The US gun culture

This is a poster for one of the many campaigns against gun violence led by the Brady Center in the US since 1974.
What fist strikes the eye is a gun; quite a modern one, with the US flag stamped on it. It is here without a doubt the symbol of the US gun culture.
Then we automatically start to read the text above that gives some comparative information about people killed by guns in one year in various developped countries. These go from 17 to 200. The last country on the list is the US, and there, the statistic number changes dramatically: 9 484 deaths from gun violence. This last sentence is put forward with a bigger font size, so the difference is given more importance. Right below, in an even bigger and thicker font size we can read "GOD BLESS AMERICA", the traditionnal moto of the United States.
In the bottom left corner there is the logo of brady campaign, that gives information about who made the poster, but is also a guarantee for the numbers given.
This poster plays on two levels. With the statistic numbers (17 people in Finland, 35 in Australia etc.) it gives, on the one hand, objectibve and precise information about the impact of gun violence in the US compared to countries just as rich and developed. The numbers speak for themselves, the difference is alarming as it is. On the other hand, there is the intention of making the poster even more shocking, with strategical changes in the font sizes, and especially , with the gun that makes us see the very object that is causing all those deaths, and with the symbols of american pride: the moto and the stars and stripes related to that death rate. The point of having these two symbols of american culture appear in the poster is to hint that the problem is caused by the American mentality, that guns and "God bless America" are in close relationship. It is a clear reference to the second Amendment of the US Constitution.



This slightly older poster for the exact same campaign consists in pretty much the same thing.
One notable difference is the choice of the gun, giving a more traditional one that can then be a part of the American symbols along with the flag and the moto.
The numbers and some of the countries chosen as examples are different but the effect is the same.
A notable change howewer is the number of gun-related deaths in 2004: 11 344, as opposed to 9 484 around 2013, when the other poster was published. We can notice that gun violence in the US nowadays is dicreasing, but is still a major problem.





These compared graphs made by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime show (based on the latest statistics made on each country between 2004 and 2010) the place the United States occupy in the rating of gun violence compared to the top ten most violent countries, and then the American gun-related death rate per 100 000 people compared to the most developed countries'.
If we look at the first graph there seems to be no major problem with guns in the US. In the gun violence ranking the United States come in 26th, with a gun-related death rate less than a quarter as high as the top ten most violent countries'. But then again, it is only predictable as the US are a very rich and developed country, with a very high HDI. It is precisely based on their Human Development Index that the countries in the second graph are classified. We can see that the US there comes in third, so we are making the second comparison with nations which have a social context much more similar to the US's. The violence rate then goes from not being very alarming at all to being exceedingly higher than the other developed countries'. Even the second on the list, which is Switzerland, has a violence rate exactly four times lower than the US's. These graphs show that there are much more violent nations than the US, but beyond this, if we look at the US in its own social context, it is an abnormally violent contry.



This cartoon drawn by the Pulizer Award winning cartoonist Steve Sack for the Star Tribune (Minneapolis) is an open criticism to the gun culture in the United States. Two Characters are standing in front of the Capitol, the famous US Congress building in Washington, one of them a member of  Congress, representing the political power, the other from the gun lobby, representing the economic power of gun trade. While a long blood stain crosses the image and goes up the stairs, signifying that there has been a shooting in Congress, the gun lobby is giving Congress a large amount of money. This money goes, no doubt, to keeping guns legal for sale for anyone as they have always been in America. While shootings kill hundreds of innocent people, Congress and the gun lobby work together for it not to change. The smile on both faces and the sentence: "now, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted..." underline with irony the indifference, or even cynism of these people, whoose interest above and beyond anything is money. In this cartoon sack is telling us that, nowadays, the lethal US gun culture lies on dishonest agreements between the political power and the gun lobby, who are thus partly responsible for fatal shootings.



This second cartoon by Dave Granlund is just as critical with the US gun culture as the first. It is divided into two parts. On the left we can see a statue of a man from the eighteenth century holding a shotgun, probably to hunt, to fight in the indepencence war or to protect himself from any danger. This would be a representation of the "Second Amendment (part of the constitution that defines the right to keep and bear arms) as defined by the founding fathers" of the US. On the right there is another man, a real one, from the twenty first century, standing on a pile of ammunition boxes, in military clothes and with at least four guns on himself. This would be the "Second Amendment as defined by the NRA (national riffle association)". This second part is a clear hyperbole.  What this cartoon tries to say is that the current vision of the Second Amendment, the one  the NRA puts through, the one that nowadays is taken into consideration to make laws, is an abuse of what this amendment was iniccially ment to allow and ensure. Gradually the US would have gone from the first to the second vision of the Second Amendment, from ensuring one's own safety (and invading native americans in the West...) with one weapon to threatening everyone eslse's with an abusive and somewhat paranoid use of guns. The Second Amendment wouldn't then justify by any means the huge gun culture existing in the US, which would be a product of the NRA, the biggest and most important part of the gun lobby, not even an official authority, which we saw paying Congress for their interests to be mantained in the first cartoon. The US gun culture as seen in this cartoon doesn't respect but abuses the US constitution.