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.
