American Gun Culture Will Never Change

In the land of the free, the liberty to own firearms is seemingly more important than the liberty to live.

Rafael Pinheiro
The Bigger Picture

--

Photo by Max Kleinen on Unsplash

The nearly total absence of mass shootings in European countries teaches us that limiting the sales of firearms is effective in preventing tragedies like the recent one in Uvalde. But such a solution is never implemented in the U.S. because it goes against one of the most contradictory ideological foundations of the country, which is America’s original sin.

The land of the free, right? Well, everything comes with a price, it seems. We used to call it the American dream, but perhaps it’s time to call it the American nightmare.

The reason why some random Texan kid walked into a school and took the lives of 19 children and two teachers is tied to the foundation on top of which all other systemic problems of the country were built. The fact that the American conception of liberty was never meant to be egalitarian — but merely the liberty of the strongest to crush the weakest. American freedom is not freedom from violence.

This similarly explains nearly every single other problem of the nation. It explains why the death penalty, banned in most western democracies, still exists in many states. It explains the discrepant way the…

--

--

Responses (28)