As the country deals with continuing controversies over gun-related violence, racial divisions tied to police actions, and bigotry against members of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, the embrace of firearms and rationalizations of killing people in the street by some is tied to power narratives that have long, deep roots in American culture. The fear of being a victim of crime drives people to accept some truly awful ideas as truth. Because when one reduces crime policy to revenge fantasies where one can run over a protester without consequence, and general access to weapons is justified as being necessary in case “a good guy with a gun” needs to stop a madman, it doesn’t take much to realize it’s all built on a very deluded, but politically effective, fantasy.
It’s a fantasy built upon long-held narratives of revenge that cast the average citizen as a lonely hero amid chaos, their gun simultaneously a symbol of freedom and savior from doom. This vision of American life accentuates a need for power that’s tied to a form of masculinity that ventures into the toxic.
The fantasy nurtures ideas found at the heart of the conservative movement: Government is portrayed as a bureaucratic nightmare that is too corrupt, inept, or overwhelmed to help its citizens. “Bleeding-heart liberals'' are villains who care more about the rights of criminals than the suffering of victims. Strength and force are virtues essential to the fantasy because people can’t (and shouldn’t) depend on the government for services or protection. Instead of trying to deescalate violence, the philosophy plays into ego and displays of strength, pushing the option to “stand your ground” and legitimizing millions of scared people walking around with their weapons and their biases like tragedies waiting to happen. And to rationalize the cruelty, mistakes, discrimination, and loss of life that may flow from such a decision, the fantasy ultimately plays into the worst stereotypes, spreading a message that believes the worst about the people in one’s community for one irrelevant or bogus reason or another. The result is a society where white flight from cities becomes a norm and a justice system that “exalts a white person’s fear over a Black person’s life.”
Some of these fantasies have played out on screens for the better part of a century, but the underlying ideas have long been embedded into our cultural fabric. They’re the same narratives with which the media covers crime, discusses police power, and attempts to dictate the value of a person’s humanity. These narratives have become the dominant way in which a significant chunk of the country perceives and relates to such topics, particularly as conservatives make it a talking point to link any crime increases to protests over criminal justice reform.