Why does the United States refuse to pass new gun control laws? Its the question that people around the world keep asking.
According to Dr Jonathan Metzl, a psychiatrist and sociologist at Vanderbilt University, white supremacy is the key to understanding Americas gun debate. In his new book, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing Americas Heartland, Metzl argues that the intensity and polarization of the US gun debate makes much more sense when understood in the context of whiteness and white privilege.
White Americans attempt to defend their status in the racial hierarchy by opposing issues like gun control, healthcare expansion or public school funding ends up injuring themselves, as well as hurting people of color, Metzl argues.
The majority of Americas gun death victims are white men, and most of them die from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. In all, gun suicide claims the lives of 25,000 Americans each year.
White Americans are dying for a cause, he writes, even if their form of death is often slow, excruciating, and invisible.
Metzl spoke to the Guardian about his analysis this March, and again this week, following what appeared to be a white nationalist terror attack on Latino families doing back-to-school shopping at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead. The conversations have been condensed and edited.
Related: 'Blood on their hands': the intelligence officer whose warning over white supremacy was ignored
You argue that Americas debate over gun control laws and gun violence makes a lot more sense if you actually understand it as a debate over race and whiteness in America. Why is that?
In my research I look at the history and the social meanings of how guns came to be these particularly charged social symbols. So many aspects of American gun culture are really entwined with whiteness and white privilege.
Carrying a gun in public has been coded as a white privilege. Advertisers have literally used words like restoring your manly privilege as a way of selling assault weapons to white men. In colonial America, landowners could carry guns, and they bestowed that right on to poor whites in order to quell uprisings from Negroes and Indians. John Browns raid was about weapons. Scholars have written about how the Ku Klux Klan was aimed at disarming African Americans. When African Americans started to carry guns in public think about Malcolm X during the civil rights era all of a sudden, the second amendment didnt apply in many white Americans minds. When Huey Newton and the Black Panthers tried to arm themselves, everyone suddenly said, We need gun control.
When states like Missouri changed their laws to allow open carry of firearms, there were parades of white Americans who would carry big long guns through congested areas of downtown St Louis, who would go into places like Walmart and burrito restaurants carrying their guns, and they were coded as patriots. At the same time, there were all the stories about African American gun owners who would go to Walmart and get tackled and shot.
Who gets to carry a gun in public? Who is coded as a patriot? Who is coded as a threat, or a terrorist or a gangster? What it means to carry a gun or own a gun or buy a gun those questions are not neutral. We have 200 years of history, or more, defining that in very racial terms.
What moments in the past few years have demonstrated to you most clearly that its impossible to understand Americas gun control debate without talking about whiteness?
The period after a mass shooting is often very telling. When the shooter is white, the context is the individual narrative this individual disordered white mind. When the shooter is black or brown, all of a sudden the disorder is culture. The narrative we tell then is about terrorism or gangs.
Then theres the quiet everyday level. Theres nothing more painful than sitting in a room with family members who have lost loved ones to suicide. Id talk to people who had lost husbands, wives, kids, parents to gun suicide, and they would come to the interview, often, bringing their guns. And I would ask them: did it change how you think about the gun? And theyd argue its never the guns fault and theyd need the gun in case an invader would attack them. This narrative about protection against the radicalized invader was so profound. They were almost nervous not bringing their guns.
Poster Comment:
The left just got loonier
#1: Lod To: Dakmar (#0)
If ten laws were good enough for God, why do we need more?
Lod posted on 2019-08-09 15:18:02 Reply Private Reply
#2: Horse To: Lod, Dakmar (#1)
Horse posted on 2019-08-09 15:28:31 Reply Private Reply
#3: Dakmar To: Horse, Lod (#2)
Swimming pools are racist!
Dakmar posted on 2019-08-09 15:31:54 Reply Private Reply
#4: Dakmar To: Horse (#2)
Dakmar posted on 2019-08-09 15:32:45 Reply Private Reply
#5: GreyLmist To: Dakmar (#0)
Washington DC/Former Fla. man asks Walmart for gun that could kill 200 people to make a point, he says | August 9, 2019 | wtoc.com
GreyLmist posted on 2019-08-09 16:45:00 Reply Private Reply
#6: Dakmar To: GreyLmist (#5)
Dakmar posted on 2019-08-09 17:03:35 Reply Private Reply
#7: GreyLmist To: Dakmar (#0)
Dmitriy Andreychenko sparks chaos at Missouri Walmart | August 9, 2019 | nypost.com [w/1-minute video]
GreyLmist posted on 2019-08-09 17:16:23 Reply Private Reply
#8: Lod To: GreyLmist (#7)
Just because it's legal, does not make it a smart thing to do.
