America doesn’t simply have a gun problem. America has a violence problem.
A Country At War
In 2020 author Charles Beuck wrote, “In the entire history of the United States of America there has been a grand total of 15 years when we have not been at war with someone. Big wars. Small wars. Wars waged on the open seas, in small rivers, across sandy hills, through dense trees, and high in the sky. The United States has engaged in the all.”
Author Sabir Shah, writing in the same year, puts the number at closer to 18, but the conclusion is fairly similar: “This means that the United States has been at war for more than 92 per cent of the time since its birth.”
But the violence and bloodshed started long before 1776. In fact, they started as early as 191 years prior in 1585, with Sir Walter Raleigh’s failed attempt “to establish a permanent North American settlement with the purpose of harassing Spanish shipping, mining for gold and silver, discovering a passage to the Pacific Ocean, and Christianizing the Indians” with the Roanoke colonies.
Even prior to that, Christopher Columbus left a swath of destruction in his wake. Instead of going that far back, let’s start at the beginning of the American Indian Wars. The settlers of Jamestown, Virginia, first arrived in 1607, and set up what would become the first permanent American colony.
The hardships began almost immediately. Failed crops and harsh winters threatened to doom the expedition from the start. No one was untouched. “ ‘The adventurers who ventured their capital lost it,” the historian Edmund S. Morgan has written. “Most of the settlers who ventured their lives lost them. And so did most of the Indians who came near them.’ “
The local Algonquian-speaking Native Americans led by Chief Powhatan (Wahunsonacock) felt threatened by the arriving Europeans, and this led to the beginning of the American Indian Wars. These wars would last well into the 19th century, with the last major conflict being the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, seeing the slaughter of at least 150 Sioux in South Dakota by the American Army.
“Though Indians helped colonial settlers survive in the New World, helped Americans gain their independence and ceded vast amounts of land and resources to pioneers, tens of thousands of Indian and non-Indian lives were lost to war, disease and famine, and the Indian way of life was almost completely destroyed.”
With the success of tobacco crops in Jamestown, a new need arose: labor. This would bring rise to the first white, indentured servants in America, and would serve as the precursor to slavery.
While battles among the British, French and Spanish existed throughout the colonization of North America, the seeds for the Revolutionary War would be planted in 1763, when Great Britain introduced heavy taxes on the colonies to pay for its debts incurred during the French and Indian War.
The first battle of the Revolutionary War would kick off in the Battle of Lexington and Concord, where Massachusetts colonists would successfully thwart a British raid to seize munitions in the Spring of 1775.
While Congress would adopt the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, war with Great Britain would continue for another seven bloody years, ending with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783.
While it isn’t really possible to know how many people died in the war, it is known that the majority died of diseases such as dysentery, malaria and smallpox on both sides. With 165 known principal engagements, the American Battlefield Trust estimates 6800 American battlefield deaths, 6100 wounded and a whopping 17,000 died from disease. British totals are estimated at 24,000, including the aforementioned causes and the missing.
America would end the 1700’s with the Quasi War with France. This was an undeclared naval war between the two countries, largely having to do with trade and France feeling we weren’t dealing with them fairly. The Quasi Wars ended with the Treaty of Mortefontaine in September of 1800.
The United States would once again engage with Great Britain by declaring war against them in 1812 over territories in Canada. The war ended with the Treaty of Ghent in 1814. Although thousands died or were wounded, there was no clear victor.
1846 would mark the beginning of the Mexican-American war, starting when Mexico refused to recognize the annexation of Texas. This would prove to be a much more costly war in terms of loss of life and injuries (over 17k in total), but it was a huge win for America in terms of land gained from Mexico, with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.
“The pact set a border between Texas and Mexico and ceded California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming to the United States. Their transfer to the United States’ control also cut the territorial size of Mexico in half.” Mexico was paid just over $18 million for the land.
With the American Indian wars still waging, America was about to enter its costliest war, the Civil War in 1861 “The human cost of the Civil War was beyond anybody’s expectations. The young nation experienced bloodshed of a magnitude that has not been equaled since by any other American conflict.” Roughly 620,000 people, and estimated 2% of the population, lost their lives. One in four soldiers would never return home in the four years it raged.
Stating the loss of lives of Americans during the Civil War should in no way diminish the appalling and significantly larger Native American loss of lives. “Around 12 million indigenous people died within present US geographical boundaries between 1492 and 1900, according to Russell Thornton in American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492.” While violence was perpetrated against Native Americans in a myriad of ways, most of these deaths the epidemiological in nature, even some of these were intentional.
