Word: gunning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...terrible as last week's shooting in Atlanta was, as terrible as all the gun killings of the past few months have been, one has the almost satisfying feeling that the country is going through the literal death throes of a barbaric era and that mercifully soon, one of these monstrous episodes will be the last. High time. My guess, in fact, is that the hour has come and gone--that the great majority of Americans are saying they favor gun control when they really mean gun banishment. Trigger locks, waiting periods, purchase limitations, which may seem important corrections...
Those who claim otherwise tend to cite America's enduring love affair with guns, but there never was one. The image of shoot-'em-up America was mainly the invention of gunmaker Samuel Colt, who managed to convince a malleable 19th century public that no household was complete without a firearm--"an armed society is a peaceful society." This ludicrous aphorism, says historian Michael Bellesiles of Emory University, turned 200 years of Western tradition on its ear. Until 1850, fewer than 10% of U.S. citizens had guns. Only 15% of violent deaths between 1800 and 1845 were caused by guns...
...myth of a gun-loving America is merely the product of gun salesmen, dime-store novels, movies and the National Rifle Association (NRA)--which, incidentally, was not opposed to gun control until the 1960s, when gun buying sharply increased--it would seem that creating a gun-free society would be fairly easy. But the culture itself has retarded such progress by creating and embellishing an absurd though appealing connection among guns, personal power, freedom and beauty. The old western novels established a cowboy corollary to the Declaration of Independence by depicting the cowboy as a moral loner who preserves...
Before one celebrates the prospect of disarmament, it should be acknowledged that gun control is one of those issues that are simultaneously both simpler and more complicated than it appears. Advocates usually point to Britain, Australia and Japan as their models, where guns are restricted and crime is reduced. They do not point to Switzerland, where there is a gun in every home and crime is practically nonexistent. Nor do they cite as sources criminology professor Gary Kleck of Florida State University, whose studies have shown that gun ownership reduces crime when gun owners defend themselves, or Professor John...
...constitutional questions raised by gun control are serious as well. In a way, the anti-gun movement mirrors the humanitarian movement in international politics. Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda have suggested that the West, the U.S. in particular, is heading toward a politics of human rights that supersedes the politics of established frontiers and, in some cases, laws. Substitute private property for frontiers and the Second Amendment for laws, and one begins to see that the politics of humanitarianism requires a trade-off involving the essential underpinnings of American life. To tell Americans what they can or cannot...