By: Meany Campbell

Meany Campbell — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 12:12:21 +0000

One more issue is that video games are normally serious anyway with the primary focus on understanding rather than entertainment. Although, we have an entertainment facet to keep your young ones engaged, each game is often designed to develop a specific expertise or curriculum, such as numbers or scientific disciplines. Thanks for your write-up.

By: Nord

Nord — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 14:39:39 +0000

Australia had a broad political mandate to “do something” post the shootings in Port Authur. The direction in Australia was clear that “do something” was less guns. In the US, today, “do something” would involve liberalizing carry laws for some significant % of the population, because if only one person in the theater had a carry permit, this story wouldn’t be a story …

Also, don’t underestimate that mass shooting were not uncommon in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Heck even Swarthmore college had its shooting. Back then, people didn’t blame the guns, but had their own list of cultural things to blame …

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:04:03 +0000

Australia as counter-example?

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 19:14:07 +0000

Good of you to pick up on that–I’m more and more aware of that myself. I think I’m really coming to believe in a kind of Edmund-Burkean view of instrumental power: that there is such a thing as progress, that there can be modest deliberate action in pursuit of progress, but that strong instrumental action by powerful institutions (private and public) to force the pace of progress is almost always a terrible mistake.

By: Withywindle

Withywindle — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:31:47 +0000

TB: Your argument against cultural intervention at home strikes me as similar to your argument against military intervention abroad. An interesting consistency.

By: David

David — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 01:37:40 +0000

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this piece, and its insights into the complexities of the interplay of culture and politics. But I think the gun problem is actually a much newer invention. And I think this dark invention poses such a threat to our society that we can’t allow ourselves to take refuge in the “it’s complex” analysis, because unless something’s done, it has the potential to get so much worse.
I don’t pretend to have my finger on the pulse of contemporary cultural politics, but my sense is that there is something very new (in the last two decades) and very sinister about present-day gun culture, that is not just about counter-swings in politics.
My first thought is that handguns and assault rifles have shifted “culturally,” from being tools and/or symbols of ruggedness, independence, masculinity, ad elevated to the level of fetish-object. The fetish really took off in recent mass-culture. In Bogart’s old detective films, a pistol was just thatâ€”a pistol; a tool. (And no match for a good manly right cross.) Even in ’70s cop films, guns were generic, rarely the focus. I think this started to change in the ’80s: the gun-shop scene from Terminator (“.45 long slide with laser sight;” “Uzi nine millimeter” Ahnold the killer robot rattles off with unerring precision) was startling, in part because the vast majority of the audience had no idea what an “Uzi” was. That excitement sparked something. Three decades later, (capitalist) culture, from films to rap songs, can expect many/most viewers/listeners to have intimate knowledge of firearms. Hell, I don’t even own a gun, but even I know the difference between a Glock and Sig-Sauer, that an AR-15 is the semi-auto version of the M-16, and that the SKS is the cheap Chinese knockoff of the AK-47. And me knowing these details reflects a MASSIVE and relatively recent investment of culture. Today, even fairly good-natured geeky films (I’m thinking of “Kick-Ass”) builds jokes and visual “rewards” around firearm fetishization. Importantly, since this fetishization is so new (within a generation) we cannot so comfortably assume the preservation of the social norms of even the previous generation.
One problem with guns becoming a fetish is that it’s fetish-status makes it a target and/or focus for mental illness. People are no crazier now than they were in the ’50s; but the firearm fetish today attracts the mentally ill like moths to a flamethrower. So, first, unless something is done, we’re going to get more and more mass-shootings. Mass murder will become our barometer of mental health. (if it’s not already) And culturally, we’ll become as inured to it as we are to traffic accidents. Should we just shrug when firearm murders go from 12,000 a year to 80,000 in the next 30 years?
But it’s not just the mentally ill (or for that matter, the economically disadvantaged) who are increasingly drawn in by the gun fetish. Add an increasingly-paranoid NRA into the picture. I think in your column lets the NRA entirely off the hook. The NRA is not just mobilized “conservatism”â€”not just a reaction to progressive social gains. It is much more. The NRA is an organization that elevates the gun fetish into the role of SOLUTION to social problems. Remember the run on gun stores after Obama was electedâ€¦ so much so there arose a shortage of firearms and ammunition? This was NOT because Obama had proposed (or even hinted at) any sort of comprehensive gun banâ€”he didn’t. Instead, gun-stockpiling, goaded by the new institutionalized paranoia of the NRA, became seen as a perfectly valid “solution” to the “problem” of a black president.
Firearm fetish as politics. Worried about racial tensions? No need for balanced social policy; just stock up on firearms. Fearing urban decay and/or crime? No need for urban planning, or economic policy: just expand conceal-carry laws, and taut them as the solution to social disorder. Problem with “Liberals” interfering with your “freedoms”? Stockpile guns, and score political points by publicly daring them into “coming after” you. Problems with failing educational systems, or unaffordable health care? Stockpile weapons as you prepare your Alamo-like stand against “taxes.” Yes, the “solution” of guns to every social problem is on the part of the NRA, largely rhetorical. But how violent can culturally-validated, institution-driven rhetoric get without real-world impact? The shooting of Giffords was not some freak aberration; it’s the logical culmination of these two new developments in gun cultural-politics. And there is some legitimate fear that we are at a starting point; incremental pendulum-like change and/or the homespun wisdom of culture works in some spheresâ€”but it falls apart in the sphere of real violence, I think. (South Africa is in that downward spiral: it has maybe 7 times more gun deaths per capital than the USAâ€¦ and, correspondingly, a guns-are-the-only-solution on the part of many Afrikaners, correct?)
True, legislation alone is probably not going to accomplish much (as you write). But that does not mean we can allow ourselves to be “indifferent.” Social/political movements CAN change culture, and even change it swiftly. The model I’m thinking of is Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. MADD pretty much took on an entrenched culture (“one for the road!”) that had its own fetishes, and, within about two decades, utterly discredited it. People still drink and drive, of course, but there’s now a public culture of this being unacceptableâ€”which has had an enormous and beneficial social effect. We desperately need some sort of movement against the threats posed by firearm fetishization and institutionalized paranoia, and I think an effort to culturally discredit “irresponsible” gun ownership (and the NRA’s irresponsible rhetoric) would, like discrediting “irresponsible” drinking (or “irresponsible” second-hand cigarette smoke) be a starting point.
Culture can be changed. And if we don’t at least try, I fear that we are going to be facing a growing mountain of dead bodies. Yes, the white suburbs will always remain safe, perhaps behind gates and militarized police forces. But is Detroit or Chicago or Tucson really SO unimaginably far from Johannesburg or (worse) Mogadishu that we can allow ourselves indifference?
Sorry for the long reply-post: I’m from Colorado, and it’s been hard to see the way things are going here.

Comments on: Don’t Bring Policy to a Culture Fight

By: Meany Campbell

By: Nord

By: Doug

By: Timothy Burke

By: Withywindle

By: David