ah well.

      5. Nah, don’t worry about it. I’m snarky myself, and if I can’t take, I shouldn’t dish it out, and I like to dish it out too much not to have to take it sometimes!

        (And it only stung because it was true.)

  5. Ib understand that intersectionality is imperative to feminism, but when did feminists go back to focusing on the various groups and gradations of men?

    I see discussion here of which men are more or less violent: black, white, Christan, Muslim. I see discussion about which men are victims, which ones are perpetrators, but what about women? While men are busy creating escalating situations of gun violence, they are still paying no attention to the women victims.

    White cis Christian men? Such a specific indictment. How about we don’t go too hard defending any group of men until they can stop killing women in their increasing violent member measuring contests.

    Women are definitely not the ones shooting anyone, black, white, Christian, Muslim. While men of various races and creeds duke out who deserves power and who should wield violence, women are once again decentered from the conversation

    1. Women are definitely not the ones shooting anyone, black, white, Christian, Muslim.

      definitely not? maybe im misreading you here, but it sounds like you’re downplaying racist violence done by white women. it’s plausible that men commit more gun violence than women, but with or without guns, white women are just as racially entitled as white men. and like white men they can be racially violent towards POC of any gender.

      i know the topic is gun violence committed by white men, but white feminists and their supporters have a habit of looking at all the violence that white men commit and then telling themselves that they arent capable of using their white entitlement for violent purposes, as if they are just as marginalized as their sisters of color. im sure that lots of white women who have access to firearms think of all POC just as lots of white men do – as non-humans whose very existence justifies owning guns.

      that said, i agree that there is a severe lack of attention to female victims of gun violence committed by men, especially WOC victims.

      1. Hi! It’s nice to here from you. This seems important to you, so I’m glad you brought it up. Great points too. I think it’s not hard at all to bring our points into agreement. Thanks for adding some really valuable specificity. I’m very flattered that you thought my comment was good enough that you wanted to help me refine my arguments. I really appreciate your contribution.

      2. Reading over my reply, I can see how in the context of internet discourse it might sound sarcastic. I want to say explicitly that it’s not at all, and is all supposed to be genuine.

      3. definitely not? maybe im misreading you here, but it sounds like you’re downplaying racist violence done by white women. it’s plausible that men commit more gun violence than women…

        Not to let reality get in the way of a good argument, but white women commit about 5% of murders in the US and about .7% of murders of POC, of which only about a third are WOC.

        Facts matter in these debates. I strongly encourage everyone to looks at the NCVS or FBI statistics.

      4. Go away Ludlow. Your willful misinterpretation and bad will is not needed in this thread. You have the rest of them for that.

      5. Well, I don’t think I will go away, but your decision to respond to my personality instead of the content of my post is noted.

      6. You are willfully obtuse because you would rather misinterpret and correct than listen and understand. You think the sick up your butt is a holy rod of reliable wisdom, but it just makes you inflexible and limits your range of discourse.

        I believe Aaliyah was talking about these sorts of racial violence perpetrated by white women:

        http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2015/07/this-is-what-rihannas-bbhmm-video-says-about-black-women-white-women-and-feminism/

        http://feministing.com/2013/07/16/white-womanhood-protectionism-and-complicity-in-injustice-for-trayvon/

        I’m certain you will need the last word, to justify to yourself why your thoughts are the purest. Enjoy it.

      7. I believe Aaliyah was talking about these sorts of racial violence perpetrated by white women:

        That’d be very odd, since she was responding to this:

        Women are definitely not the ones shooting anyone, black, white, Christian, Muslim.

        Pretty sure failing to support just for Trayvon is not the same thing as literally shooting someone with a handgun- get back to me if you find otherwise.

        Enjoy it.

        Grazie.

      8. definitely not? maybe im misreading you here, but it sounds like you’re downplaying racist violence done by white women. it’s plausible that men commit more gun violence than women

        I’m going to have to disagree with this quite a bit. The stats on who commits mass-murdering gun violence (and against whom) are pretty clear, and it’s not white women. And the facts on whether men commit more gun violence in general than women have been in for a long time. They do. It’s not a matter of “plausible”.

        but with or without guns, white women are just as racially entitled as white men. and like white men they can be racially violent towards POC of any gender.

        I’m…pretty sure that when we’re discussing widespread multiple-deaths gun violence, yes, there’s a large line between someone yelling “all lives matter” and the kind of regular, devastating mass deaths I’ve seen at the hands of white men. Yes, overwhelmingly white men. I do think that “white women are racist too” is a counterfactual position in this one particular argument. And yes, I’m with Ludlow – facts matter. I’m dealing with a racist in my class right now, but I still don’t think she’s Darren Wilson.

        I can tell, because I’m alive.

      9. definitely not? maybe im misreading you here, but it sounds like you’re downplaying racist violence done by white women. it’s plausible that men commit more gun violence than women

        I’m going to have to disagree with this quite a bit. The stats on who commits mass-murdering gun violence (and against whom) are pretty clear, and it’s not white women. And the facts on whether men commit more gun violence in general than women have been in for a long time. They do. It’s not a matter of “plausible”.

        but with or without guns, white women are just as racially entitled as white men. and like white men they can be racially violent towards POC of any gender.

