Alienation flows through the barrel of a gun: Despair, mass shootings, and suicide in an American settler colony

Levi Gahman
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Abstract

In what is now referred to by many as the United States, gun violence rages on. When one considers the country’s sheer number of annual gun deaths, the data is as overwhelming as it is distressing. Indeed, perhaps the only thing outpacing the trauma and loss of life wrought by gun violence is the anguish and grief of those who are impacted by it. Despite the shocking statistics and fervent calls for change, few efforts have been effective at curbing the harm. Such a reality raises pressing questions about why gun violence in the U.S. is so prevalent, and what can be done to prevent it. In this Contention, I maintain that the only way out of the U.S.’s centuries-long doom spiral of gun violence will be reckoning with the nation’s historical-ongoing trajectories of settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and imperialism. I further contend that any effort to eliminate gun violence in the U.S. mandates ending mass alienation and taking masculinity to task. Accordingly, I illustrate how guns are not actually the root of the problem, even though their ease of access and the culture(s) surrounding them are corollary symptoms that necessitate urgent intervention. In short, I argue that resolving gun violence in the U.S. demands a historical-structural-intersectional focus and that the source of the country’s firearm-involved deaths are alienation, despair, and oppression owed to capitalism, entrenched patriarchal social relations, and the settler colonial state­­––all of which must be abolished if we are seriously concerned with livable futures.
枪管里流淌着异化:美国移民殖民地的绝望、大规模枪击和自杀
在现在被许多人称为美国的地方,枪支暴力肆虐。如果考虑到美国每年枪支造成的死亡人数,那么这些数据不仅令人痛心,而且令人难以承受。事实上,也许唯一比枪支暴力造成的创伤和生命损失更严重的是受其影响的人们的痛苦和悲伤。尽管统计数据触目惊心,人们也热切呼吁改变现状,但在遏制枪支危害方面却鲜有成效。这样的现实提出了迫切的问题:为什么枪支暴力在美国如此普遍,以及如何才能防止枪支暴力。在本论争中,我坚持认为,要摆脱美国长达数百年的枪支暴力厄运螺旋,唯一的办法就是对美国历史上持续存在的殖民主义、异族父权制、白人至上主义和帝国主义轨迹进行清算。我还认为,任何消除美国枪支暴力的努力都必须结束大规模异化,并对男性气质负责。因此,我说明了枪支实际上并不是问题的根源,尽管枪支的易得性和围绕枪支的文化是必须紧急干预的必然症状。简而言之,我认为要解决美国的枪支暴力问题,就必须关注历史-结构-跨部门问题,而美国枪支致死事件的根源在于异化、绝望以及资本主义、根深蒂固的父权制社会关系和殖民定居国家所造成的压迫--如果我们要认真关注宜居的未来,就必须废除所有这些因素。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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