Reply to America is far from free. Why do we accept living under perpetual fear of endless gun violence?

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Reply to "America is far from free. Why do we accept living under perpetual fear of endless gun violence?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There are a tangle of reasons, but I read something interesting today in another context about the need, in big industrial societies, to sublimate disagreement and conflict to institutional forms. Government needs to maintain a monopoly on violence, and this means police, courts, due process and all of that.

In the Catcher in the Rye, there is a line about how the mark of the immature man is a willingness to die nobly for a cause and the mark of the mature man is a willingness to live humbly for one.

I think the gun culture exploits an immature dissatisfaction with the institutional forms of conflict resolution. Guns create the illusion of agency, an immediacy of conflict resolution, a decisiveness of action that aren't available through other means. Living humbly is simply not something we teach people, particularly our young men, to value. [/quote]

A very interesting take. As the mother of two boys, I agree. I'm trying to impart lessons about kindness, honesty, and the dignity of hard work.  It's so difficult when the lessons my children see out in the world and on the news don't support those values. I also spend a regrettable amount of time teaching them to be fearful and distrustful. I dropped my son off at a high school party. In addition to typical warning about drinking and drugs, I also felt the need to tell him that if he sees a gun or hears anything about someone with a gun at the party, to leave immediately and call me. It sucks that that's part of my run of the mill parental speech. What other advanced nations have a set up like that?  [/quote]

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