Conflicting Gun Violence Narratives

So, a couple of years ago, the jiu jitsu on the Right about gun violence against blacks was the standard “We need more guns” panacaea that always comes from Gun Culture.  Here’s the inimitable Ann Coulter issuing the standard party line: All would be well if black people went around armed to the teeth, ready to fight off violence against them.Sarah Silverman saw comedy gold in this and did not hesitate to exploit it.But, of course, she is a godless left winger so the mantra went marching on that it is vital to get as much technology of mass slaughter into as many hands as possible, because free citizens will need it when Obama sends the 101st Airborne in to impose shariah law and march us into concentration camps.The vision of the Uprising of Citizen Soldiers against the imminent totalitarian regime is one of the most cherished myths of gun culture, enabling it to overlook 30,000 real deaths every year in favor of the millions of imaginary deaths it will prevent when ObamaHitler comes to take all our guns. Only, well, here’s the thing: when the Police really do behave like Police State police, killing unarmed black kids, arresting politicians and journalists who are trying to see what they are up to, and behaving exactly like the occupying army of NRA fantasies, suddenly the scenari0 becomes concrete–and not at all according to plan for a lot of gun culture.  As a reader wrote:You’re living in a neighborhood where men in bulletproof vests who have already killed an unarmed teenager which is how this whole thing started, are at war with your friends and neighbors. They’re setting off flash grenades (which can cause burns and injuries), they’re spewing tear gas directly at people in their own yards, they’re driving around in