Thoughts about gun scum

[dwayneb]

We have to acknowledge the reality that at the rotten core of America is a subculture that loves guns, death, vengeance and violence. We have groomed our society for decades, all the way from the seemingly innocent days of John Wayne and cowboy movies through the gruesome unlimited violence that is portrayed in 2023 on every movie, television and phone screen. We have become fully desensitized to violence and it was a deliberate strategy by those wishing to put their boot on the necks of the American people, not to mention those who are profiting every single day from American blood-lust.

Someone asked me recently; would a fascist like Kevin McCarthy change his mind, if one of his children or grand children were murdered in a mass shooting? The answer is simple - no. These "representatives" are fully and completely beholden to their constituents who are too stupid and brainwashed to demand reasonable gun laws, and they are too beholden to the monied interests that drive the firearms industry. Vicious depraved gun scum, no more no less.

This is all going to get much, much worse before it gets better. This will not end until there is a full-blown civil uprising in this country. You don't have to look back very far in human history to understand that human beings will eventually revert to savagery.

After that catastrophic event? We'd like to hope that our democracy will emerge intact, but there is surely no guarantee. The divisions are nearly insurmountable at this point.

[Skittles]

1. even one of those good-guy first responders said, "I am a gun lover"

this is a sick, sick culture

[dwayneb]

2. Sick, stupid, selfish

We are a nation of children. Reminds me of one of those old Twilight Zone episodes with the evil child. Serling saw where we were going way back in 1960.

[sanatanadharma]

3. "Gun Scum" - interesting metaphor

As grandma taught, scum rises to the top.
Out of the entire gun-desire culture, certain stories boil to the top.
They are not stories about the manufacturers, distributors, sellers, suppliers, advertisement and magazine writers, hunters, skeet and target shooters, collectors, ...

No the stories are of crazies using their guns to get their kicks, their desires met, to experience god-over-lordship over life.
The 'proof-positive' stories about guns used cruelly are stories that are born out of the gun-desire culture.
They are stories about modern life, born in the USA losers armed by NRA terrorism.

The entire gun-desire culture is responsible for gun-desire, the belief in gun-protection, gun distribution with almost no tracking, gun-legislators, and all gun-carnage be it one suicide or dozens mass-murdered.

The scum is the cream of the gun-culture, the true-uncivilized-gun-god-devotees who walk the walk that the culture talks.

[Scrivener7]

4. Do not forget terror. These people are so fearful, it's amazing. Go into our own Gungeon

and read a few of the posts there. They shout their existential panic. A dozen guns aren't enough to protect them. They have to have gates and locks and guns and drills with their children to prepare for when their homes are attacked.

A REALLY wise DUer, nuxvomica, has the only explanation for this behavior that has ever made sense to me:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=17679568
We are supposed to transition from the innocence of youth through rites of passage to the awareness of corruption in the world and the commitment of our newfound adult powers to protecting the innocent from that corruption so the cycle can begin anew. If we pass the awareness stage without answering the call to heroism, either because we fear sacrifice or have no confidence in our powers, this broken instinct must be mitigated by fantasies in which we are pantomime heroes easily fighting the made-up corruptions invented by abusive parental figures who only acquire power by keeping their followers in a permanent twilight of childhood. This broken cycle has been the primary cause of human misery since the dawn of humankind, even though myth and literature, from Gilgamesh to Skywalker, keeps telling us how the whole thing is supposed to work.

Essentially, they are stuck in a phase of adolescence that they haven't successfully moved through. To feel brave and adult, they must fantasize about themselves being heroes and vanquishing enemies they have invented in their minds. Those thoughts of the dangers of invented enemies are encouraged by people who benefit from keeping them in this limbo of childish fantasy.