The American Gun Culture and Charleston Shootings

There is a culture of shooting in America. One could call it the gun cult. When immigrants from Europe landed on American soil in the early 1600s, they encountered a highly evolved moralistic tribal civilization of the native Indians, who fought fiercely to preserve their independence and culture. While this civilization did not have too many rules or laws, they certainly did have an exalted sense of the right and wrong and they detested white interference in their native affairs.

From killing to spreading disease, the white settlers tried all means to weaken the native civilization. The primary objective was to be able to exploit the land and forests in territory on which they held sway.

President Jefferson was instrumental in moving the Indians west of the Mississippi. Perhaps the idea was to settle some tribes in the Indian state of Oklahoma (meaning red people)

While this could in some measure be the provenance of the gun culture, the 1791 Second Amendment granted the constitutional right to own weapons, which further gave this tendency a legitimacy that even today a civilized United States of America finds too hydra-headed to combat. The background checks that a vendor of assault weapons is supposed to perform on the buyers of the weapons are given a go by, thereby putting weapons in the hands of the rash and irresponsible, and even those with a criminal record and propensity.  

During the pre-civil war era, the whites would often be shooting the Reds and the Reds would often be shooting the whites, till the issues of the blacks(traded slaves) also rolled in the whole picture. In the late 1700s, there are reports of reds shooting white children returning from school.

The rate of carrying arms is the highest in the United States, counting as high as 9 guns on 10 Americans, is double of the second highest – an anarchical Yemen - a failed Sunni state facing Shia separatist insurgency. The second highest absolute number of arms today are owned by us – Indians - but given the large population base the per capita ownership is still not an astounding number.

The latest Charlston Church shootings are an aggravated manifestation of background that I have just painted. The American Press calls it Hate Crime. I would call it Mad Terror or Black Horror.