With the Civil War and the American Indian Wars in its rear view mirror, America would end the 1800s the Spanish American War in 1898, when Spain declared war on America. It was a quick war, ending the year it began with the relatively small loss of life of approximately 387 dead. With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in the same year, America would not only emerge victorious, it would gain the territories of Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico
Almost concurrently, America was engaged in the Banana Wars (1898-1934) and the Philippine-American War (1899-1902).in the interests of U.S. business.
At this point, America had been at war for almost 200 years.
The 20th century would prove to be no different. The U.S. would enter WWI in 1917 (the war ended in 1918), and WWII in 1941 (ending in 1945). Following the end of WWII, the U.S. would enter a Cold War with Soviet Union that would last until 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Other wars in this decade include Korea (1950-1953), and Vietnam (1955-1975).
This is by no means a comprehensive list, and the U.S. interferes with different countries in a myriad of ways. However, looking at the data from a statistical standpoint, it appears, over time, that the U.S. is getting more aggressive.
“If we look at the distribution of the 392 U.S. military interventions since 1800 reported by the Congressional Research Service in October 2017 by fifty-year increments, the data show a dramatic increase: from 1800–1849 there were thirty-nine interventions; forty-seven from 1850–1899; sixty-nine from 1900–1949; 111 from 1950–1999.” While each of these represents a period of 50 years, the data from 2000-2017 shows 126 interventions in a mere 17 years.
“If we further refine the data to compare Cold War and post–Cold War intervention rates, something truly striking emerges: while the United States engaged in forty-six military interventions from 1948–1991, from 1992–2017 that number increased fourfold to 188.”
After the Cold War, one could argue that interventions were no longer necessary as both ideological and material existential threats to the security of the U.S. were no longer on the table.
On a world stage, America had established itself as fairly untouchable. No other country was going to beat us in a direct armed conflict. Of course, this forced them to deal with us in other ways. Countries have done this by exploiting U.S. vulnerabilities in ways that would not provoke the U.S. into a military assault, i.e., cyber intrusions, business dealings, international agreements, etc. While other countries seem to have adopted these strategies to great effect, the U.S. stubbornly continues on its physically aggressive path.
“The United States does not view itself as an aggressor state, but with the brief exception of the Obama administration (2009–16), whose core energies were absorbed with holding the U.S. and global economy together along with mitigating the impact of two unwinnable wars, the United States has become both more interventionist and less likely to cleave to its core principles of opposing genocide (e.g. Rwanda, Darfur) and abiding by the rule of law (e.g. Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib). It has fought two fantastically costly wars, won neither, and then insisted that Iran not acquire the means to defend itself.”
These aggressions arguably make us less safe, as countries can increasingly look at us as a threat to the international order. A more sane, less violent country would look to strengthening the country from within.
“[T]he ideal U.S. counter to Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and North Korean strategies is to avoid the preventive use of armed force (thus repudiating the post 9-11 strategy of offense as defense) and to devote a greater share of resources to resilience: to effective education, infrastructure innovation, health care reform, food security and equitable economic growth.”
Obviously, our country has chosen violence over resilience. This is perfectly encapsulated by the U.S. choosing to engage in a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, pushing us to the brink of WWIII. Instead of resilience, we have chosen to pour tens of billions of dollars into Ukraine when our own citizens are facing crises and education along with crippling student debt; crumbling infrastructure; zero health care reform in a country where people more and more frequently base health care decisions on cost rather than need and an unprecedented number of deaths is a pandemic; and an economy that lines the pockets of billionaires and weapons manufacturers while the cost of fuel in some places has exceeded the minimum wage.
The Rise of Christian Nationalism
But violence in our country exists at levels beyond our government. In fact, it is a part of the fabric of our society.
Christians came and they brought violence. Different forms of Christian faith came to American shores, and they oftentimes regarded each other with skepticism, but violence wasn’t out of the question. White supremacy was sometimes part of the equation.
As early as 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, 19 people were hanged to death by their Christian neighbors. Five more died in prison awaiting trial, and one elderly man was crushed to death with stones
“In Virginia, where the Anglican Church was established, political and religious authorities took an especially harsh approach to dissenters. They put a number of legal requirements in place that made it difficult for dissenters to build churches and get preaching licenses. Many Baptists simply ignored these requirements. They suffered accordingly. Dozens of Baptist preachers were put in jail in Virginia in the 1760s and 1770s. One of them, James Ireland, was arrested for illegal preaching in Culpeper, Virginia, and was mercilessly hounded by anti-Baptist thugs.”
