Though good points are made in the
article regarding the context of
American violence in relation to both
the nation's history, the falling crime
rate in the USA and Europe's frequent
atrocities, I find the following piece
to simply recycle anti-gun arguments.
I also found that the article almost has
you accepting revolvers as the "assault
weapon" of the nineteenth century.
Jeff
Philadelphia Inquirer
August 29, 1999
Gun-toting America no peaceable kingdom
Some historians see recent outbreaks of
violence as rooted in history.
By Ellen O'Brien
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The heart-stopping images of kids
fleeing Columbine High School. The
bloody day-trading offices in Atlanta.
The muzzle of a semiautomatic in the
window of a blue Ford Taurus leaving
Chicago. The screams at a day-care
center in L.A.
Each of the mass shootings that has
erupted over the last half-year has had
its own mad signature, and has prompted
shock waves across the country. But some
who study the nation's history see these
tragedies as merely the latest chapter
in America's long national story of
violence.
Because we're a democracy, we like to
think of ourselves as a peaceable
kingdom.
Not so, they say.
And some predict that the mass murders
we have witnessed with an alarming
frequency will increase in number unless
the spread of personal arsenals is
halted.
"It's really built into our culture,"
says Roger Lane, a historian at
Haverford College and a former
consultant to the National Commission on
the Causes and Prevention of Violence.
His most recent book is Murder in
America: A History.
Of course, killers who explode into mass
violence are beyond the norm - rare,
disturbed, certainly unpredictable. Lane
says they tend to be "people whose
psychological profiles resemble
'suicides' rather than murderers. . . .
They almost always are captured
immediately."
But still, he and other historians say,
those murders are emerging from a
culture of violence that has roots
dating to the first slave holdings in
the 1600s - a culture of personal
retribution that was amplified by the
mass production and marketing of
revolvers in the 1800s.
Says Lane: "It all seems to go back to
slavery."
The country's earliest slave
plantations, he says, were "particularly
savage. . . . It was a system that had
to be enforced by the 'master' himself -
there was no law enforcement, he was the
law."
Of course, American colonists farther
north were soon destroying the country's
native people - the Indians - to acquire
their land. They dehumanized them as
their Southern counterparts dehumanized
the Africans. Lane and some other
historians believe that brutality on the
plantations, with its "zero tolerance
for disrespect," mutated into the
Southern code of personal honor.
And eventually, that code spread through
every social level, says Lane:
"Statesmen and street thugs went for the
same code of honor - the code of the
duel."
Meanwhile, in the early 1800s, a second
major influence for violence in the
country emerged.
The Colt and Remington companies began
turning out guns by the thousands.
Before that, most families had a rifle
or two, for hunting and protecting the
homestead. But the mass manufacture of
handguns was accompanied by mass
advertising, and soon thousands of
would-be gentlemen were being convinced
they needed to carry their own revolvers
wherever they went.
Then came the Civil War, followed by
churning social dislocation that spurred
many young white men to travel west,
moving ahead of established law again,
carrying their dueling code into Texas
and parts of Wyoming and Montana.
"Where males are young and drunken and
reckless," Lane says, simply, "they do a
lot of killing."
Those two components of our national
experience - slavery and the mass
distribution of guns - have created a
tradition of violence that differs from
that of other developed countries.
For one thing, Americans generally are
violent toward each other. In other
countries, the violence is more often
wrought by or aimed at the state.
"Our violence has generally been amongst
the citizenry - with the government
staying out of it," says historian
Howard Smead, author of Gunfighter
Nation: The Myth of the Frontier, who
teaches a course on social violence at
the University of Maryland in College
Park. He says the numbers speak for
themselves. Since the Civil War, there
have been more 5,000 lynchings in the
United States, Smead says. Since 1800,
there have been more than 1,000 riots.
"We have a history that is singular in
the Western world: rioting by private
individuals; lynch mobs; antilabor
violence - and rioting as
entertainment," he says. "We have
settled many controversies in our
history through social violence, and
essentially the government stayed out of
it."