Lod posted on 2019-08-09 18:21:44 Reply Private Reply
#9: GreyLmist To: Dakmar (#6)
Leftists/Commiecrats don't really care about gun facts. They just want to be in control of all guns so that others won't ever be close enough to see one unless they're being robbed, attacked or arrested by a Leftist/Commiecrat gunner.
GreyLmist posted on 2019-08-09 19:19:37 Reply Private Reply
#10: ghostdogtxn To: Dakmar (#0)
ghostdogtxn posted on 2019-08-09 21:19:57 Reply Private Reply
#11: BTP Holdings To: ghostdogtxn (#10)
Sadiq Khan is Mayor of London and he is a Muslim. ;)
BTP Holdings posted on 2019-08-09 22:10:18 Reply Private Reply
#12: Dakmar To: ghostdogtxn (#10)
Dakmar posted on 2019-08-10 03:17:42 Reply Private Reply
#13: GreyLmist To: All (#5)
Update @ ABC - National News | Yesterday @ 9:33am | stillwaterradio.net
GreyLmist posted on 2019-08-10 20:51:53 Reply Private Reply
#14: GreyLmist To: Lod (#8)
If nothing else, the Missouri Walmart scenario is an example that contradicts Metzl's claim in the UK Guardian article about visibly armed White men of that Open Carry State being "coded as Patriots" when in public places like Walmart. It's also a stark contrast in comparison with the Florida Walmart scenario where reports of the more privileged Leftist "political statement" speaker downplay his terrifying words to the clerk (as if that was less threatening than his "Social Justice Warrior" claim of seeing an unidentified "white nationalist looking guy" supposedly purchasing a gun cuz he says so and states self-righteously that it angered him into doing what he did).
The frantic Missouri Walmart reports present "the good guys" who "prevented a massacre" as: 1. the Store Manager who pulled an alarm to evacuate the premises and 2. the off-duty civilian firefighter who detained the "suspect" at gunpoint as he went outside along with other customers during the alarm - even though he had not moved to shoot anyone inside the store or outside and is not accused of so much as uttering something frightening. Nevertheless, a felony charge of "making a terrorist threat" was reportedly filed quite quickly on the grounds that his militaristic appearance caused the evacuation of a building. The penalty for a "guilty" conviction is: "up to four years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine." [live5news.com Ref.] Like the Florida Walmart "political statement" speaker, the Missouri Walmart "suspect" also claims to have been conducting something of a social experiment: to see if his Second Amendment rights would be respected. Lieutenant Mike Lucas: "He's lucky he's alive still, to be honest." Everybody who didn't kill him is lucky too. [Deprivation Of Rights Under Color Of Law: punishable by a range of imprisonment up to a life term, or the death penalty, depending upon the circumstances of the crime, and the resulting injury, if any. - 4um Ref.]
Discussions at Free Republic and elsewhere have questioned whether Andreychenko is like a Portland, Oregon imported Leftist whose motive is to panic States like Missouri into repealing Open Carry Laws. Maybe so, maybe not. Either way, I've not seen a single press report that cautions against Store Managers panicing people with alarms rather than sending an armed Security Guard to approach the publicly armed person for questioning. In fact, not a single armed Security Guard is mentioned as on-site there at all, afaik. And I've not seen any press reports either that caution against illegally detaining a publicly armed person as the Concealed Carry firefighter did, which might cause injuries or worse that wouldn't have happened otherwise. It's like the press, the police and officials are deliberately promoting wrong lessons from this alleged incident and that's worrisome, imo. Example:
"We applaud the quick actions of our associates to evacuate customers from our store, and were thankful no one was injured. This person is no longer welcome in our stores. We are working with the authorities however we can and we appreciate their quick response that prevented this situation from escalating further," the spokesperson's statement reads. [abcnews.go.com Ref.]
