Guns: The Last Vestige of Male Dominance
by John Lawrence
When females run the world, hopefully soon, assault rifles will be off the streets in a New York minute. Toxic masculinity has been responsible for war and conflict resolution by violence since the world began. Gun manufacturers advertise, "Get your man card." Mamas don't want their babies to grow up to be mass murderers or the victims of mass murderers. They don't want their babies to go through life with PTSD from having participated in that primordial male occupation - war. Sure there are some masculinized females who have adopted a male consciousness and support war and dominance as a means of conflict resolution, but there are more who support diplomacy, understanding and empathy. Even Hillary Clinton had to prove she was "tough" by supporting the Iraq war because she wanted to run for President. There will be no peace and no love as long as men are in charge. Witness some of the nations on earth where females run things. New Zealand, Sweden and Denmark have female presidents or prime ministers. These ladies reside over relatively peaceful and enlightened nations. Nobody in their right mind would refer to the US as an "enlightened" nation although the enlightenment was supposedly over 200 years ago. At that time the US Constitution was written in such a way to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" for white male property owners only. The Constitution excluded African Americans and women who didn't get to vote till the 1920s. African Americans are still suffering generational effects from being excluded first by slavery, then by Jim Crow laws and later by red lining.
Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand got assault rifles off the streets in short order after a mass murder in new zealand. Ardern describes herself as a social democrat and a progressive. The Sixth Labour Government has faced challenges from the New Zealand housing crisis, child poverty, and social inequality. In March 2019, in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shootings, Ardern reacted with empathy and rapidly introduced strict gun laws, winning her wide recognition. Throughout 2020 she led New Zealand's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, for which she won praise for New Zealand being one of the few Western nations to successfully contain the virus. Ardern led the Labour Party to victory in the 2020 general election, gaining an overall majority of 65 seats in Parliament, the first time this has happened since the introduction of proportional representation in 1996.
Less than one month after a gunman killed 50 people in an attack on two mosques in Christchurch, the New Zealand Parliament voted to ban most semi-automatic and military-style weapons. The law makes it illegal to possess the prohibited weapons in New Zealand. Current owners of the now-banned firearms had a short period of time to return their weapons for compensation under a buyback program. If they didn't return them, they would face up to five years in prison. Speaking before lawmakers, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she knew her country would approve a ban after the police commissioner described the deadly nature of the guns used in the attack, which had been obtained legally and easily modified to hold more than 60 bullets per magazine. "I could not fathom how weapons that could cause such destruction and large-scale death could have been obtained legally in this country," Ardern said. She described visits to hospitals where dozens of victims were still recovering. "I struggle to recall any single gunshot wounds," she said. "In every case they spoke of multiple injuries. Multiple debilitating injuries that deemed it impossible for them to recover in days, let alone weeks. They will carry disabilities for a lifetime, and that's before you consider the psychological impact."
So now the Supreme Court is in the process of reverting the US to the Constitution as originally written where only white male property owners were in charge, the "Age of Enlightenment." Male dominance means that the only means of conflict resolution is by war or the threat of war. There is no such thing as peace. Power and strength is what prevents your neighbor from conquering you so why bother to empathize with your neighbor? The end of the Cold War was the biggest opportunity for bringing about a peaceful world. Gorbachev and Reagan hit it off and actually reduced nuclear weapons with the INF treaty. But their initiatives were never extended and capitalized on. Instead the US and the world reverted to hostility with Russia by extending NATO to Russia's border. It was an opportunity to create peace between the western world and Russia, but no a stance of power based containment ensued so that the Reagan-Gorbachev peace initiative ended up being almost entirely worthless with power politics becoming the operative policy as it always has been, and war is the culmination and outworking of power politics.