Historian Richard Slotkin of Wesleyan
University agrees, particularly when it
comes to vigilantism: "Individuals feel
they have a license to take into their
hands a power that in other places is
reserved for the state . . . and other
Americans sympathize." For example, the
Ku Klux Klan was rampant for decades
throughout the South, with many
communities complicit in their silence
and acquiescence in the vigilantism.
Smead believes that sympathy came out of
an elemental national conservatism - the
same conservatism that wants to keep
government limited and local.
The same conservatism that respects the
code of honor. And conservative laws
that do likewise.
America's legal tradition, says Smead,
holds that private citizens under
assault have " 'no duty to retreat,' "
that they may resort to violence in
self-defense.
Again, says Smead: "The law protects a
man's honor."
But despite our distinct social and
legal history, Wesleyan's Slotkin says
that as individuals, Americans are no
more aggressive than other people.
"Europe says the United States is a very
violent society," he says, and quickly
adds with grim humor: "This is a
statement from the people who brought
you two world wars, the police state,
the Holocaust, the Gulag, and the
various terrorist movements."
What he means is that Americans would do
best to keep the issue of their violence
in perspective.
For instance, historian Peter Stearns
argues that statistics suggest violence
has been decreasing in America.
And in fact, according to the FBI, in
1997 the country's murder rate - 6.8
murders per 100,000 - was lower than it
had been in 30 years. The overall
violent-crime rate was down to its
lowest point in a decade.
"We have a lot more pressure on people
to learn not to be violent" than we ever
did, says Stearns. And further: "We
certainly worry more about violence in
our midst than other societies do."
Stearns, dean of the College of
Humanities and Social Science at
Carnegie Mellon University, and author
of Battleground of Desire: The Struggle
for Self-Control in Modern America,
thinks television and movies lead people
to believe the United States is more
violent than it really is. Still, he
says, the United States must soon come
to grips with the sources of its
violence.
"I think we're kind of at a watershed
here," says Wesleyan's Slotkin.On one
hand: "We've got a series of terrorist
incidents that are the consequence of
people following the most extreme
libertarian views."
On the other hand: "People have become
aware . . . that it's not simply the
number of guns that are out there that's
the issue - but it's the way in which
the culture gives people a license to
kill." Slotkin believes bloody incidents
such as Columbine will keep escalating
in number, and in horror, unless
Americans begin to address the spread of
personal arsenals. But in this country,
the gun-control issue itself has become
a battleground. "We may be so fascinated
with guns that we can't be regulated out
of it," says Stearns. Haverford's Lane
agrees emphatically: "We ain't going to
get rid of the gun culture." And
Slotkin: "In a society in which guns are
so widely available, people are not
going to give up legitimate weapons of
self-defense.
But then Slotkin adds: "The question is
- what is a weapon of self-defense? You
don't need an AK-47 to kill a deer, and
you don't need an Uzi to stop a hold-up
man. . . .
"It's the attack on war-fighting weapons
- and the people who use them - that
society has to get serious about,"
Slotkin says. "Go after the people who
are in conspiracies that allow people
like these guys . . . to operate."
Stearns, meanwhile, takes a more
controversial tack. He thinks there
should be more avenues of protest - not
fewer. He says, for example, that the
decline of unions nationally means that
workers have fewer legitimate outlets
for objecting to unfair work conditions,
which, in turn, means a more volatile
workforce.
Stearns maintains that increasingly
strict laws regulating behavior have
limited even casual rowdyism -
overturning an outhouse, tearing down a
goal post - that communities once
tolerated. "We've hemmed in reasonably
normal channels of unrest, so much so
that we've partly created the conditions
for extreme violence."
Perhaps there is a way to remove the
threat of violence that sometimes seems
to hover over schoolyards and office
buildings alike.
That was the hope of 2,000 students on
Aug. 16 in Littleton.
After months of renovations designed to
erase signs of the gruesome events that
left 15 dead, including the two young
killers - and after a pep rally to
banish grief and fear - the teenagers
reentered Columbine High School.
