Thomas Powell

Department of Fine and Applied Arts, American River College, Sacramento, United States

ABSTRACT

The essay investigates America’s sordid gun addiction. It reviews actual gun usage during colonial times and the early independence decades to understand the rationale for the Second Amendment. Patriotic arguments by gun advocates that guns protect citizens from external invasion and internal tyranny are examined and found to be flawed and not believable. The issue of “gun equality” as personal self-defense as well as the widespread disbursal of handguns as a form of societal “gun détente” is also examined and found to be fallacious. Handgun distribution in the United States is argued to be a hidden form of class and race warfare, while the widespread disbursement of guns and military armament across the globe since World War II and increasing global violence represents the long-term failure of a gun obsessed American foreign policy. The Hobbesian state is explored as the ultimate dystopian refuge of gun rights proponents.

KEYWORDS

Gun lust; American history; Second Amendment

From: International Critical Thought 2016 6 (1)

Editor: Wang Yi