Does U.S. militarism and nationalism play any role in domestic gun violence?

While I don’t disagree that there is some connection, I don’t quite know which is causality, and which is end result.

The answer is yes, at least where I live.

Only to the extent that it feeds into the white supremacist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant crowds.

I don’t know. There are other imperialistic, nationalistic countries like Germany and Great Britain that didn’t and don’t have a culture of mass murder. I out it down more to our Wild West, individual rights culture that seems to be unique to the USA.

I could be wrong. Any UK/German people here that can comment? I was under the impression that the UK and Germany did not lather the population in militaristic propaganda like the U.S. does. Do sporting events have national anthem and military fly-overs? Is there an equivalent veneration of veterans and military personal in these countries?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there necessarily is a connection here. But it would seem strange to me if there were no connection.

Well of course it does. Why is that even a question for anyone?

@thisismyusername I wasn’t referring to them currently but historically. Certainly both Great Britain during its empire days and Germany during WW2 were as militaristic and jingoistic as the USA is

It certainly could be a factor as you and @Zaku say but I do think it is more the other – my rights over a sense of public good. The same reason we don’t have a national health system.

I don’t think we can actually be considered a martial nation, particularly since the establishment of the “all voluntary” militiary services. The truth is that we are particularly clumsy and inefficient as a military power, and while we are endowed with elites which talk loud and long about pariotism and duty, those folks fully appreciate that actual military service is an endeavor for losers.

No. Not really… movies/television would be ever so much more…

I would think yes.

The US will vanquish any foes, along with their civilian populations. Sounds like we’re teaching our citizens to kill those who we don’t agree with. But it’s only murder if you aren’t doing it for the country…

No.

If @KNOWITALL says yes, then I believe her. She is more surrounded by that type of attitude.

I can say my southern friends tend to be very ready to promote guns, and they also border on being nationalistic. They are fairly obsessed with the military. I’d say religion, and how Bible Belt conservatives frame “America” plays a part in it also. Not that I think Christianity present day is to blame, I feel the religion is used as a tool by the people who want to promote militia and gun culture. Some Christians believe America is a special place, and God blesses our country, because it is a Christian country. People tampering with that need to be stopped.

I think if someone snaps, and they are accustomed to using guns, and have one handy, they are more likely to use a gun to hurt other people, or themselves in a more final irreversible way.

One more comment, I am surrounded by former and retired military people where I live, and that’s not the overall attitude though. They are extremely patriotic in general, but as a whole not obsessed with gun culture. Maybe because many of the people I know here fought in Vietnam. We do have gun incidents though.

Meanwhile, there are millions of Americans who are not part of the gun culture, and who are not nationalistic, although I believe the vast majority of Americans are very patriotic.

I think so. What are we teaching our children when our country has been at war for their entire lives?
Don’t they see that our only solution to dealing with conflict is through violence?

I think the same could be said for children living in the Middle East where US occupation on bombs have been part of their entire lives.
How do we expect them to feel about us?

This is a bit of a derailment but I am wondering if anyone really knows we are at war still. Since we turned to a volunteer army, I don’t think the wars – particularly the one in Afghanistan – are much in anyone’s mind, let alone having an impact on the young.

“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations.” Martin Luther King Jr.

It isn’t that simple to state that it is our militarism or nationalism that drives “the cult of the gun”, though there is no question that the 2 topics are heavily embedded in the tactics geared toward “believers” convinced to the bitter end their guns synonymous with patriotism.

I live in gang-infested Memphis, and I can assure you that in many neighborhoods, EVERYONE has a gun from twelve on up. I am on disability, a victim of a robbery.

The school shootings and gang shootings have one thing in common: someone else is responsible for your personal problems, and the solution is a gun massacre.

Video games, movies, T.V. and rap music are teaching our young people that someone else is responsible for all of their problems and that the solution is, “BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!”

The military is far too disciplined a place to hold much interest for those who blame someone else, or authority, for their problems

Do I think any school shooter was inspired by the military? Eh, no.

@Yellowdog You make a good point. I think you’re at least partially right regarding the population you speak of, but then move out to the burbs of Shelby county and it all changes. End result, a lot of people throughout your county has guns.

