What we have in this country is a culture problem. We’re a culture born of armed revolution and built on the backs of slave labor—a practice that itself led to civil war.
We’re a culture that expanded west through the armed slaughter of Native Americans, a culture that made heroes of the men who could draw and fire the fastest, who acted as judge, jury, and executioner on the wild frontier. We’re a culture who’s fetishized flintlock-wielding colonizers, sixgun slinging sheriffs, Tommy gun toting gangsters, and AK-armed druglord kingpins.
We’re a culture who deals with each other through violence and prioritizes incarceration over intervention. We are castle doctrines and concealed carry permits, hundred-round magazines and rapid fire rifles. We are road rage. We are hotel-window snipers and high-school-aged lone gunmen.
Guns are the problem. Mental healthcare is the problem. The mythologizing of ourselves is the problem.
We the People are the problem.
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