In 1782, militiamen in the Ohio territories brutally attacked the German Moravian mission station at Gnadenhütten that they believed was helping Delaware Indians to attack frontier settlers. No one was spared and over 100 men, women and children were massacred.
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) can trace its roots back to Tennessee in 1865. Since its inception it has spawned innumerable like-minded hate groups filled with racist ideologies.
Contrary to assertions made otherwise, our Founding Fathers did not create a Christian nation. ”There were Christians among the Founders – no deists – but the key Founders who were most responsible for the founding documents (Declaration of Independence and Constitution) and who had the most influence were theistic rationalists. They did not intend to create a Christian nation. Not a single Founding Father made such a claim in any piece of private correspondence or any document.”
In fact, religion really didn’t play a role in government until Dwight D. Eisenhower became president. President Eisenhower is the only president to ever be baptized while in office in 1953, and he did it when he was 62. Eisenhower had a very close relationship with Reverend Billy Graham and brought him into the White House as a spiritual advisor.
He brought prayer into the White House first with his inaugural address, then with Cabinet meetings, and even instituted a National Prayer Breakfast. During his presidency, “in 1954, Congress inserted “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance and later made “In God We Trust” the official motto of the United States, even placing these words on the paper currency.”
Christian nationalism has its roots deeply in our society, and where our government is concerned, it has been mostly used to advance the causes of white Christians. “After the Civil War and throughout the years of Jim Crow, Christian leaders routinely provided the theological arguments needed to rationalize limiting Black Americans’ access to participation in the democratic process. They explicitly tied these efforts to their desire to protect the purity of a “Christian” nation.”
Reverend Liz Theoharis, co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign, said that this kind of messaging reinforces beliefs that “that God loves White Christian America, favors small government and big business, and rewards individualism and entrepreneurship, but meanwhile the poor, people of color, immigrants, queer people, women — [are] blamed for society’s problems.”
Increasingly, as Christian nationalism infiltrates our government, especially after 9/11, the concept has been dangerously intertwined with ideas of patriotism and what it means to be a “true” patriot. After 9/11, white evangelicals became locked in with the Republican party. While President George Bush, Jr. did little to advance their cause, the mere presence of Obama did, and the Tea Party movement rose in opposition to him.
“The tea party turned out to be a warmup for Donald Trump, who made white evangelicals his most fervent supporters as he constructed an America First ideology based on Islamophobia, closed borders, beggar-thy-neighbor tariffs and religious liberty for his religious supporters. What fireside chats were for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency, political rallies were for Trump’s. The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol was their apotheosis.”
The Past and Present Violent Legacy of Slavery
The precursor to slavery in America, indentured servitude, came to America almost as quickly as the first colonies. As America quickly began to grow and acquire mass amounts of land, this was no longer a viable option.
The first documented slaves were stolen from a Portuguese ship by a privateer, and sold to Jamestown in 1619 in exchange for food. While technically, these first arrivals were classified as indentured servants, it wasn’t because of the largess of their new owners. It was simply because laws had yet to be written to classify them as slaves. This changed in 1662, when Virginia codified that children born to enslaved mothers were now the property of the mother’s owner.
While indentured servants were the majority throughout the majority of the 17th century, the decline in indentured servants around 1680, led to an explosion in the African slave trade. By the middle of the 18th century, slaves not only existed in all 13 colonies, but there mere existence was intertwined with the agricultural economy of the Southern states.
As I have written previously, “slavery was as American as apple pie. Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 41 were believed to own slaves. Eight of the first twelve Presidents owned slaves while in office, and additional 4 Presidents had slaves when they were not in office.”
In January of 1807, Congress acted to abolish the African slave trade. Again, this was not out of the goodness of anyone’s heart, but rather that with 4 million African slaves in the south alone, the populations was self-sustaining. It also did not address slave trade within the states, so that practice continued.
It wouldn’t be until 1865 and the conclusion of a bloody Civil War that slavery itself would be abolished.
“By 1865, some 12 million Africans had been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, and more than one million of these individuals had died from mistreatment during the voyage. In addition, an unknown number of Africans died in wars and forced marches directly resulting from the Western Hemisphere’s demand for enslaved people.”
Freed slaves, however, were rarely met with open arms, and the KKK was founded in the same year. The legacy of slavery continues to this day. From horrific erasures of thriving black towns with unchecked violence such as the Tulsa massacre in 1921, to the modern day lynching of Emmet Till in 1955 black people have often had a difficult time assimilating.
