Violence guns and men

 

The past weeks news of murderous gun violence both in Buffalo, New York at a Tops supermarket and beyond in Uvalde, Texas, at the Robb Elementary School taking the lives of nineteen innocent children and 2 teachers again drove me into a cerebral stupor as I try to explain these all-too-frequent occurrences in our nation.  I am saturated with sadness drowning in tears and with, I admit, rage. Both emotions beg for analyses as to why these senseless acts of gun violence, and murder of innocents occur with seemingly never-ending shameful regularity in our nation. 

Perhaps, because the analysis of this national gun violence is so complex in its abundance weaving in and out of a labyrinth that it makes me want to give up before I even try to make sense of it all.  Let's attack the understanding of violence from both a larger perspective of historical and biological rationales to a smaller analysis that is particular to our own national history.

Man is and has been a violent creature both because of an evolutionary propensity to survive and prevail over anything else.  His desire to satisfy this seemingly bottomless hunger to get what he wants in competitive struggle with those around him and even with alien others continues in perpetuity.  We can see this combat in other species, too, in their desire for dominance both with their own kind and in a survival-of-the-fittest competition with others for scarce resources. As man progressed so did his inclination to make war and his ability to build a better mousetrap or weapon became prominent. In sum, the violent nature of our species' DNA cannot be denied.  Violence is in us from our evolutionary beginning.

In a smaller national analysis, why is gun violence and the killing it births so prevalent in our nation?  The film director Michael Moore was asked that question.  He tends to agree with the NRA’s stance that “guns don’t kill people — people kill people,” but he believes it is more accurate to say, “Americans kill people.” He said we are a violent nation; violent from the very beginning of our nation's founding and that we are good at it.  White men gained power by destroying first the Indians whom they discovered were here before anyone else then systematically conquering black and brown African people by the millions forcing them into the cruel indentured servitude of slavery over centuries that has been entrenched in Black history and shows its mark today.  America has been at war first against the British, and then followed a series of violent conquests shown in the chart below dedicated in this nation and in pertinent part to the maintenance of white supremacy and the maintenance of white men over black and brown men in positions of power.