Promoted from dead thread:

re: #164 Renaissance_Man

It takes them being black, or brown, or some other ‘dangerous’ social class.

The US firearm system is working as intended. The system is not designed to keep weapons out of the hands of insane white males. If it was, it might actually happen sometimes, and gun deaths might decline, instead of rising. Gun massacres are an intended feature of American life - they stimulate gun sales, they keep people fearful, stimulating more sales and the social and political constructs that keep American people in a constant state of depraved indifference.

Americans believe that guns are for shooting other people in normal civilian life. This is a mindset that is so alien to those of us who did not grow up here, yet so ingrained in the national consciousness that the average American cannot conceive of it any other way. As long as everyday, commonplace gun deaths are the province of ‘those people’ - black thugs, gangbangers, etc. - and gun massacres are a privilege of white men, the American system is exactly as it is supposed to be.

In the wave of popular “adult” TV westerns in the late 50s, early 60s, this was exactly right. The programs were built thematically around a flawed, sometimes tormented central character, with a gun as symbolic talisman.

The Rifleman, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke, and literally dozens of others were often beautifully written and acted (it was a very profitable business after all) and they always involved some sort of moral lesson, with Bible quotes in abundance. They also displayed a (largely mythical) world where guns were everyday accoutrements and gunplay a routine method of problem solving.

The Rifleman has been justly praised for the extraordinary on-screen chemistry between Chuck Connors as widowed father Lucas McCain (the Rifleman himself) and John Crawford as his son Mark, and for its insightful portrayal of parenting. The show was not especially violent by early 60s standards. Nevertheless, Lucas managed to shoot and kill over 120 bad guns during the show’s 5 year run.