The Armed Nation: American Culture and Guns at the Core

By Jensen Cox

Why don't we understand the gun debate that is inflaming American opinion? Historian Jensen Cox explains its origins and current events to us. Every year, mass killings plunge the United States into horror. And yet, the freedom to be armed is a fundamental right, based on the sacrosanct second amendment to the constitution, which is supported by a majority of Americans: the powerful national rifle association, peaceful mothers, hunters, sports shooters, all those who want to defend themselves against possible attacks, who trust neither their police nor federal institutions. This is disputed, with solid arguments, by supporters of arms control. The debate divides the country, just like abortion, the death penalty and immigration. It holds an even more important place than the opposition between democrats and republicans. It arouses controversy in the religious, academic and political worlds. In a word, it immerses us in the heart of American culture, so close and so different from ours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miller
• Release date: May 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223959922

Jensen Cox

Jensen Cox is an esteemed author renowned for his profound insights and meticulous research in the fields of history and business. With an exceptional ability to weave captivating narratives and shed light on complex subjects, Jensen has established himself as a trusted authority in both disciplines. Through his thought-provoking works, he has consistently delivered invaluable knowledge and enriched the understanding of readers around the world.

Book preview

1

The mass killings

The year 2012 was, even more than the previous ones, particularly tragic. On December 14, the small town of Newtown, 35 kilometers northwest of New Haven, Connecticut, was marred by a shooting that shocked the United States. The drama begins at 8 o'clock. Adam Lanza, 20, dressed in black, a black polo shirt over a black t-shirt, black sports shoes, black gloves, a black belt. He donned an olive green jacket into which he slipped magazines that hold up to thirty bullets. What to feed the arsenal which he seized, quite simply in the cupboards of the family home. He enters his mother's room, who is still sleeping. He shoots her four times – psychologists will say that each bullet symbolizes a family member, both parents and two sons. Then, armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and three other weapons including handguns, also semi-automatic, he jumps into his mother's car and heads to Sandy Hook Elementary School. The door to the school is closed. Never mind ! With a burst, he smashes the adjoining window and enters the school. He shoots everyone he meets, the headmistress, her assistants, mistresses, a psychologist. Calmly, he recharges his armed. He enters the classroom. Hearing the noise coming from the corridors, teachers push the children into the toilets. Others fail. Several are hiding under the tables. Lanza shoots indiscriminately. Sometimes he shoots his target a second time. As soon as one of the magazines is empty, he takes the time to reload his weapon. The balance sheet arouses fear: twenty children aged 6 to 7 were killed and six adults. Exhausted from the weight of his arsenal, Lanza stops the slaughter. He then grabs his gun and kills himself. In total, twenty-eight dead, including the killer and his mother. Plus two injured teachers. The shooting lasted six minutes.

Some explanations are necessary. The police intervened as quickly as possible. Alerted at 9:35 a.m., the Newtown police arrived five minutes later, one minute before the killer's suicide. Their colleagues from the state of Connecticut join them at 9:46 a.m. At 10 a.m., the hospital in Danbury – the neighboring town – receives the injured, including two children who will not survive. In a nutshell, the police could do nothing to stop the killing. It recorded 156 impacts. And discovered, in addition to the four weapons with which Lanza is equipped, a rifle in the back of the family car. The survey is disappointing. It is not enough to note that Lanza was a deranged mind, that he suffered from a profound imbalance. He had not taken any drugs and was not under the influence of alcohol. What was he looking at on his computer? Impossible to know, because before committing his crime, he destroyed the hard drive. All we can guess is that Lanza took a close interest in the July 22, 2011 shooting, which left Norway in mourning and left 77 dead in Oslo and on the island of Utoya, which he saw videos of the 1999 Columbine shooting and the 2006 Pennsylvania shooting, which he allegedly listed of 500 murders. At his home, the police found three samurai swords. His mother was a gun enthusiast. She was a member of the National Rifle Association (NRA). A specially fitted cupboard contained 1,400 rounds of ammunition, several working rifles, not to mention the weapons that Lanza took with him.

The psychological condition, even psychiatric, of Lanza was the object of studies as precise as possible. The killer had no rational motivation to go after Sandy Hook Elementary School, other than that he had attended school there for four years. He was then a student at Newtown High School, where he showed his angst and his inability to make friends. Experts identify the hallmarks of autism. Insensitivity, rejection of all sociability, Lanza would have been autistic Asperger. With obsessions that his mother mentioned: frequent washing of hands and clothes, dizziness, refusal to touch objects he considered dirty, etc. His father, separated from his wife, does not believe in the diagnosis of autism. He leans towards schizophrenia. Lanza was also anorexic. For 1.80 meters, he weighed barely 51 kilos.

