A Thought On Guns, Power and America
I remember when I first saw a police officer with a gun. I was 9, and I had just moved to New Jersey after being born and raised in London. I asked my mother, who is staunchly anti-gun, why police officers needed to carry guns. Gently, she told me that police officers need to protect themselves from criminals who want to hurt them. This is an answer I accepted for a long time, until I started to look further into the intricacies of American gun culture.
Within the past month, three major shootings have occurred across America. In Las Vegas, 58 people died with 546 injured after a man fired an automatic weapon into a crowd of 22,000 concert goers. A man in Texas opened fire at a church, killing 26. Yesterday, a shooting at an elementary school was narrowly avoided. While there are arguments as to what the next step should be, it is critical to assess why this is happening — and why these shootings are so uniquely American.
“It’s impossible to understand”, a friend in London said to me recently of America’s obsession with guns. “I understand guns, but I don’t understand why anyone would be so infatuated with something that’s sole purpose is to take life.”
This is a sentiment that pops up often when I travel back to Europe. Over the past years, I have traveled through countries such as Denmark, Germany, France and Spain. The question is the same in every language: “Why do they love them so much?” The answer, I always say, is complicated. This is because there are many answers. To some Americans, gun ownership is a constitutional right. To some, it’s an explosive hobby with the depth and culture to last a lifetime. To others, it is protection. But from the perspective of a foreigner in this land, there is one thing I deem all guns and gun ownership to be connected to: power.
You see, Americans love power. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that — it has shaped America into the most powerful country on Earth and has left them prosperous for much of history. The problem is the seemingly unquenchable and volatile pursuit of power that has the capacity to take many nasty forms. The pursuit that takes its form in racism, misogyny and gun ownership. The pursuit that takes its form in the act of a police officer with a gun shooting an unarmed black American in the back.
Guns are a difference maker in this pursuit. They are a symbol of authority and supremacy. A few years ago, I had a friend who had family in Oklahoma. I went with him, purely out of curiosity. This was, after all, a side of America I hadn’t seen. Typically, I ended up arguing with his uncle, who is strongly pro-gun. The debate eventually turned to America as a whole, at which point I exclaimed that the “greatest country on Earth” can’t be responsible for 20,000 gun deaths per year. The uncle’s answer was said half in jest, but it has stuck with me to this day: “Well, why don’t you go down to Texas and tell those guys we aren’t the greatest country on Earth, and see what happens.”
It was at this point I realized that to take these people’s guns away was to take everything away. It was going to take away their pride. Take away their power. Take away their America. The very reason they could bellow “America Is Number One” is that when it comes down to it, anyone that argues that statement could very well be on the business end of a gun. And to many, that is why America Is Number One.
What has to be stated is that I do not believe this pursuit of power is a choice for many who endeavor upon it. It is primal — drawn into our genes to be dominant and in control of a world that is impossible to control. That being said, it is absolutely possible to recognize this archaic inner journey and realize that it is either inconsequential or meaningless.