Whether a spoiled suburban kid who blames his problems on various groups or faculty or the entire folly of the high school experience, and his own failings— or two black youth who decide that Yiddish shopkeeper in their neighborhood is eking out a living making money they themselves deserve for it being their hood, the result is the same. Youth of all backgrounds are being indoctrinated with the message that a gun is the great equalizer for this injustice.

The medium that conveys this message is video games and music—entertainment.

Unfortunately, warm fuzzies and feel-good programs and ministries, or cooperative work projects, are eschewed by youth, as is the rigor and orders of the military. I can hardly think that taking up a gun or committing suicide are desirable to them either either, but their inspiration comes from music, entertainment, and violent video games.

Inspiration for many of the most popular violent video games is the military. It’s definitely the basis of Call of Duty, Battlefield, and the most popular “first person shooters.”

We are a militaristic society. The first toy most male children get, is a toy gun… The highest military budget in the world is America’s, by an exponential margin. There’s really no way to debate that America is promoting violence, as our way of life.

@Yellowdog I don’t understand why you completely dismiss the obsession with the military in the country right now. I support our military. You will even find me on base sometimes, and at the VA, since I’m the daughter of a military officer. I’m often at the local events for Veterans Day, etc. if you came to visit me I would take you to the Eisenhower Center here where I live, because it’s full of memorabilia donated by our veterans, and their families who live here, and some of the items are just incredible.

But, the way a portion of our society blindly accepts military decisions of our leaders is uncomfortable to me. If anyone speaks against the decision there are many people who either try to shame that person, accuse them of not supporting our troops (which is completely different) or call the person unAmerican or unpatriotic. This behavior promotes a fascination with the military.

I saw this really ramp up when we went to Iraq like nothing I had ever scene. I think children being raised during those years were indoctrinated in a culture of militaristic attitudes. Coupled in with military video games, and a message that the gun is as American as apple pie. Literally, they see it as a birth right, and as an identifier as an American.

The military has a hard time recruiting enough people, we spend a fortune in recruitment. It’s a huge percentage of our military budget. It might sound a little conspiracy theorist, but I think some of the outrage regarding people speaking out against military actions is purposefully planted to trigger a firestorm of commentary. We are constantly being manipulated one way or the other. The government must know that little kids who grow up thinking guns are cool might be more likely to be police officers or soldiers. I really think there is method to the madness. Kill the bad guys right?

Okay, then. The reason we have so many school shootings is because of the military. The United States has a big military that terrorizes the world. Teens and young adult men often see this and are inspired to terrorize others. If the U.S. can impose its will on the more peaceful nations of the world, so can they. Anyone who resists is toast.

It is an unintentional but necessary flip-side to the subtle ways in which the military influences young people, on a subconscious level, to join the military.

@Yellowdog I get your point, but this statistic shows there is some correlation, which I believe is what @JLeslie is saying. I’m patriotic as all get out, trust me, but even my bro-in-law has PTSD and depression, which is real. My grandpa and uncles rarely talk/talked about their service, so I know they had some issues, too, no denying it. Grandpa said he wouldn’t tell me about what they found at the concentration camps, but he talked about it only once in my whole life. They need real help getting back to ‘normal’.

“Veterans account for 13 percent of the adult population, but more than a third of the adult perpetrators of the 43 worst mass killings since 1984 had been in the United States military. It is clear that, in the etiology of mass killings, military service is an important risk factor.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/opinion/veterans-and-mass-shootings.html

I wasn’t specifically talking about our soldiers committing the mass shootings, but I do always say that I think environment is more important than genetics when it comes to mental illness, and sending our men into war means a certain percentage of them will develop mental health issues. However, I don’t feel you have to be a soldier to be affected.

Children growing up in war like situations run great risks of being affected. This can be neighborhoods with street violence and drugs everywhere. Even simply having parents who are unreliable creates an insecurity issue for children. Constantly feeling unsafe, threatened, affects people. Glorifying military service and guns is another dimension. So, you tell people that a lot of people are against them, you help create high anxiety by telling them there is an immediate threat, then you feed them pride in owning a gun, and you fill the air with how glorious it is to defend yourself with guns, and you turn shoot outs into a look alike Hollywood scene, and it’s a bad recipe.

Everyone feels under threat if they listen to the scary people. White Christians feel like the powers at be want to secularism the nation. Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Muslims, are nervous for their safety and acceptance. I could go on. Every group now is on high anxiety. It’s not good.

The most recent gun incident where I live was a veteran. Just happens to be. They were able to disarm him without anyone getting hurt.

