Are Guns a Myth?

Once you have read and annotated the essays about guns and mythology, You will look at a definition of mythology, a long quote from one of the essays you have read, and then you will answer two questions as a reflection on the reading and thinking that you have been doing about guns and mythology.

Read and Analyze
Look at the following definition of myth:

A myth is a narrative, responsive to or expressive of a super/supra reality (often the divine), which addresses the concerns of an ultimate reality*. A myth seeks to codify/ clarify/ qualify/ contextualize what the listener accepts to be real.

* Ultimate reality is that which is “final” in its power, definitive in its consequence; something that a group of people accepts as a) existing objectively and b) possessing transcendent importance (importance beyond the practical, immediate functions of the moment). Myth is a story type that is also, more broadly, a sociological term applied to “narratives” that either mimic or elicit the intent and/or the effect associated with the original story type.

From Myth and Folklore by David Prisk, shared under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 (Links to an external site.) license.

Looking at the following quote from “Who Puts Guns in the Movies?”
Still, no hard statistics can prove a link between gun purchases and video games, and the overwhelming majority of academics agree there’s no credible cause-and-effect relationship between the consumption of violent media — games, films or TV — and an increase in gun violence.

“If it’s a factor, it’s 25th out of 25 factors on a list,” says University of Wisconsinprofessor Constance Steinkuehler, who studies video games, education and game based learning. “Poverty, mental health issues and gun control are all much more significant.” “I haven’t found much evidence that watching violent movies or playing violent video games makes people angry, more aggressive or is even correlated to violent crime,” says Stetson University psychology professor Christopher Ferguson, who has published widely on the subject. In fact, the opposite may be true. A 2014 study out of Villanova University entitled “Violent Video Games and Real-World Violence: Rhetoric Versus Data” notes that when new versions of popular video games are released — including especially violent ones such as Call of Duty — violent crime among young people drops considerably because so many kids are attached to their game consoles, at least for a while.

Still, I can’t shake the thought that the media help boost familiarity with weapons, which breeds increased popularity. And it isn’t the fault of Hollywood and the video game industry alone; toss the news and social media into the mix as well. Consider that in the days after the Orlando massacre, when it was erroneously reported that the shooter, Omar Mateen, had used an AR – 15, Google searches for that weapon spiked. When it became clear he had used a Sig Sauer MCX, searches for that weapon spiked. People wanted to see the gun he’d used, and some almost certainly bought one for themselves, which brings us back to the gun – loving liberals of Hollywood and their most powerful weapon of all: stories.

For millennia, stories — especially hero tales — have been used to influence and reflect human life. Joseph Campbell, anthropologist and author of the seminal Hero With a Thousand Faces, became famous for documenting the hero’s journey in myths and legends from cultures around the world. George Lucas consciously integrated Campbell’s work into Star Wars. Legions of filmmakers followed suit, and today’s heroes are almost always armed for their journey with a gun.

“I think Call of Duty enables gamers to act out fantasies of empowerment — to be a hero and live an epic life — in a fictionalized world,” Steinkuehler says, “and to be honest, that doesn’t frighten me.”

But what if the unhinged among us are telling themselves their own hero story? Didn’t a crazed Gavin Long — who, don’t forget, was a marine — see himself as a hero on the day he killed three cops in Baton Rouge? What about Mateen in Orlando or Micah Johnson, another veteran, in Dallas?

Assignment:

1. Do you believe that guns have been mythologized in American culture? Support your ideas with quotes or summaries from at least three of the essays/mp3, as well as from the definition of mythology supplied at the top of this page.
2. Are guns an important part of the 20th and 21st century hero’s journey? Explain why or why not, and how you have come to this conclusion