To find swastikas scrawled on the
bathroom walls.
article regarding the context of
American violence in relation to both
the nation's history, the falling crime
rate in the USA and Europe's frequent
atrocities, I find the following piece
to simply recycle anti-gun arguments.
I also found that the article almost has
you accepting revolvers as the "assault
weapon" of the nineteenth century.
Jeff
Philadelphia Inquirer
August 29, 1999
Gun-toting America no peaceable kingdom
Some historians see recent outbreaks of
violence as rooted in history.
By Ellen O'Brien
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The heart-stopping images of kids
fleeing Columbine High School. The
bloody day-trading offices in Atlanta.
The muzzle of a semiautomatic in the
window of a blue Ford Taurus leaving
Chicago. The screams at a day-care
center in L.A.
Each of the mass shootings that has
erupted over the last half-year has had
its own mad signature, and has prompted
shock waves across the country. But some
who study the nation's history see these
tragedies as merely the latest chapter
in America's long national story of
violence.
Because we're a democracy, we like to
think of ourselves as a peaceable
kingdom.
Not so, they say.
And some predict that the mass murders
we have witnessed with an alarming
frequency will increase in number unless
the spread of personal arsenals is
halted.
"It's really built into our culture,"
says Roger Lane, a historian at
Haverford College and a former
consultant to the National Commission on
the Causes and Prevention of Violence.
His most recent book is Murder in
America: A History.
Of course, killers who explode into mass
violence are beyond the norm - rare,
disturbed, certainly unpredictable. Lane
says they tend to be "people whose
psychological profiles resemble
'suicides' rather than murderers. . . .
They almost always are captured
immediately."
But still, he and other historians say,
those murders are emerging from a
culture of violence that has roots
dating to the first slave holdings in
the 1600s - a culture of personal
retribution that was amplified by the
mass production and marketing of
revolvers in the 1800s.
Says Lane: "It all seems to go back to
slavery."
The country's earliest slave
plantations, he says, were "particularly
savage. . . . It was a system that had
to be enforced by the 'master' himself -
there was no law enforcement, he was the
law."
Of course, American colonists farther
north were soon destroying the country's
native people - the Indians - to acquire
their land. They dehumanized them as
their Southern counterparts dehumanized
the Africans. Lane and some other
historians believe that brutality on the
plantations, with its "zero tolerance
for disrespect," mutated into the
Southern code of personal honor.
And eventually, that code spread through
every social level, says Lane:
"Statesmen and street thugs went for the
same code of honor - the code of the
duel."
Meanwhile, in the early 1800s, a second
major influence for violence in the
country emerged.
The Colt and Remington companies began
turning out guns by the thousands.
Before that, most families had a rifle
or two, for hunting and protecting the
homestead. But the mass manufacture of
handguns was accompanied by mass
advertising, and soon thousands of
would-be gentlemen were being convinced
they needed to carry their own revolvers
wherever they went.
Then came the Civil War, followed by
churning social dislocation that spurred
many young white men to travel west,
moving ahead of established law again,
carrying their dueling code into Texas
and parts of Wyoming and Montana.
"Where males are young and drunken and
reckless," Lane says, simply, "they do a
lot of killing."
Those two components of our national
experience - slavery and the mass
distribution of guns - have created a
tradition of violence that differs from
that of other developed countries.
For one thing, Americans generally are
violent toward each other. In other
countries, the violence is more often
wrought by or aimed at the state.
"Our violence has generally been amongst
the citizenry - with the government
staying out of it," says historian
Howard Smead, author of Gunfighter
Nation: The Myth of the Frontier, who
teaches a course on social violence at
the University of Maryland in College
Park. He says the numbers speak for
themselves. Since the Civil War, there
have been more 5,000 lynchings in the
United States, Smead says. Since 1800,
there have been more than 1,000 riots.
"We have a history that is singular in
the Western world: rioting by private
individuals; lynch mobs; antilabor
violence - and rioting as
entertainment," he says. "We have
settled many controversies in our
history through social violence, and
essentially the government stayed out of
it."