GreyLmist posted on 2019-08-11 00:05:03 Reply Private Reply
#15: Lod To: GreyLmist (#14)
Lod posted on 2019-08-11 01:23:31 Reply Private Reply
#16: GreyLmist To: Lod (#15)
GreyLmist posted on 2019-08-11 01:36:51 Reply Private Reply
#17: Lod To: GreyLmist (#16)
Lod posted on 2019-08-11 02:07:26 Reply Private Reply
#18: GreyLmist To: All (#16)
Open carry in the United States - Wikipedia
GreyLmist posted on 2019-08-11 02:12:57 Reply Private Reply
#19: GreyLmist To: Lod (#17)
People who want America to be turned into a padded cell for them to feel protected from the 2nd Amendment should get out of our country.
GreyLmist posted on 2019-08-11 02:20:34 Reply Private Reply
#20: Lod To: GreyLmist (#18)
What does that begin to mean? There were probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people with guns in "the area of the Walmart."
And if the cops can't say whether it was a sidearm or a toy, that's even more pathetic.
Lod posted on 2019-08-11 02:47:08 Reply Private Reply
#21: Lod To: All (#20)
babylonbee.com/news/woke-...pologizes-for-being-white
Lod posted on 2019-08-11 02:58:59 Reply Private Reply
#22: GreyLmist To: Lod (#21)
Egads! What if they all did that? Then how would Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson keep getting their paychecks? YouTube answer, paraphrased: They'd have to start blaming Hispanic brown bears, Oriental panda bears and Himalayan-Indian red bears for everything instead.
GreyLmist posted on 2019-08-15 16:27:04 Reply Private Reply
#23: Lod To: GreyLmist (#22)
We live in a cuckoo's nest.
Lod posted on 2019-08-15 16:40:14 Reply Private Reply
#24: GreyLmist To: Lod (#20)
Checked the news link at #18 for an update, which reports a mysterious escape sequence by the accused, who was arrested but may also have escaped any weaponry charges whatsoever:
GreyLmist posted on 2019-08-15 18:22:16 Reply Private Reply
#25: Lod To: GreyLmist (#24)
Lod posted on 2019-08-15 18:44:28 Reply Private Reply
#26: GreyLmist To: Lod (#25)
Yes, let's do that. It's so much more critically concise than calling Minton a Houdini-like cartoonish culprit and portraying the policers as rather reminiscent of the Keystone Cops.
GreyLmist posted on 2019-08-15 19:14:55 Reply Private Reply
#27: AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt To: Dakmar (#12)
"...Again says Justice Brandeis: Let us all recognize that we Jews are a distinct nationality, of which every Jew, whatever his country, his station, or shade of belief, is necessarily a member.
And he concludes his article, from which these quotations are made, with these words:
Organize, organize, organize, until every Jew must stand up and be countedcounted with us, or prove himself, wittingly or unwittingly, of the few who are against their own people...."
www.jrbookson line.com/Intl_Jew_full_version/ij22.htm
==============
www.sweet liberty.org/perspective/jewishpersecution18.htm
[The real story behind the founding of the Jewnited States of America]]
www.swee tliberty.org/perspective/jewishpersecution19.htm:
"...Six months before Senator Joseph McCarthy's mouth was closed forever, he presented an article titled George Washington's Surrender, in which he quoted British General Cornwallis. The full article can be found in The Union Jack - Epilogue:
"Jonathan Williams recorded in his LEGIONS OF SATAN, 1781, that Cornwallis revealed to Washington that, "A holy war will now begin on America, and when it is ended America will be supposedly the citadel of freedom, but her millions will unknowingly be loyal subjects to the Crown."
"Cornwallis went on to explain what would seem to be a self contradiction
"Your churches will be used to teach the Jew's religion and in less than two hundred years the whole nation will be working for divine world government. That government that they believe to be divine will be the British Empire. All religions will be permeated with Judaism without even being noticed by the masses, and they will all be under the invisible all-seeing eye of the Grand Architect of Freemasonry." ..."
=====
Cover of the book GREAT RED DRAGON:
greatreddragon.com/cover.htm
DEDICATION TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
greatreddragon.com/dedicate.htm
Index, Great Red Dragon the Book
greatreddragon.com/toc.htm
Fast forward to today. Great Red Dragon,Foreign Money Power in the United States:
greatreddragon.com/
AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt posted on 2019-08-15 19:39:17 Reply Private Reply
#28: AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt To: Dakmar (#27)
Jews Disarm the Goyim, while Arming Themselves
www.henrymakow.com/2019/08/Jews-Disarm-the-Goyim.html
always the hypocrites
AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt posted on 2019-08-15 20:19:47 Reply Private Reply
#29: Lod To: GreyLmist (#26)
Lod posted on 2019-08-15 20:56:47 Reply Private Reply