jueves, 22 de septiembre de 2016

American Identity - The Identity Of Gun

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In general the term of identity defines as whatever makes an entity with different qualities and characteristics recognizable and distinguished from the others. A person"s identity includes a sense of continuity, a sense of uniqueness from others and a sense of affiliation; by them an individual is recognized.

There are several different types of identity such as cultural identity, social identity, ethnic identity and religious identity.

American identity:

To explain the term of American identity it is necessary to know about the American cultural and national identity. In general Cultural and national identity refers to the common feelings and beliefs of a group with common culture, all the individuals in the new World are divided into different nations sharing their own common identity and usually common origin.

As culture is the main factor in articulating a nation"s identity, we can concentrate on the American culture in order to explore American identity.

Gun as a symbol of power and violence is one of the cultural icons in the United States. Guns have occupied a unique position in US politics. The United States" society has been divided in two groups; a group which advocate the right of caring guns for self-defense and a group which is against the right to possess and carry arms that leads to the violent crimes and massacres in   America . Although the second group tries to ban this right but it seems impossible to become successful because the American mind and heart have been intermingled with the idea of the necessity of having gun. As much they try to convince other group by reminding them massacres in American schools for example the massacre happened in the year 1999 at Columbine high school in Colorado which led to the death of 12 students and their teacher by two of their friends caring gun to the school, less they gain success in gun control issue because those anti-gun advocates can not establish the proper link between gun and violence , they face with this claim that "people kill people not gun kill people by itself" The idea of possessing guns has stemmed from nation"s frontier history.

The trace of guns can be seen in every part of the  America"s  soil especially in west where the wilderness of environment and the existence of Indian tribes forced settlers to use guns in order to secure themselves and their families in confrontation with dangers.

There are two views of the wilderness; either it means savagery which threatened new settlers" community or a fertile land enabled settlers to cultivate there what they desired. Both of these two views share the common belief that it was the wilderness helped settlers to establish civilization during the time when they were trying to remove obstacles presented by nature and indian people.

The "Wild West" is still in the psyche of the US. A good example to prove this claim is the request of Mr. Bush to have Bin Laden "dead or alive" which reaped continuously in aftermath the terrorist attacks in 9/11.

The importance of guns in American culture also stemmed from the necessity of hunting in the culture of American people, especially in those early years of the European arrival to the New Land  of  America .

"To understand gun talk, I had to understand what  America  means to millions of ordinary people and how these beliefs shaped their sense of who they are, were, and must remain in the future." Joan Burbick, 2006

Joan Burdick, a professor of English and American studies at Washington State University, in her book "Gun Show Nation" talks about the trace of gun in American national and political identity. She focuses on how far gun identity has been successful in introducing its products, guns, so cleverly to convey the concept of patriotism and to label those who use them as law-abiding civilian shooters.

Burdick also draws a picture of a white, middle-aged man [as a symbol of many white people in  America ] who believe that gun itself can stop violence, in contrast with the history  of  America  [that not only had been witnessed many wars between American people and the world beyond the sea but even the trace of guns in the death of many people in the United States.]

Although the American identity intermingled with the identity of gun which has been troublemaking inside the  America  , reminding the presidential assassination and the death of students in their schools as a notable examples in the history of the United States, but this identity helped  America  to feel proudness and self-confidence to follow the concept of manifest destiny in order to bring democracy beyond the continent through wars relied on the power of gun.



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Source by Hedyeh Nasseri


















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