        I’m…pretty sure that when we’re discussing widespread multiple-deaths gun violence, yes, there’s a large line between someone yelling “all lives matter” and the kind of regular, devastating mass deaths I’ve seen at the hands of white men. Yes, overwhelmingly white men. I do think that “white women are racist too therefore it’s a white problem not a male problem” is a counterfactual position in this one particular argument.

        And yes, I’m with Ludlow – facts matter.

      10. You two are being dense. I didn’t see Aaliyahs reply as a disagreement. I saw it as an expansion. An important point about racial violence that she did not make up, and I have heard before. It was a point I would have happily included in my post were i not limited by my phone keyboard.

        Your points, that women do not commit as much racially motivated gun violence as men, is not relevant here. It is not arguing against anything Aaliyah said. She specifically went out of her way to acknowledge that her point was a departure from the discussion of gun violence, and that it was looking more abstractly into what constitutes racial violence. She was reacting to my absolute phrasing, and I thought it was a good correction.

        I think you are both bad listeners and that is why your comments aren’t interesting. You completely miss the intent and import of comments because you are so excited over that one word you think is not factual enough.

        It turns discussion into a boring pedantic exercise that no one wants to participate in, and so now we have no commenters here.

        But don’t worry, Ludlow will comment five times on every thread to make up for it. And it will all be the same boring obtuse irrelevant self aggrandizing nitpicking, because she is obviously not here to learn ever, just to teach all of us to use her approved precise robot discourse.

        Bleep blorp bleep blorp, I am Ludlow, your phrasing is unsatisfactory, please consult my numbers bleep blorp bleep blorp.

      11. it looks like i left out some important context in my last comment. i was responding to what seemed to be a typical white/pro-white feminist remark about how only white men can be racially violent.

        im sure some reliable statisitcs show that white men shoot more POC than white women, solely as a result of gender difference. and tbh, between an armed white man and an armed white woman, im a lot more wary of the former (though i don’t feel totally safe around the latter either).

        it’s just that i notice lots of white feminists and their supporters focusing on the dangers of white men shooting POC, to the complete exclusion of white women. and it inevitably leads to white feminists telling themselves that their own whiteness is unimportant because white men are statistically more violent in whatever way. it’s similar to how TERFs think that cis women don’t have privilege over trans women because women are oppressed by men and therefore can’t possibly support or enact oppression of any kind.

      12. And it will all be the same boring obtuse irrelevant self aggrandizing nitpicking,

        Pretty sure my comments in this thread have been more about the fundamental disagreement I have with some of the commentator’s premises, not superficial disputes over verbiage.

        Bleep blorp bleep blorp, I am Ludlow, your phrasing is unsatisfactory, please consult my numbers bleep blorp bleep blorp.

        How dare I introduce statistics and facts into a political discussion? What type of monster would do that?

        But don’t worry, Ludlow will comment five times on every thread to make up for it.

        So I’m too mathy, too aggressive and too talkative, hm? I’ll work on being more sensitive and demure, promise.

      13. @Aaliyah thanks for the expansion of the comment; I agree with your broader point, though, again, I think that saying “what about all racial violence?” does in fact distract from this plague of mass murders your country is facing, and I don’t think turning it into a matter of either white supremacy or male supremacy provides the whole picture. It’s the intersection that’s really lethal.

        @Babby

        I’m not commenting in order to be interesting to you. I’m certainly not commenting in order for you to sling around insults in response to my comment, which was perfectly civil and quite reasonable. And I’d like some citations on how Ludlow and I destroyed comments on Feministe, when I more or less left while comments were still going strong (I think I’ve left 10 comments in the last year that weren’t just encouragement/condolences/congrats on the open threads), and she didn’t turn up until after things quieted down as far as I can tell. But thanks for reminding me again why I so rarely feel like commenting here these days.

      14. Have you guys seen that South Park episode where Cartman goes into the future and there are a couple of warring factions, and in the end, he discovers the reason they’re all murdering each other is because they disagree about what they should call their organized atheism? All of them were atheists, but they disagreed on the name, so then they murdered the shit out of each other.

        Anyway, just something to keep in mind, given that I know all three of you agree that sexism and racism are wrong, that intersectionality matters, and that prejudice isn’t strictly measured in the number of lives lost.

      15. This latest shooting has a woman perpetrator, so maybe you guys were not only overly sanctimonious and pedantic, but just plain old wrong too!

      16. Yeah, a woman of color. No one is arguing that atrocities can’t be perpetrated by anyone regardless of sex, gender, race, creed, etc. But racism is still a thing. We all totally agree, rendering ad hominems irrelevant. That’s awesome!

      17. This latest shooting has a woman perpetrator, so maybe you guys were not only overly sanctimonious and pedantic, but just plain old wrong too!

        someone teach me how do i maths?

