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gun violence

Ditching the Rubric on Gun Control: Notes from an American Moderate

Here's the trouble: in America, our unique history of rebellion (against colonial rule, against domestic tyranny), expansion (westward, etc.), and individualism (the Enlightenment and all that) leaves us a peculiar cultural legacy. Our gun control debate, like our ongoing discourses on race and our role as a superpower, is uniquely American in its construction; it depends on our on-going historical disagreements over the precise balance of power in the social contract, and over the idea of voluntary democratic rule.