^Tension is definitely high, everywhere in the US. Luckily, we have a POTUS focused on unity, and peace. Oh wait…..

^^Yeah, the current guy capitalized on the anxiety out there. Pretty clever.

@Yellowdog I suppose if what you say about the military influencing shootings in the US would also mean that Israel would have the most shootings of any country since all adults there are required to perform military service. (In other words, I think your logic on that point is extremely flawed.)

@JLeslie I see no facts to support that “fear” of any kind incites mass killings. The only commonality is that they are all men and usually mad.
The articles I’m posting include some interesting insights. Or we can lock all the crazy men up haha!

“But my experience suggests that the outsize attention paid to the shooter’s particular beliefs obscures the real connections between mass shooters. What binds them together and elevates their likelihood of killing in this particular fashion is a history of antisocial, sometimes violent conduct, not any particular belief set…...before shooters actually kill, they usually assault, abuse or threaten people close to them, such as spouses or co-workers. They are often profoundly alienated from society…..Despite the fact that mass shooters often fit a clear profile, our background-check system is ill-equipped to stop people like this from buying guns.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/14/what-do-most-mass-shooters-have-in-common-hint-it-isnt-politics-video-games-or-religion/?utm_term=.a891e02599dc

Though the federal background check system’s (NICS) second largest body of records on people barred from buying guns is comprised of the mentally ill, none of this summer’s headline-making shooters met its standards for being judged mentally unfit for gun ownership — not even Houser, despite being well known to various local jurisdictions for his unsettling behavior. That’s not because they weren’t dangerous, as is now brutally clear. It’s because no judge or legal body adjudicated any of them mentally ill, the only way NICS blocks a potential purchaser on psychiatric grounds. To include people like Flanagan, Houser, Abdulazeez, or Roof in the database would require a substantial expansion of the criteria for qualifying as mentally unfit.
https://www.thetrace.org/2015/09/gop-mental-health-republican-trump/

Dr. Michael Stone, a New York forensic psychiatrist, found that about half of the 200 mass murderers he had studied had no clear evidence of mental illness before the attacks. About a quarter displayed signs of depression and psychopathy.
“What’s become clear over the past 30 years of research is that there’s virtually always a personal grievance that will start a person on a pathway to mass murder,” Dr. J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist who consults on threat assessment for universities and corporations, said in 2015.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/us/mass-murderers.html

*As a final comment, as a white christian, I’m not afraid of any secularism, other races, taking guns away or anything else. I think rather than being motivated by fear, the statistics show that it’s people who get angry and don’t find productive ways to try change things, which could be applied to many mindsets, many political.

@KNOWITALL I don’t think men being “mad” is any answer as to why “men” (or anyone else of any particular sex) kill indiscriminately. I get real mad sometimes but I don’t get a gun and start shooting. The “mad” you mention is insanity, pure and simple, and should be mentioned as such.

@kritiper Okay, so why are so many white men insane?

Kritiper: There IS no correlation—as I’ve stated over and over in this thread, the school shooters as well as the gangs have been influenced by video games and music (especially rap music—which teaches that someone else is responsible for your problems and the solution is to kill everyone. Every gangsta wannabe from twelve up in my neighborhood has a gun. Every school shooter blames someone for their problems in a similar way the gangs do.

Neither the school shooters nor the gangs have anything to do with the military. Discipline and authority are anathema to them.

@Yellowdog Of course there is no correlation: That’s what makes it insane. And you have it half right, the secondary part. The question you need to look at is “Why are they doing it?” What is the main, number one reason for their actions? Even if a sane person were to be influenced by whatever, sane, civil thinking keeps one from doing what is illegal, insane, and illogical. So what do they really want?
@KNOWITALL I don’t know, and I doubt anyone could say.
But it isn’t just “white men.” It is everybody, male and female. It is something in the water, or the air. Pollutants, possibly. Or there being just too many humans crowding the planet.
Men are graphic, violent creatures, more so than women. And the media makes us all more aware.

I think it’s a mental snapping, a result of too much social stress. These minds go on a wild spree with no logic involved, in a wild attempt to get themselves killed without having to do the deed to themselves.

Whatever it is, the fact remains that it is not sane! Draw your own conclusions as to why, or what causes it.
But keep in mind that some answers to some questions may be unattainable, unanswerable.