Gun culture: the new idolatry

Alias Seiichi Tagami
AR-15 rifles are displayed at Impact Guns in Ogden on Friday, March 2, 2018.

We are a nation whose moral and literal wounds from gun violence never heal. There is no gun debate. There are only the repetitive ceremonies we exercise in our own ideological corners. Our competing expressions of grief and blame have become a new religious war. There are articles of faith: “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” There are mantras: “thoughts and prayers.” There are saints: “good guys with guns.” Of course, there are martyrs: the victims themselves. We even have prophecies of gun confiscation or more mass shootings. The political right has the advantage of the status quo, and the political left often settles for knowing it has the moral high ground as if that was victory enough. Thus we seem cursed to relive this fight over and over. All the violence on the road to Valhalla, and none of the closure.

Our societal and political transactions on guns, gun violence, laws and policing have a similar mythological script. Like Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill only to repeat the task ad infinitum, we are all exhausted, and we all know we will do it again. Another school shooting, another unarmed black man becomes a trending hashtag, another toddler shoots their self or a sibling, another domestic assault turns deadly, and — yes — another suicide. We are rich in our martyrs.

I believe we have been living this fight so long we have lost sight of end states, and our ideological zeal is such that we don’t seek the victory of peace; we seek to defeat others. The options for our society are not total gun prohibition or carte blanche access to any desired weapon without modest inconvenience. We are done a great harm by those who lie to us that these are our only options, and we should observe who benefits from these myths.

The price thus far is paid in measurable human suffering — someone else’s suffering. These people are not sacrificing themselves, and the benefit of this high price is not so a few of us can indulge the violent fantasy of a coup d’état because our modern country looks different than it did 50 years ago. In his 2008 campaign for president, Barack Obama received a lot of criticism when referring to parts of America “clinging to the guns and religion.” Perhaps he was correct. As gun culture continues to become more dogmatic, it becomes the new idolatry.

Alias Seiichi Tagami is a Springfield native and a member of SACRED (RedSGF.org).