Race, Rights & Rifles

Guns, Guns, Guns. In the United States gun violence and shootings in schools, supermarkets, and malls are widespread and have almost become routine. The country is flooded with weapons. Americans may be the most heavily armed people on earth. Fascination with guns has its roots in the American Revolution when notions of patriotism fused with a belief in white male supremacy and maintaining racial and gender hierarchies. It’s patriotic to possess a gun. The corpses keep piling up and the rulers do little to ameliorate the situation beyond mouthing platitudes such as “our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims.” It’s astonishing that a country with so many gun-related deaths does not enact meaningful regulation.

Recorded at the University of Oregon.

Speaker: Alexandra Filindra

Alexandra Filindra is an associate professor of political science and psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture.

Description from www.alternativeradio.org