Essay: Disrupt the Normalization of Gun Violence
“Our struggle will not succeed unless we rebuild society.” - Silvia Federici
The one and only time I shot a gun, I burst into tears. The crying completely caught me off guard. The shooting range was outside, empty and quiet. I was with my husband and his parents. Initially, I felt very calm. We only even went shooting because I showed an interest in the first place. I simply thought it was something I had never done before, so…why not? I'll try anything once. So off we went skeet shooting.
Before the outing, I didn't think much about what it would be like to shoot a gun because it's not like I was killing something. We are skeet shooting, holding big-ass rifles to shoot clay plates propelled into the air. Killing something - a deer, bird, squirrel - isn't something I would ever choose to do. This would be different. Or so I thought.
As soon as I picked up that rifle, I knew it wasn't for me. The gun felt unusually heavy and extremely uncomfortable. I think my inability to get comfortable was my intuition's way of telling me this shit isn't for us. But I didn't listen (which is always a mistake.) I shot the gun anyway. After 1 round, I was done. The most memorable part of that experience is the feeling. The weight of the gun made me feel like I was drowning. The physical heaviness was magnified by an invisible weight from knowing I was holding something so much more powerful than me. This thing could kill; I could not.
Staunch gun advocates (and I’m not talking about the hunters or folks living off the land) love to say, 'Guns don't kill people; people kill people.' And sure, physically, that is true. Someone does have to pull the trigger. But guns provide a feeling. Feelings of safety, protection, or authority. They can empower someone to do things that maybe they wouldn't or couldn't do before, like kill someone who cuts them off in traffic or shoot a child who rings their doorbell. Yes, people kill people, but guns get them there. Guns make killing accessible. Guns turn scared people, angry people, racist people, and misogynist people into scared, angry, racist, misogynist murderers.
America’s gun problem has no sign of slowing down, but the White House is offering a glimmer of hope. This week, the White House announced the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
Every article about the announcement leads with the same terrifying facts, which read as an attempt to double down on the necessity of the initiative, (Vox):
There have been more than 500 mass shootings in 2023
More than 30,000 firearm-related deaths in 2023
Gun violence deaths among teens and children rose 50% between 2019 and 2021
Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in the United States
It's no coincidence that the first Gen Z member of Congress, Democrat Maxwell Frost, who has prioritized gun control policy, stood with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris during the announcement. Gun violence is driving a mental health crisis among Gen Z, and especially Gen Z of color, who have had to contend with the fear of gun violence and racist violence. Congressman Frost is a survivor himself after witnessing a shooting in Orlando. Survivors turned activists turned politicians are the force behind solutions like this, but I also recently learned that there are people who have been on the inside and have seen the gun industry take a turn for the worse. They offer an invaluable insight into the world that many of us who are not gun advocates would not know.
Enter Ryan Bussey, a former senior executive who left the firearm industry and now works as a senior advisor for Giffords, a gun violence prevention group led by Gabby Gifford (another gun violence survivor.) He was recently a guest on Dahlia Lithwick's podcast, Amicus, which I highly recommend. Lawyer and writer Dahlia explains the latest in the Supreme Court and how the cases impact us in our daily lives and in society. In this episode, Ryan explains the sharp right turn the gun industry has taken in the last 10 to 15 years, diving head-first into hate, deregulation, and irresponsible marketing that caters to violent extremists.
“So for a century or more, you had guns like the Smith and Wesson 629 and the Rementing Model 870. Right. For non gun people like these are just average guns with numbers and letters on them. They don’t sound terrible. There’s nothing frightening about an 870 or a 629.
Today we have a firearm called the Ultimate Arms warmonger. We have an AR 15 called the Wilson Arms Urban Super Sniper. We have the Black Raid Ordinance. Three Percenter malt. I could go on and on and on. So you see the decency the responsibility has been pulled from the marketing, and I assume people spend money on marketing campaigns because marketing works.
We have a company, one of the largest retailers in the country, who produced a gun marketed directly to the Boogaloo Boys. I know the subtleness is crazy there, but they wanted some divorce from actually calling (it) a boogaloo. But it was a Hawaiian print AK 47. And so the plug has been pulled on decency and responsibility and marketing, and I assume the marketing works.
I mean, another example voting from the rooftops is a common refrain inside of sort of far right gun circles. And that means when things don’t go your way, you grab your rifle and get up on the rooftop and vote with bullets. Frightening. We now have a firearms company, an AR 15 company called Rooftop Arms. That’s the literal name of the company. I think that should frighten people.”
As a person, this insight terrifies me. As a marketing professional, the new marketing tactics disturb me. It’s emotional selling at its most lethal. A warmonger is "a person who encourages or advocates aggression towards other countries or groups." ‘Urban’ is a word always coded for Black communities in ‘big cities.’ A raid is a sudden attack in armed warfare. Three Percenters and the Boogaloo Boys are far-right, antigovernment, violent extremists. And as Ryan explains, voting from the rooftops advocates for shooting people from the rooftops when you don’t get your way. Emotional selling is about zeroing in on someone's motivation for a purchase and the gun industry is literally profiting from a terrorist fantasy, all in the name of turning a profit. As Dahlia asks Ryan to explain at the top of the episode,
…help us to understand how this industry created didn’t just arm, but created the sort of young white male shooter out there who thinks there’s no social problem that cannot be solved with an AR 15 or three.
Dahlia and Ryan further discuss an upcoming Supreme Court case, United States v. Rahimi, which will decide whether the 2nd amendment confers the government's ability to prohibit firearm possession by a person with a domestic violence restraining order. Zackey Rahimi "was convicted of possessing a gun while subject to a domestic violence protective order, issued after he violently assaulted his domestic partner in a parking lot and shot a gun when he noticed others had witnessed his abuse. Mr. Rahimi challenged the law as a violation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms." (ACLU) This is another man, using a gun, to try to get what he wants.
In a previous 2nd amendment case, the far-right, originalist judges on the Supreme Court ruled that if the law didn't exist in 1794, it can't exist now. So what could that mean for society? Someone who commits domestic abuse will be allowed to keep their guns until they are convicted of a crime because domestic abuse wasn't illegal in 1794. With corrupt judges like Clarence Thomas and gun rights groups spending $13.2 million in 2022 on federal lobbying, Republicans have become relentless in expanding and protecting gun access, pointing the blame of gun violence at anything other than guns themselves. This political party tells Americans that books, education, and drag queens are a bigger threat to society than guns. I believe the Republican acceptance of extremism is an attempt to pull our political center even more to the right. If we are (rightfully) afraid of the extremists, then the Republican norms of low corporate tax-rate, expensive and/or inaccessible healthcare, educational censorship, and allowing a convicted sexual abuser to run for president, maybe won’t seem so bad.
Recently, Democrats like Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg have been directly calling attention to Republican hypocrisy and absurdity, which I share below:
I am glad Democrats are finally vocally, passionately, and consistently calling this bad, violent behavior out. My belief is that there are more of us who want to progress forward than move backward. Although the latter is louder, we cannot normalize their false equivalency. It’s time for us to get loud.
Thank you so much for reading!! Please share with friends, family, and your online community. Growing this community means so much to me and it means a lot that you are here. As always, please reach out or leave a comment if you want to discuss.
Adriana <3