Either way, mental illness may explain Adam Lanza's daily behavior. The separation of his parents contributed to aggravate his psychological problems. The fear of changing residence accentuated his ill-being. No doubt, but he couldn't have become an assassin if his mother hadn't possessed an arsenal, if she hadn't left this arsenal close to her son. She was the first victim.

The murder of twenty children and their teachers shocked Americans. President Barack Obama, moved to tears, had the flags half mast on all federal buildings. He traveled to Newtown on December 16 to attend a wake. The Governor of the State of Connecticut called on his fellow citizens to rally, to pray. On December 17, at 9:30 a.m., all the state bells rang twenty-six times, in memory of the twenty-six victims. Of course, the most violent video games have been indicted. And again there was talk of a gun control legislative initiative.

Even today, the memory of the killing haunts people's minds. However, tragic as this shooting is, all the more tragic in that it touches the very heart of everyone's feelings with the murder of children, it is not as exceptional as one might think. In this same year 2012, other mass killings, mass shootings , occurred, elsewhere than in Connecticut. For example, in Aurora, Colorado. On July 19, the cinema offers the broadcast of a film by Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight Rises , the last part of his trilogy on Batman. A special session is scheduled for midnight. James Holmes puts on accoutrements which will create the illusion that he is one of the hosts of the evening: the gloves, the protections necessary for the safety of the throat, the arms, the face, a helmet. He thinks he's the Joker. He carries knives, a taser. And above all, he carries in his car a rifle, a semi-automatic AR-15, a pistol also semi-automatic, chargers, hundreds of ammunition. He would have bought 6,000 bales in the last two months. The spectators who see him enter the room have no reason to be suspicious, especially since he is dressed in Batman style. They believe that it is an animation which is offered to them. Holmes opens a can of gas. All the more reason to think that the operators of the room seek to put the spectators in the atmosphere of the film. He starts shooting at the ceiling - again, enough to fool Batman fans. Then he changes weapons and fires into the crowd. Hundreds of ammunition reach the spectators in the panic that one can imagine. At 12:38 a.m., a first call reached the police. The killer does not commit suicide. He is stopped. There are ten dead, to which are added shortly after two wounded who did not survive and 70 wounded, who will remain hospitalized for more or less long periods, disabled, marked forever.

Should we complete the list of mass shootings ? She is long. Of course, we can establish the martyrology of the victims and go back to the 18th century . But if we stick to the most recent years, we must begin with the massacre in Austin, Texas, in 1966. Charles Whitman climbs to the top of the tower that dominates the university campus. He has just murdered his mother and his wife. Well protected behind the parapet of the tower, he fired for an hour and a half on anything that moved, killed seventeen people, injured thirty-one. He ends up being killed when a policeman manages to reach him and shoot him. Other universities are affected in the following years, without the results being as dramatic. On the other hand, other places were struck, a McDo in 1984 (twenty-two dead, nineteen injured), a cafeteria in Texas in 1991 (twenty-three dead). Not to mention the 1995 attack committed by Timothy McVeigh against a federal building in Oklahoma City.

Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado? Another tragedy. On April 20, 1999, two young boys, dressed in a black trench coat, fired on their classmates, killing twelve students in six minutes and teacher, injure twenty others and commit suicide a few minutes later. The toll could have been even heavier if their propane bombs had exploded. The assassins fired without making the slightest choice between their victims. Were they influenced by video games? by the so-called Gothic culture? by the mockery of which they would have been the object? To tell the truth, it would seem that the murderers, for once there are two, were subject to a single influence, that of the Oklahoma City bombing. Their original plan was to blow up high school.

This sinister list must be completed to try to understand the epidemic that is hitting the United States. On April 16, 2007, Seung Hui Cho, a 23-year-old student at the Polytechnic Institute of Virginia (Virginia Tech), entered campus at 7:15 a.m., broke into the dorms, shot a female student and an assistant. He returns to his dormitory. His clothes are stained with blood. He changes clothes, destroys his hard drive and stuffs weapons in his backpack. He takes care to go to the post office to send a DVD which contains a twenty-five minute video and forty-three photos, plus a twenty-three-page statement that he intends for the NBC television channel in New York. He then enters one of the university buildings, chains the doors to prevent anyone from getting out. He is armed with two semi-automatic pistols with nineteen magazines. It has a total of 400 rounds. At 9:40 a.m., he enters a classroom. Thirteen students are taking a course in hydrology. He kills eleven. He then goes into a German class, shoots the teacher and the students. He heads for a French class, while everyone in the building tries to protect themselves. A mechanics teacher, survivor of the Holocaust, makes his students jump out of the window, while he bars the door of the room. Cho shoots him down without hesitation. He returns to the rooms and makes sure that he has killed those he has targeted. He commits suicide twenty minutes after the start of the massacre. There are thirty dead and seventeen wounded.

