Last week, in response to the latest in a long series of mass shootings, various media outlets posted infographics that juxtaposed the number of Americans killed by guns with the number killed by terrorist acts.
While the essence of the graphics was important, it still erred in creating a false dichotomy between the two entities — as if terrorists do not use guns and as if our culture of guns does not ultimately constitute forms of domestic and international terrorism.
Government statistics estimate there is nearly one gun per person in the U.S., and they are in the hands of one-third of the population. This can be attributed to a material culture that proliferates weapons and an ideological culture that glorifies violence.
On the global scale, how is a country that so desires peace also responsible for three-quarters of the global arms market, having earned at least $66 billion in arms sales last year alone? Furthermore, when American arms shipped abroad end up in the hands of terrorists — or are directly gifted to autocratic regimes — how could it not entail terrorism?
Lest we forget, the function of any weapon is destructive, no matter how much a sadistic culture might elevate violence and its implements.
So, returning to our domestic sphere, what role do guns really play? We are reminded of the absurd un-reason given by the gun lobby and the various "law-abiding citizens" that privately owned guns simultaneously stave off the threat of some foreign dictatorship and keep our military, the most-equipped in human history, at bay.
But, past the imagination of those who cling fast to weapons, guns have one salient outcome in the U.S., and it is evidenced through our daily stream of violence.
Beyond the racist notion that the only terrorists in existence are Arabic/Islamist/bearded/dark-skinned rebels in some country "over there," why aren’t people who shoot up theaters, schools, neighborhoods and churches also terrorists?
The couple watching a movie, the child doing her homework, the people praying in church, all of them gunned down while just trying to live. Are they not victims of terrorism, as well?
The sobering realization is our culture of guns is terroristic and also very singular in the world. America’s rates of gun ownership far surpass even the most rogue states like Yemen and Somalia, and among other so-called "developed" countries, our preponderance of gun murders is exponentially in excess.
The factors that fetishize guns are diverse, but one cannot deny the extent to which the reliance on weapons is fueled by fear, delusion, insecurity and the narcissistic notion that, while in possession of a gun, one is always the subject, not the object, and thus is invincible.
Sure, the advocates of guns and gun proliferation, and by extension those responsible for the violence to which we are all subjected, are wont to claim our violence stems from the lack of guns and presence of gun-free zones, and they are just as quick to assert that without guns the U.S. would be reduced to a dystopian nightmare of stabbings and brick attacks.
But why should advocates of a militarized U.S. even feel compelled to provide arguments for guns? The present state of our country, in which more than 30,000 people are murdered annually by guns, is the status quo they have established and is the only argument they need provide.
Disarmament is the ideal to which democratic, civil societies must aspire, though it can only be accomplished when we find a means of addressing both the material and ideological roots of America’s violence. The first and most crucial disarmament society must enact is one within the human spirit.
Until the day of disarmament, I have one parting thought for those who resort to violence and are not troubled by the ongoing assault on civil society: Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Jordan MacKenzie is a second-year UF linguistics master’s student. His column appears on Wednesdays.
