The gun debate has erupted once again. The two sides are entrenched in their respective positions, which have changed little over the decades. One side claims their right to keep
and bear arms. The other sees all guns as violent and wants them outlawed.
But guns are not the real issue. This is a moral problem. What leads people to kill others is not the instrument — anything can serve as an instrument of death. What is being done to prevent more people from committing immoral acts with guns? That’s the question we must ask.
And when we ask it, three real problems present themselves: mental illness, frustrated young men, and the glorification of violence.
Our Culture is a Factory Producing Mass Killers. Closing the Factory Can Solve the Gun Debate
US culture is exported and, to varying degrees, assimilated into every predominately English speaking country on the planet(and arguably many non-anglosphere countries too).
Heck, US rightwingers are the first to soapbox about how Europe's culture is even more un/anti-Christian, even more culturally Marxist even more degenerate; yet this problem seems exclusive to the US when looking at comparable counties.
The whole "It's because culture" line isn't even wrong.
It's just used so broadly as to be a smokescreen.
It's violence in movies/games/music, mental health, frustrated young men, it's because slipping morals ETC.
All of there can be factors, but these frustrations being expressed as gun violence on such a scale is uniquely a US issue.
There's something the US has in it's culture that it's peer countries don't. Something that makes guns and unquestioned access to them a fundamental political belief, as a badge of pride, as core to their American identity.
But these folk would be the first decry any blame placed specifically on how the US, or indeed specific prominent sub-cultures, treat firearms.
Be it the sales of them, the identity politics surrounding them or both parties historical reluctance to place even the most watered down of regulations on them.
In the end, the "it's not guns, it's culture." argument, functions to place the blame on anything but guns and the subculture surrounding them. It's a move to redirect the discourse and political action away from any area where actual impact could be made.
When a uniquely influential gun lobby of a uniquely gun saturated country is saying the uniquely severe gun violence problem isn't uniquely lax gun regulations of which they benefit massively from; the problem is probably uniquely lax gun regulations and the uniquely gun centric culture that preserves this status quo.
And probably not the violent culture exported internationally for half a century that hasn't made the USA's problem any less unique.
TL;DR
It's guns(
and the culture surrounding them).
