Militarizing our language has gunned up our society
Another day, another shooting. The president says it has become all too routine. I say it has become all too real. Society has undergone a transformation from sport to war when it comes to guns. We have allowed the makers and marketers of the gun industry to systematically move us from a culture of the outdoors to one of militarization. We have become more interested in tactics or tests of terminal ballistics than in experiencing and telling a good hunting story. The conquest of noble game has become the conflict between human beings.
While many debate gun control and mental health services, I want approach the problem of gun violence from a different angle: war games. A brief survey, using word search on the websites of three big-box “outdoor” stores and three major online gun related hunting stores, reveals our shift of language and imagery. My search included the words tactical, assault, and sniper. The websites of these six stores revealed an average of 8,539 products related to “tactical.” An average of 50 items connected to “assault” and an average 342 things popped to the word “sniper.”
The language we use becomes not only a descriptor but also a predictor of our world. Just as we have witnessed the militarization of police forces since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as the surplus of the armed forces has been distributed to bolster our protection, we have seen a similar shift in the outdoor world as military gear and tactics has made its way into world of the everyday hunter and gun enthusiast.
As one scholar writes, “reality is the way we experience it, which is rarely how it actually is. And our experience of reality is largely a function of our beliefs about reality — how reality occurs for us and the language we use to describe reality.”
The shooting industry has convinced us we need an edge to stem our anxieties about security and modern life. My argument is that we are being convinced we need something we can do without. It is the need to pretend we are at war.
This pretending has produced a new reality. Our words, images and advertising sells us a bill of goods that is harmful to a civilized society. Our worries are not calmed but increased as we identify with military armament and tactics. We have created a world of enemies.
Regular people need more humanization and less militarization. Leave war to the warriors. If we continue to pretend we are at war, then we will be at war. Open-carry legislation in Texas is an example of such a self-fulfilling prophecy. While we have a right to own firearms, we do not necessarily need to continue down the path of imagined conflict.
The least stable members of our society find it hard to distinguish between the real and imaginary threats. While some are able to play war, much like a video game, and act out the scenarios of good guys and bad guys, others are driven further into a paranoia with predictable outcomes. Unable to sublimate aggression into play, play becomes aggression and the boundary between imagined and real is blurred — if not destroyed. People act out the words they see and use. A world of possible violence becomes a world of actual harm because we can no longer distinguish between the two.
If we continue to pretend we are at war, then we will be at war.