The gun is a cardinal piece of the American psyche. Organizations like InterArms, the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby have taken the lethal object and turned it into a totem of American independence. The right-to-bear-arms debate is profoundly intertwined with fears of losing white power.
The Second Amendment was written in a way that intentionally upheld the right for people to legally carry weapons — extermination included. In the decades leading up to the Bill of Rights’ ratification, the so-called well-regulated militia had already used rifles, muskets and other artillery to annihilate Indigenous people off the Atlantic Coast and enforce the slave codes through slave patrol militias.
The right to bear arms — like much American violence — was partially bred from the insidious American ambition to preserve whiteness.
Every point in American history where white Americans have anticipated being dethroned, they have clung to the gun. Some of the white working class worship the gun lobby for commodifying the one object that maintains their unassailable independence. There is a resentment towards prosperous immigrants for soiling their idealized white American dream of economic supremacy. As the demographic of people of color in America increases, so does a poor white person’s hunger to maintain power through violence. If the government took away their guns, they would officially surrender to a system that has left them in squalor. Guns give them a new, invigorated meaning to their life in America. It is one of armed strength and fierce loyalty to their white working-class clan.
The climate crisis has sprung survivalist cults around the nation — some of which are white supremacist groups. In their imagined scenario of societal collapse, people of color flee the lawless scramble of a collapsing city to enter the rural, majority-white countryside. These cults fantasize about blockading their rural towns from people of color with weapons — especially assault-style guns. Even in an imagined future, people of color are scapegoated and guns are the eternal totems of white supremacy.
According to American scholar Richard Slotkin, blood sacrifice has become integral to the American identity. The story of the American frontier plants a firm idea in citizens that the real America was born through blood being drawn. A nation is cleansed and built by subjugating a group of people with weaponry. This lust for the blood of the enemy is certainly maintained overseas. The United States has slaughtered inhabitants in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Libya — the list goes on. In lieu of white supremacy, guns are being used here to protect American exceptionalism.
Based on the findings of Psychology Today, Americans are 10 times more likely to be killed by guns than people in other developed countries. The United States owns half of the guns in the world. Compared to other high-income nations, the American gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher; the gun-related suicide rate is eight times higher. When the American gun lobby makes assault-style weapons readily accessible, the American entitlement to gun ownership only exacerbates.
Guns will never stop circulating the nation — there are more guns than people. But state-by-state harm reduction through careful regulation is effective. While it is federally mandated for licensed dealers to set a minimum age of 21 to buy a handgun, long guns are not under that mandate. A long gun has the stock resting against the shoulder while aiming and is typically a rifle or a shotgun. Because they are fastened for hunting and sport shooting, 37 states allow individuals under 21 to purchase one with proper screening.
However, an AR-15-style rifle — a long gun — is involved in a significant number of high-profile mass shootings in the United States. The AR-15 was used in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, the 2018 Parkland shooting and the 2022 Uvalde shooting. In all of these AR-15 mass shootings, the shooter was under the age of 21. A minimum age for all firearm sales, long guns included, should be set to 21. Easy gun accessibility to young Americans directly contributes to mass shootings.
As long as white supremacy exists and guns stay accessible, there will be an inevitable interlink between gun violence and the preservation of white power. People’s willful ignorance to American gun violence and the rooted history of white power will no doubt continue in this country of herded individuals.
Isabella Ehring is an Opinion Apprentice for the winter 2025 quarter. She can be reached at iehring@uci.edu.
Edited by Jaheem Conley.