We have a deeper problem that resists bureaucratic solutions. Why is the identity of so many Americans wrapped up in guns and, compounding that, why is freedom defined for so many as unfettered access to guns?

Many commentators and average Americans view Islamic jihadists or, more broadly, Islam as a death cult. Radical Islam is seen as a threat to the American way of life because of its embrace of death, through martyrdom and a belief in a paradisal afterlife.

One aspect of American exceptionalism that is promoted as our last best defense against this alien death cult is our Second Amendment right to bear arms. That is, the only way we can ensure the survival of our society under threat from this alien death cult is with a death cult of our own.

Fetishizing instruments of murder and mayhem, and finding a scriptural basis for our beliefs in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, predates the rise of radical Islam but now finds in radical Islam a purported foil that is, upon closer inspection, a mirror image. In the wake of the San Bernardino shootings, mass murder performed with legally purchased guns and ammunition by people apparently influenced by jihadist ideology, these two world views merged into one and were consecrated into law as the Senate voted to block any restrictions in the sale of guns to people on the federal government’s terror watch list.

American society has become a death cult.