Thread by @DavKat43

1) Underappreciated fact: people process news stories as if they are events in a narrative arc. Ie things that happen have to fit in with the stories that already exist in their head, otherwise they are mildly discomforting & quickly ignored.
Trump & co have open the story book

2) of cultural homogeneity. Where things that look the same are safe, and things that are visibly & culturally divergent are unsafe.
So they can process gun massacres such as the one in San Bernardino & Orlando because they can fit it into their story arc. The villain is the

‘Other’. Other massacres such as Charleston & Sandy Hook and Parkland are stories that do not fit in appropriately to their story template. So ordinarily they would assume their place amongst the dismissed details on their psychological cutting room floor. No place. But here we

have the disruptive factor: the Parkland students. Who have seized the nation’s attention by the lapels & shouted in our faces ‘we were hunted with an assault weapon in our school’ . They have shouted ‘how was this allowed’. They shouted ‘We call BS’. Now for those who are

habituated to ignoring the role of the enormous proliferation of guns & valorisation of the shooting of things/people in the US..this is difficult to fold into the story. There has to be an element of ‘other’, of the ‘not us’.

So the shooter’s mental instability becomes of prime importance here as a point of divergence from the ‘us’. The NRA spokesperson dwelt strongly on how such a ‘monster’ should not have been able to get a weapon.

He is ‘othered’, all the rest of us may safely be supposed to deserve access to high powered weaponry. And they would like us to co-operate with this telling of the story.

Only ‘monsters’ snap...and as long as we are impressed by this narrative.. and don’t examine facts such as this one: women who have a gun in their home are significantly more at risk of having that gun turned on them. Then we will be ok, & compliant with our leaders.

As a mother, I can say that I snap quite frequently, and that I may switch from being a gentle, patient, obviously loving mother to an exasperated, shrewish & impatient mother who yells about shoes. Writ large, the duality of human nature allows for a lot of variability.

Guns and the dichotomy of human nature do not play well together, and whilst most people would not go to a public space and hunt their peers to death, many people with transient suicidal thoughts have suffered from ready access to weapons.

And many men in domestic relationships have suffered from a ready access to guns, & their partners have suffered significantly more. The NRA is willing to call any civilian who misuses a gun a ‘monster’.

And I am ready to say ‘the massive proliferation & fetishisation of guns in American society means there are many more monsters. Many ‘monsters’ who spend most of their lives with their darker sides behind the wall of a well socialised temper. But when there are guns on the shelf

and when firing a gun is a powerful and pleasurable act..then the neural path to that gun on the shelf is etched out. And many many ‘monsters’ or are therefore that much closer to death.
Not their own death.

The NRA spokesperson likes to say “we don’t want monsters like that to have any access to guns”.
They only become the monster in that instant they pick up the gun that day they snap.

So the NRA will not see sales figures affected by a test for excluding ‘monsters’ because there is no such test. ‘Monster’ is a post-mass-shooting label.

We need to look for avenues to control the narrative ourselves, as the Parkland students have done.

I read a description of the cultural promotion of motherhood, as used to good promotional effect by Dana Loesch of theNRA. She is a Mother. She wants to help Children Because she is a Mother. And Emma Gonzales was able to turn the table on that arc instantly, during the TownHall

Emma said something like “We will work to protect your two children, even if you can’t”.
She emphatically underlined the better dedication that she and her fellow activists have to protecting young people than, *gasp* the Mother! And this upending of the expected deference is

A Masterclass for the rest of us in how not to get sucked into the ‘story’ sold by our foes. Yes foes. Because the narrative they tell us about the guns being good for home use, for self defence, for women’s safety. The research says it is BS. The statistics say it is BS.

Many heard the historic speech by Emma Gonzales and there was relief &recognition. The false story fell away in sheets. Adding more guns to America has not made it safer. How wonderful to be able to hear the truth for once, and not to have to wrestle uncomfortably with falsehoods

I would like to conclude with these two memes.