      18. “Nice try, PA. I see what you’re saying and it’s super reasonable.” “Thanks, guys! I like that we can all come together in the pursuit of holistic equality, and not get caught up in minutiae that exists because we’re viewing the same problem through different lenses.” “IKR?”

  6. The USA is a nation that doesn’t put value in individuals at all. Communities are better protected than persons in the USA. As a result, individual freedoms are perpetually threatened by “community prerogatives” that pull the whole society backwards.

    1. See, I would have said the other way round. The US is so obsessed with individuals that it refuses to accept that communities too have rights and get injuries–look at the way the US simply cannot cope with First/Native Nations concepts of community needs and wants, and the way it blames individuals for being parts of oppressed groups. It’s so obsessed with an individual’s perceived need to own guns, for instance, that it refuses to prioritize the needs of communities ravaged by gun violence or recognize that as a group, we need to be safe.

      1. That’d be my take too, EG, but Schmorgluck — I’m interested to hear what your perspective is based on.

        I’m generally wary of any attempts to summarize or draw broad conclusions about the culture of a place as big, populated, and diverse as the US, so it’s certainly plausible that both narratives are true in different contexts.

        1. I think it’s relevant that U.S. gun laws and culture are driven by the racial paranoia of Wayne LaPierre-types at the N.R.A. rather than, say, gangsta rap or the Black Panthers or something.

      2. I think it’s relevant that U.S. gun laws and culture are driven by the racial paranoia of Wayne LaPierre-types at the N.R.A. rather than, say, gangsta rap or the Black Panthers or something.

        Laws, yes. Culture? I don’t think there is a singular gun culture; if we’re going to talk about cultural effects on gun violence, we have to consider where and by whom most gun violence is being committed.

        Gangster rap and the Black Panthers are both favorite bogeymen of the perpetually paranoid racist right, but if we’re serious about a) reducing gun violence and b) reducing the vastly disproportionate number of black people who are annually murdered in this country, we’re going to have to confront the fact that both a simple majority and a vastly disproportionate amount of gun violence is committed by black men, who are not (by and large) NRA members and do not belong to the type of Appalachia-tinged ‘gun culture’ that most people are referring to when they use the term.

        I get why progressives are so squeemish about approaching this, because (like I’ve said above) I’m very aware of how this discussion can very easily play into white supremacist narratives of pathological black masculinity, but closing our eyes to the reality doesn’t help either. If the NRA went out of business tomorrow and no white person ever committed another shooting, the annual number of black people being murdered would fall about 5%.

        We can’t talk about tackling gun violence without talking about redlining, about ghettoization, about school-to-prison pipelines, about economic marginalization that means drug trafficking is the best paying (or only) job available, about how the War on Drugs leads to tremendous amounts of violence within the drug trade (simple version: because you can’t call the cops or file a lawsuit to settle a business dispute, your only recourse is violence), about laws that prevent the accumulation of intergenerational wealth, and so on. Blaming straight white cis Christian men is an easy way to sound progressive and avoid offending anyone, but it will never lead to the policy result we all want.

        1. If the NRA went out of business tomorrow and no white person ever committed another shooting, the annual number of black people being murdered would fall about 5%.

          You don’t think the easy availability of handguns, legal and illegal, has anything to do with this? I’m sure criminals would just switch to cars or knives or something equally deadly and unlicensable.

      3. You don’t think the easy availability of handguns, legal and illegal, has anything to do with this? I’m sure criminals would just switch to cars or knives or something equally deadly and unlicensable.

        It absolutely does, but getting rid of the NRA wouldn’t help much. There are more legal guns than there are people in this country, and that’s before you consider that the vast majority of crimes are committed with illegally owned guns.

        White people may provide the political impetus that keeps gun laws so lax in the US, but I’m not sure that changing gun laws at this point would have much impact on the majority of shootings that take place. Maybe if we banned private ownership and importation and manufacture of guns, some number of decades from now it’d start to make a dent as old guns were confiscated or malfunctioned, but there are plenty of functional M1 Garands from WWII that are still around…. and that would never, ever happen, not just because of the lobbying from gun owners but also because firearms manufacturing in the US is a $13 billion a year industry.

        Basically, I’m happy to lay a lot of blame at the feet of the NRA and white conservative gun owners for gun violence in the US, but I don’t think it’s anything like a strong enough link to support a statement like:

        It is a problem with White Christian cis men with guns, but it’s also specifically American (U.S.) White Christian cis men with guns. The U.S. has by far the highest number of guns per capita in the world, but even other nations with high rates of gun ownership by large White Christian cis-male populations but without the toxic U.S. gun culture and legal regime see much lower rates of firearm deaths and mass shootings.

  7. (And not coincidentally those are substantially the same voters who are opposed to any efforts to rectify the growing income and wealth inequality and unnecessary poverty in this country.)

  8. Pingback: Weekly Reader #32: Where the River Flows Edition | Tangerine Wallpaper

  9. The tears for the white men and the mean racism against them are a flowin’, I see. Yet, I remain unmoved. Must be my cold NDN heart.

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