From Pine View Farm

Conflict Emotions 1

Mark Dillon examines our societal fascination with firearms. A nugget:

But the availability of guns is not the only issue we have to ponder in the wake of the Newtown horror. The idea of the gun, the symbol of the gun, the culturally recommended uses of the gun — vengeance, assassination, mayhem (and almost never the kind of self-defense the NRA claims justifies near-unlimited gun rights) — is in fact as powerful as the gun itself. And ubiquitous and graphic depictions of gun violence serve as the best promotion the idea of the gun, as well as the gun itself, could ever have.

While millions and millions of guns are sold each year (10.8 million guns, generating $4 billion in revenue, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation), you see far less advertising for gun brands than for motorcycles, smart phones, breath mints, power tools or constipation cures. Look at the movie ads this weekend if you don’t believe that gun = cool, gun = power, gun = right.

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1 comment

  1. George Smith

    December 20, 2012 at 6:57 pm

    Yep, agree with that. We have a gun culture promoted in everything. But the computer games and movies get exported and are wildly popular worldwide. Yet, none of the other developed nations has the US gun massacre phenomenon. Why is that? They don’t have the well lubricated access to the tools. Reminds me, today, walking to lunch, the bus goes by with an ad for Arnold”s coming movie, forget the title, but him behind a machine gun as the image, that’s the selling point.