re: #321 BigPapa

I think being legally able to kill someone is the ultimate extreme of dominionism. There is no greater power than taking a life with no consequence.

It is at the core of US Gun culture. It’s not about hunting, self defence, tyranny, or any of the words that are used - what it is actually about is preserving the cultural right of white men to kill anyone they want if they feel like it. It’s why Kyle Rittenhouse was never going to be convicted and why Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers would never even have been charged were it not for a national outcry. It’s why it’s so surprising they were actually convicted. It’s why US cops are not police but an occupying garrison, and why the immediate cultural response to ‘Black Lives Matter’ was to say ‘Blue Lives Matter’, as if we should all understand that American police are diametrically opposed to black people and that it’s us or them.

America can’t have gun laws that work, because for that to happen, it would mean that American laws - which are designed to protect an in-group and constrain an out-group - would then have to bind American guns; which are meant to enforce the power of the in-group against the out-group. These are one and the same, and having them do the opposite of their intent - impose limits on white men and the rest of the in-group - would attack the very heart of America.