American Cowardice... or just a lack of vision.
by Nicolai Tolstoy
What are Americans afraid of? Why do they need so many guns? The American military, undoubtedly capable of repelling any invaders, is free to spend most of its time policing other parts of the world. So who are all those guns necessary to defend against?
Why does America love guns so much? It's a question which demands to be asked in the light of the latest mass murder in an American school. And it's a vexing question indeed. How is it that a nation that is so vocal about how much it loves its children is so irresponsible when it comes to making firearms available for those same children to use on each other? The two don't add up.
It's difficult to understand when observing from another country where gun violence is virtually nonexistent. But one question always arises: why do they need so many guns? What deficiency are Americans trying to make up for through their obsession with guns? Have Americans not yet matured beyond their wild west history? Or is it a result of a national siege mentality?
Most Americans when asked to speak on the subject of the need for guns will say that guns ensure their freedom. From the outside looking in though it's easy to see through such a flimsy statement. Americans are not free. They are free to call their politicians bad names. Free to choose which cola to consume, but Americans do not enjoy true freedom. On the contrary, Americans are prisoners of their own ideology. And that ideology takes the form of fear. And that incarceration as it were, makes them not a lot unlike Communist China or Soviet Russia. Ironic.
The fact is that Americans, through their heralded freedom, have created a nation whose intituitions increasingly resemble a prison. In fact the American mind seems to increasingly resemble a prison.
It would seem that there are two possible ways (surely there are infinitely more) to deal with the world and all its inherent complexity. The first would be to open up and embrace the universe accepting it for what it is and loving it.
The second would be to close oneself to the complexity and let fear, loathing and hatred dictate one's thoughts, beliefs and actions.
Judging by the phenomenom of American children murdering each other with guns in so-called safe places like schools, and American adults' seemingly ineffectiveness in dealing with such a phenomenon, America has chosen the latter.
Or perhaps Americans simply can't visualize a world without guns.
And fear.
Copyright 1999 by Nicolai Tostoy All Rights Reserved
Nicolai Tolstoy was born in the United States in 1966. He has lived in Europe, Africa, Russia and South America. At university he studied philosophy. He currently spends his time in North America photographing the Atlantic Coast.