In yesterday’s NY Times former U.S. Border Agent and author of the best selling memoir The Line Becomes a River grapples with the centrality of firearms to the American mythos, what that has meant for him personally – from his childhood play with toy pistols to his days as a border agent – and the broader subject of what the gun and gunman have come to represent in our culture and where that is leading us.
Cantú begins his essay relating his personal experience with firearms, from the aforementioned toys presented to him by his parents, on through to the to – so many Americans – natural progression to BB’s and .22 calibers to his service weapon bestowed upon him at his graduation from the Border Patrol academy.
He then gets into the meat of his essay, expounding on the gun’s (and the gunman’s) place in American history and culture:
“Guns have long been an integral part of our national mythology, woven deep into our most sacred lore about the winning of our independence, about manifest destiny and territorial expansion, about the defense of democracy and the spread of our empire across the globe. At the center of this mythos is an abiding archetype — the lone man and his gun. This figure (usually white and positioned in opposition to people of color) has been represented throughout history in many familiar forms: the musket-toting militiaman with a revolutionary thirst for liberty; the cowboy chasing freedom with a six shooter across a frontier full of hostile natives; or the soldier with a rifle deployed to conquer or save a distant people inferior to his own. In each case, the gun is an essential counterpart — serving, like King Arthur’s sword or Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, as the one tool that makes possible the hero’s journey.”
Cantú goes on to describe how further how pervasive gun culture has become to our identity, or, at least the identity of many of our fellow countrymen, before writing two paragraphs that could well be as easily inserted into a story about yesterday’s events in Highland Park and Philadelphia –
“For evidence of how completely this mythology has been metabolized into law, we need look no further than last week’s Supreme Court’s decision striking down a gun restriction implemented in New York State. In his majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas dismisses a history of public safety protections as burdening the right to “individual self-defense,” gesturing ultimately to the “enduring American tradition of permitting public carry.”
This “tradition” has caused guns to become integral to the identity of countless Americans, giving rise to a gun culture defined by fundamentalist zeal and sloganeering well suited for the social media age. In a world where so many people are asked to compress their personhood into succinct lines and images, it is little wonder that these often end up including guns — America’s most potent symbol of masculinity, power and self-determination.”
Where is this all leading us to?
Cantú is, not surprisingly, none too optimistic:
“In “The End of the Myth,” the historian Greg Grandin argues that the presence of a frontier “allowed the United States to avoid a true reckoning with its social problems, such as economic inequality, racism, crime and punishment, and violence.” Even as America closed in upon its territorial edges at the end of the 1800s, he writes, our leaders continued to gesture toward new frontiers where the figure of the lone American could be thrust outward to defeat new enemies — across the ocean, into outer space or through clouds of terror oriented around a globalized axis of evil.
As our country slouches deeper into the 21st century, Mr. Grandin posits that we are being made to reckon with a sputtering mythology that has finally run out of ways to divert the rage, resentment and extremism once allowed to fester at our country’s ever-expanding edges. In this respect, our myths have effectively been turned in upon themselves.”
And turned upon us all, Mr. Cantú… on us all.
I do wish that Clarence “Uncle Tom” Thomas would be reminded that, when the Founders introduced the Second Amendment, HE would have been prohibited from owning a gun or even wielding a gun and all because of the color of his skin. I’m willing to bet that even as a young boy, he didn’t know any people with his skin tone who actually owned a firearm (the South was less fond of the idea of “colored” folk sporting guns than it was of “colored” folk socializing with white folk as if they were full equals).
Most Blacks who did have access to guns were usually Free Blacks (but there weren’t very many of them) who worked as cowboys, and generally, only after the end of the Civil War. Texas, after the Civil War, was a little more open to Black cowboys but you can imagine that such guys had to be pretty careful about former Confederate soldiers who might not be so thrilled to see a “you-know-the-word” with a gun. As far as the rest of the Deep South was concerned, a “you-know-the-word” with a gun was a double target and was more likely to find himself as Billie Holiday’s proverbial “strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar tree” (especially if he dared to fire that gun at the “night riders”).
Uncle Thom is the creme de la creme of hypocrites. Pretty sure his picture is beside the definition in Websters.
How sad is it that a large segment of our population consider firearms a part, or maybe all, of their identity? How small is your list of accomplishments if that is how you identify yourself? It’s on the level of “I defecate in the toilet” F.F.S. I mean, they have nothing of note to say about themselves, they’ve done nothing with their lives, but by g_d they can purchase a firearm and that makes them…what exactly? An american? A man/woman/??? I suppose it is safe to say they are x-tians. When that is all you have, I own a gun and I believe in jeezus…It’s pathetic. President Obama sure nailed that one tho’. Guns and bibles.