Of course, it is not because they have not wanted to or have not tried. Heroes like Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr have also always existed, yet however hard they have worked for equal opportunity and access, they have most often been thwarted, whether by individuals, and even governments up to the Federal level.
We see the violence of slavery perpetuated and maintained in our current carceral system comprised predominantly of private prisons where prisoners are predominately black and people of color.
The racism doesn’t seem far from politicians lips, even at the highest levels of government. Documented racist statements from Presidents following the Civil War include Andrew Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and most recently Donald Trump. Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986. President Bill Clinton signed the 1994 Crime Bill with then Vice President Joe Biden as its chief architect. (You can read more about the effects of these legislations here.)
The Gunslinger
Of course, we can’t have a discussion regarding the violence that pervades our society without having a conversation about guns.
Guns have quite literally been a part of the fabric of our society since its inception. They helped create the United States. One could argue that the early settlers would have never have survived without them. Whether it was routing the native populations, hunting for food or protecting oneself, guns had our back.
They also provided us the necessary power to fight the tyrannical British off. We were born of gun power. That power was so necessary for our survival, that the Founding Fathers codified our Right to Bear Arms.
“[I]n 813 itemized male inventories from the 1774 Jones national database, guns are listed in 54% of estates, compared to only 30% of estates listing any cash, 14% listing swords or edged weapons, 25% listing Bibles, 62% listing any book, and 79% listing any clothes.” Guns were more fundamental to lives in early America than even cash.
As time progressed, so did the fire power of guns. Prior to the Civil War, people only had single-shot rifles such as the blunderbuss and matchlock musket.
As we moved West, gunsmithing also became important, and the American long rifle was born. To this day it is an important part of the American frontier iconography, famously displayed in depictions of such men like Daniel Boone.
While long-guns were well-adapted to the needs of the frontier, they were not effective in battles. New, more quickly reloadable flintlocks were created by famous gunsmiths Remington and Derringer in the early 1800s. Later in the century would come the Colt.45 revolver and the Winchester repeating rifles, guns purported to have “won the West.” Smith and Wesson would also produce a popular repeating revolver.
The other innovation Colt brought to the table was the ability to mass produce guns. The 1800’s would also see the introduction of the first automatic weapons, including the Gatling and Maxim guns. Of course, the constant need for more effective, deadlier and faster guns has never ceased since.
Aside from the material fact of guns, there is also the lore that surrounds them. Aside from Daniel Boone, famous frontiersmen include the likes of Kit Carson, David Crockett, James “Grizzly” Adams and James Bowie, to name just a few.
The 1800s would also give rise to infamous gunslingers: Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, Henry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid), Doc Holliday, Jesse James, and Wild Bill Hickok. Again, just to name a few. And while gunslingers included both the outlaws and the men who pursued them, it seems the outlaws are generally more famous. In the above list, Wyatt Earp and Bill Hickok are the only lawmen. While Earp and Holliday died of natural causes, the rest died violently at the end of a gun.
All of the above-mentioned frontiersmen and gunslingers have been memorialized by Hollywood, and it is important to note how important Hollywood has been in perpetuating gun culture in America.
How many of us of a certain age played Cowboys and Indians or quoted Dirty Harry while pointing a toy gun saying, “Go ahead. Make my day.”?
Nobody thought Rambo was a sociopathic killer as he tore apart both Soviets and Vietnamese in First Blood Part II (85). He was a hero. Of course, after the release of Red Dawn (84), we imagined ourselves fighting off the evil Russkies in our neighborhoods.
Justin A. Joyce, author of Gunslinging Justice: The American Culture of Gun Violence in Westerns and the Law, spoke to Shirley Li of The Atlantic earlier this year. He told Li that Westerns “thrived because they validated the gun as a solution for conflicts that the legal system couldn’t handle. When a hero in a film fires a gun and ends the life of a villain, that’s very reassuring to the popular imagination,” Joyce said. “It helps reassure [American audiences] that the individual has the power to solve things.”
“Whether you are a gun owner or not, folks in America are raised to reify the power of the individual, and guns work as a symbol in that way,” Joyce explained. ”The empowerment the character feels in the movie while brandishing a gun, is attractive to viewers as we place ourselves in their shoes.”
Conclusion
Violence and guns are an inextricable part of not only the bloody birth of this country, but how it and we behave to this day. The solution to gun violence and mass shootings cannot simply be addressed by limiting the type of guns people have access to. That can only be one part of a much bigger picture in a country where one could recently more easily buy a gun than a can of baby formula.