US Exceptionalism and Mass Shootings

I’m sitting with today’s July 4th mass shooting in Highland Park. As a Chicagoan, this literally hits close to home.

Sitting with it led me to read up on gun control in other countries.

I know that different folks have different ideas about gun laws. But either way: I think these histories of gun control in Britain, Australia, Canada, and Norway are interesting and worth considering and investigating.

One thing that I’ve been sitting with over the past few years is that, when folks compare US gun laws, gun rights, and gun ownership rates to other countries, they always leave off one thing: US political parties.

Many other industrialized nations share uneven similarities with the US. What no other industrialized nation shares with us is the total absence of a “legitimate” political party of either the working class (i.e. a Labor party) or of socialism.

What this makes me wonder is: what does it do to an entire population when the only “legitimate” political parties are constantly blaming us for our own misfortunes or blaming an “other” (i.e. Black folks, femmes, trans folks, immigrants, Muslims, etc).

All too often, people discuss political parties as simply a means to an electoral end. But I would argue that they represent so much more.

There is not simply an electoral price to be paid when an entire class lacks its own party, when an entire political ideology lacks its own party: but a psychological price as well.

A society that only offers two parties of capitalism…

a society that convinces you that these two parties represent “opposites”…

a society where both parties blame you and “the other” for your misfortunes…

a society that convinces you that ideas outside the bounds of these two parties are fanciful and illegitimate…

…is a society that is driving its people into a regularized, hopeless, murderous, frenzy.