A good depiction of history has you following along in real time as actions and motives are revealed. It allows you to bring in your own knowledge of the time period in question and fit that into the overall narrative. In some cases, your knowledge was incomplete and benefits from the added depth. In others, you notice a contradiction which pushes you to think more critically about the history before updating your incorrect assumptions. In high school, I only saw history as a series of dates, events, and battles (thank you four years of U.S. History). It was a boring set of facts, never allowed to get too close to current events, or even to tell us why our country is the way it is today besides making it seem like this is the way things had to be. Of course there was conflict in the past, but I falsely believed that the field of history was aimed at explaining the straightforward cause and effect of events with some overarching truisms. A decontextualized statement like “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”, is divorced from the massive struggle it encompasses in which the arc of history does not bend passively, but is bent by the daily actions of many people coming together to demand dignity and express solidarity with those not receiving it. When this specific Martin Luther King, Jr. quote is separated from the context of his life, speeches, and writings, it serves to pacify rather than to push people toward the action necessary to make the changes King spent his life struggling to achieve.
My many years since high school have been an unlearning of this passive way of viewing history. My process likely took longer than those who actually study history; according to Lies My Teacher Told Me, most college history professors see their initial job as overcoming all of the false and oversimplified history that students learn in high school. Through many years of learning about the history of various Latin American countries and finally seeing a different perspective in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States, I began to understand that you can tell a story as much with the facts you leave out as with the ones you include.
A truly good history book presents key individuals as well as grassroots movements and shows the complexities of how they arrive at different positions and the forces aligned with or opposing them. Andrew C. McKevitt, Professor of History at Louisiana Tech University, achieves this in his 2023 book Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, & Control in Cold War America. It provides deep context around the creation of gun culture in the U.S. and the factors that have maintained its supremacy even while countries like Australia, which had a similar proliferation of guns, reacted to protect the safety of its citizens after a mass-shooting. Anyone concerned about gun violence or working toward solutions should read this book. I listened to the audio version, but I may purchase it as a reference since it is replete with historical citations, primary sources/quotations, and studies.
One of the key pieces of U.S. gun history, that I didn’t know before reading, is the impact the mass production of small arms used in WWII had on U.S. gun culture. Basically, the U.S. was one of only a few countries in the world that allowed unlimited offloading of these weapons into the consumer market. Because there were so many of them, some shrewd entrepreneurs of death (Samuel Cummings) were able to import literal boatloads to sell cheaply in the U.S. Prior to WWII, guns were not as widespread in the U.S. as many people assume, but the flooding of the market with cheap used weapons created the material conditions for their widespread adoption. Advertising campaigns in sport shooting and hunting magazines promoted them as quality weapons, which were so cheap that even if you had to replace a part or two, it would be well worth it. This drove demand and led gun manufacturers in the U.S. to compete in the newly created mass-market by ramping up production, marketing, and offering lower quality, cheaper guns.
This entirely avoidable situation (avoided by most of the world with sensible gun laws), set in motion a long struggle between gun extremists and gun control advocates. McKevitt details how the strategies and stances of both the NRA and gun control advocates changed over time, both in response to each other, and in response to a changing political climate. There was a constant tension in the movement history both between factions of the gun control movement (those who wanted more regulation and those who wanted to ban guns), and between gun control advocates and the NRA, where advocates were on the defensive for a long time. One conclusion rings clear throughout the book, that partial measures will never be enough. The gun culture in the U.S. is an artifact of policy and material conditions combining in just the right way to promote the creation of a mass-market for weapons of mass murder. This was never inevitable, as shown by the actions of the Australian government in 1996 after a mass shooting. In addition to heavily regulating firearms, they implemented a massive, mandatory gun buyback program. Whereas in the U.S., the federal assault weapons ban enacted in 1994 in the U.S. was full of exceptions and was not made permanent, but was allowed to expire after 10 years.
So much of the rhetoric about being “tough on crime” comes from a place of fear. Gun Country shows how fear of Communism during the Cold War drove gun sales, leading into fear of rising crime, which early on was likely an artifact of standardization of data collection as well as the large generation of Baby Boomers coming of age. I have already written several times about the possibilities of creating a better system of justice and reducing incarceration (see here, here, and here). There are successful examples across the U.S. of states reducing both crime and incarceration through supportive policies focused on actually preventing crime and reducing the conditions that promote crime. However, a key driver of the punitive responses to crime is fear. Fear is justified when anyone can easily access guns in the U.S., and that fear justifies more people buying guns legally to protect themselves (even though it does not make you safer). The more guns that are legally available, the more guns end up on the street, either stolen, or purchased by strawman buyers who resell them illegally. The continued mass-production and sale of firearms is not only making the U.S. less safe, it is making the world less safe. The most recent Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms report on guns recovered in Central America found that 40% of traced guns used in crimes were manufactured in the U.S. Violence is a factor causing increased immigration, and lax U.S. gun laws (not to mention absurd law enforcement operations, I mean, Fast and Furious? come on) directly contribute to it. I believe there is a path forward for criminal justice reform without gun reform, but it is infinitely harder since gun owners live in constant fear of what other gun owners could do with their weapons. They are creating the conditions they fear in a self-perpetuating cycle of violence.
The introduction and conclusion of Gun Country narrate the tragic story of a Japanese exchange student killed by a fearful gun owner (redundant, I know) for going to the wrong address for a party. The example illustrates the absurdity of U.S. gun rights when compared to almost every country in the world. It also does a great job highlighting how U.S. gun culture not only makes the U.S. less safe, but also makes the world less safe, as bad actors are able to easily access guns because of the U.S. mass market and our presence in the UN preventing any globally coordinated action to reduce small arms sales to militant and terrorist groups around the world. Viewing the U.S. from the perspective of Japanese citizens, who started learning colloquial phrases like “freeze” after a teenage boy visiting the U.S. was shot to death for existing and his killer was acquitted for acting in “self-defense”, shows the insanity of our gun culture and accompanying culture of fear. As history shows, this was never set in stone, and a better world is still possible.
I realize I haven’t been good about this recently, but I’m working on being better about ending posts with a positive call to action. As I wrote at the start, the “arc of the moral universe” doesn’t passively “bend”, it is actively moved toward justice by the actions we take, both collectively and as individuals. In my experience, the best way to build hope for a better world is to actively participate in creating it. That said, the network of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense In America, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Students Demand Action For Gun Sense In America provide multiple ways to get involved, from the basic step of informing yourself about your state’s laws on gun control, to letter-writing, advocacy days, and local volunteering to support your local community.