America’s Culture of Violence

A troubled young man in Connecticut lays his hands on the kinds of guns that no civilian should ever have and does something that no civilization should ever see. The obvious way to prevent the next such massacre is gun control. And, yes, we need it now. Voters need to be loud, politicians need to be brave, and the gun lobby needs to be defeated. Perhaps Barack Obama, no longer up for election, will no longer be chicken. Perhaps the ever-more-obvious data will be persuasive—yes, more gun control correlates with less violence, state-by-state and country-by-country.

But American violence doesn’t just come from the assault weapons we buy and the gun shows we frequent. It’s much deeper than that. This is also the country that supplies three-quarters of the world’s arms trade. These are weapons sales authorized by our government and by a Democratic President. International weapon sales by America between 2010 and 2011 tripled. The same Democratic President continues a policy of targeted (often poorly) assassinations in Pakistan.
This country also supplies most of the world’s violent entertainment. America leads the world in massacres in life, and in film too. Read I.M.F.D.B. for a harrowing catalogue. The most popular movie this week, “Skyfall,” is a load of fun; but every emotional climax involves a shooting, sometimes with small guns sometimes with large ones. Firearms have long been identified with masculinity in popular culture. Ever more they are identified with femininity, too. The most popular video game this week is “Halo 4;” the most popular novel is Tom Clancy’s “Threat Vector;” the second- and third-best-selling works of nonfiction are “Killing Kennedy” and “Killing Lincoln,” respectively. Every author, and every creator, should have the right to make what they want. We need to change the way we think about the Second Amendment, not the First. Still, every civilian has a right to choose what to see and what to buy.
Violence is sometimes essential to art, and often to foreign policy, too. But the slaughter in Newtown, the worst single event in this country in eleven years and three months, should lead to a moment of deep reflection. It’s time to talk about guns; but it’s also time to talk about a lot more

Read the original here.