Historian Richard Slotkin of Wesleyan
University agrees, particularly when it
comes to vigilantism: "Individuals feel
they have a license to take into their
hands a power that in other places is
reserved for the state . . . and other
Americans sympathize." For example, the
Ku Klux Klan was rampant for decades
throughout the South, with many
communities complicit in their silence
and acquiescence in the vigilantism.
Smead believes that sympathy came out of
an elemental national conservatism - the
same conservatism that wants to keep
government limited and local.
The same conservatism that respects the
code of honor. And conservative laws
that do likewise.
America's legal tradition, says Smead,
holds that private citizens under
assault have " 'no duty to retreat,' "
that they may resort to violence in
self-defense.
Again, says Smead: "The law protects a
man's honor."
But despite our distinct social and
legal history, Wesleyan's Slotkin says
that as individuals, Americans are no
more aggressive than other people.
"Europe says the United States is a very
violent society," he says, and quickly
adds with grim humor: "This is a
statement from the people who brought
you two world wars, the police state,
the Holocaust, the Gulag, and the
various terrorist movements."
What he means is that Americans would do
best to keep the issue of their violence
in perspective.
For instance, historian Peter Stearns
argues that statistics suggest violence
has been decreasing in America.
And in fact, according to the FBI, in
1997 the country's murder rate - 6.8
murders per 100,000 - was lower than it
had been in 30 years. The overall
violent-crime rate was down to its
lowest point in a decade.
"We have a lot more pressure on people
to learn not to be violent" than we ever
did, says Stearns. And further: "We
certainly worry more about violence in
our midst than other societies do."
Stearns, dean of the College of
Humanities and Social Science at
Carnegie Mellon University, and author
of Battleground of Desire: The Struggle
for Self-Control in Modern America,
thinks television and movies lead people
to believe the United States is more
violent than it really is. Still, he
says, the United States must soon come
to grips with the sources of its
violence.
"I think we're kind of at a watershed
here," says Wesleyan's Slotkin.On one
hand: "We've got a series of terrorist
incidents that are the consequence of
people following the most extreme
libertarian views."
On the other hand: "People have become
aware . . . that it's not simply the
number of guns that are out there that's
the issue - but it's the way in which
the culture gives people a license to
kill." Slotkin believes bloody incidents
such as Columbine will keep escalating
in number, and in horror, unless
Americans begin to address the spread of
personal arsenals. But in this country,
the gun-control issue itself has become
a battleground. "We may be so fascinated
with guns that we can't be regulated out
of it," says Stearns. Haverford's Lane
agrees emphatically: "We ain't going to
get rid of the gun culture." And
Slotkin: "In a society in which guns are
so widely available, people are not
going to give up legitimate weapons of
self-defense.
But then Slotkin adds: "The question is
- what is a weapon of self-defense? You
don't need an AK-47 to kill a deer, and
you don't need an Uzi to stop a hold-up
man. . . .
"It's the attack on war-fighting weapons
- and the people who use them - that
society has to get serious about,"
Slotkin says. "Go after the people who
are in conspiracies that allow people
like these guys . . . to operate."
Stearns, meanwhile, takes a more
controversial tack. He thinks there
should be more avenues of protest - not
fewer. He says, for example, that the
decline of unions nationally means that
workers have fewer legitimate outlets
for objecting to unfair work conditions,
which, in turn, means a more volatile
workforce.
Stearns maintains that increasingly
strict laws regulating behavior have
limited even casual rowdyism -
overturning an outhouse, tearing down a
goal post - that communities once
tolerated. "We've hemmed in reasonably
normal channels of unrest, so much so
that we've partly created the conditions
for extreme violence."
Perhaps there is a way to remove the
threat of violence that sometimes seems
to hover over schoolyards and office
buildings alike.
That was the hope of 2,000 students on
Aug. 16 in Littleton.
After months of renovations designed to
erase signs of the gruesome events that
left 15 dead, including the two young
killers - and after a pep rally to
banish grief and fear - the teenagers
reentered Columbine High School.
To find swastikas scrawled on the
bathroom walls.