Cho's motivations are explained in his text sent to NBC. Religious motives? Sinners must be punished. Recriminations against rich students who drive Mercedes, who get drunk on brandy and vodka, who wear gold necklaces. "Let the revolution begin! To death, descendants of Satan! Get fucked...and to death now! I'm America's Counter-Terrorist. It's an understatement to say that Cho had a deranged mind. We can, of course, blame the insufficiency of the laws on firearms, the too slow reactions of the university, which should have interrupted the courses at the first shot, the passivity of the guards. The real explanation must be sought and found in the relations between Cho and his fellow students. He suffers from being despised, kept aside, misunderstood by the other students. He too is influenced by violent videos and films.

The list is not closed; far from there. On February 14, 2018, it was Florida's turn to be affected by the epidemic. Marjory-Stoneman-Douglas High School is located in Parkland, not far from Miami, 45 kilometers from Fort Lauderdale. Nikolas Cruz, a former student, was dropped off in a taxi in front of the school. Backpack on his parka, he heads for building 12, which houses thirty classrooms, or 900 students and thirty teachers. In the hands, an AR-15 and many magazines. He activates the alarm signal and shoots at random, without aiming at anyone. The shootout lasts six minutes, moments before class ends. The murderer drops his weapon, mingles with the fleeing students and quietly walks into a Walmart to buy a bottle of soda. Then, he enters a McDo which he leaves around 3 p.m. The police arrest him a few minutes later. She was able to identify him thanks to surveillance cameras and several testimonies. Result of this shooting: fourteen students killed at the same time as three members of staff, seventeen wounded who will survive (under what conditions?).

We can cite, as in other circumstances, the heroic acts of several students who tried to avoid the worst. We can also cite the warnings that the FBI and the local police have received. Neither of them took it into account. The county sheriff was warned forty-five times from 2008 to 2017 that Cruz was a dangerous individual. In September 2017, five months before the attack, a video was posted on YouTube; it was posted by a certain Nikolas Cruz with this statement: "I am going to be a professional killer in a school. »

In 2018, a shooting bloodied the high school in Santa Fe (Texas) and left ten dead. The murderer borrowed his father's weapons. He has expressed a desire to kill himself – which he will not do. He is 17 years old. In Le Figaro , Philippe Gélie conducted the investigation. Dimitrios Pagourtzis is a boy without psychiatric problems, but rather withdrawn. He has never had dealings with the police, but he is aware that by killing he is making history – he has spared classmates so they can tell his story. Dressed, summer and winter, in a long black trench coat, he posts his photo on Facebook "with the explanation of the pins with which it was adorned: the hammer and the communist sickle to represent the rebellion, the Nazi iron cross supposed symbolize bravery, the Japanese rising sun in reference to the kamikazes, a Baphomet – a horned idol reputedly linked to the cult of the Templars – to evoke the devil and Cthulhu, a science fiction creature supposed to represent power 1 ". In other words, childishness which is at the origin of a school mass shooting.

Mass shootings do not only affect schools. In the Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015, a single individual killed nine worshippers. In another Baptist church, this time in Sutherland Springs (Texas), the toll is even heavier: twenty-six dead and twenty injured. More recently, on October 27, 2018, a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was targeted: eleven dead. Three tragedies, three assassins who have sophisticated weaponry and express their hatred of blacks, Jews, and society in general.

Finally, the last example I would like to cite dates from October 1, 2017. The drama is set in Las Vegas. On Route 91, the famous Strip, a country music festival is held. It attracts over 20,000 people. The Mandalay Bay, a forty-three story hotel, overlooks the Strip. Steven Paddock is 64 years old. He exercised his talents in the business world. Since retiring, he has lived in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada. His father robbed banks, but he only broke traffic laws from time to time. Admittedly, he is a heavy drinker. He likes to play video-poker, loses a lot of money, but he pays off his debts. However, in Boston as in Chicago, he considered attacking public demonstrations. Nothing more.

He rents a room at the Mandalay Bay on September 25, on the thirty-first floor. He also occupies the next room. He carries five heavy suitcases up there. They contain fourteen AR-15s, twelve of which are equipped with bump stocks – mechanisms that transform a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon. He also has ten AR-10s, a rifle and a revolver. On September 30, he hangs a " Do not disturb " sign on the door of each of the two bedrooms. This does not prevent him from maintaining normal relations with the hotel staff, who guessed nothing.

On October 1 , the festival enters its