[dropcap style=”font-size:100px; color:#992211;”]A[/dropcap]fter mass shootings in the US, the sale of firearms rises.
The phenomenon is very much like the reaction of alcoholics whose solution to the stress-inducing trouble, pain, and chaos that alcohol inflicts on their lives is to attempt to remedy the situation by careening into another drinking binge. US Americans are attracted to guns in the same manner drunks are in love with their chosen killer.
They are seeking sanctuary from fear. All too many view the world as a hostile place. The remedy, US culture has instructed them, is to dispatch the threat by means of violence. These tormented souls believe they will be provided safety on a weapons-bristling citadel built on a mountain of corpses. (Floridians had to be advised that it would be a less than propitious act to fire weaponry into the fury of Hurricane Irma.)
A study of the history of the nation confirms the fact. The fear is the very DNA of the European settler colonialists who seized the land from its original inhabitants. They also feared the African slaves they imported to build the nation, thus they marshalled slave patrols. Therein, we find the origins of the Second Amendment — to wit, in slave ownership and genocide. Moreover, we find the reason that the White population countenances the violence perpetrated upon African, Native Americans and dark skinned people by police.
Thus, discussions of “gun control” will only exacerbate the fear. They will cause gun sales to rise, and they will increase the body count. The great unspoken is: US Americans fear the wrong things. The culture roils in a miasma of confused apprehensions and displaced responses. The threat US Americans are attempting to ward off is comprised by an occupation of ghosts. It is the ghost of history, that stalks the precincts of their own minds.
Illustration by Dan Booth. Not to be reproduced without express prior permission.
Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City.
Yet a bio amounts to dharma for dimwits: It defines a human being in the same manner and degree of veracity as a restaurant menu describes the various slabs of meat offered … commodified things that were once living beings.
