Why as a Nation are we so Violent? Essay

Submitted By EmilyVarner
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Pages: 6
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Why as a Nation are we so Violent? The essay that I have written is on the movie “Bowling for Columbine” it is also on the question that seemed to be asked many times during this movie and that is, why are we as Americans so violent? Throughout this essay I will discuss how we as a nation are different with violence compared to other countries. Along with that, I will also talk about the factors that come to play when violence erupts, along with the role of guns, the media’s play of the violence, and the role of corporations when the violence happens such as the Columbine Shooting. In addition I will address how we as Americans tend to isolate or even goes as far as to alienate ourselves from one another. The last thing will be discussed is the perspective of people and how just because you look or act a certain way you may perceived as something completely different. To begin this essay I would first like to consider how Americans differ from other countries in our violence rate. In the movie statistics are given to show just how many gun murders were committed in that year, here are some of those countries statistics from that year and the year 2005; United States: 11,127 /9,369, UK: 68/14, Canada: 165/144, Germany: 381/269, and Australia: 65/59. Though these statistics show that in other countries there murder with guns is much lower than ours the fact is that most of these countries have such strict laws against guns that it is nearly impossible to own a gun. With that said people tend to only look at the charts and see the that the rates here are extremely high and very low in other places, but they don’t seem to realize that the freedoms of the right to own guns are very little in those places, so of course the gun murder rate is low none of the people have guns to use to kill a person. The thing that stuck out to me about these statistics is the fact that they went down, one role that I believe may have played in this is it is before and after 9/11. That said the stricter gun laws after 9/11 might have something to with the U.S. statistic going down but doesn’t account for the other countries rates going down. Or does it? The way some people might see it is if a tragedy does occur it doesn’t only happen to one place or a group of people it effects everyone so not only do our gun laws and other weapon laws become stricter so do others. The next two paragraphs I will go into is how is the reaction when violence erupts whether the reaction comes from the media, communities, corporations, or the role of guns or even gun corporations. Media seems to play a huge role in advertising the violent crimes and putting them in people’s faces across the nation. They do this by constantly showing us all the bad that is happening and hardly any of the good that is out there. This can make for a very scared nation and with a scared country there isn’t much room for trust. Not that there isn’t any good in the media there is just way less there should be. Another thing that comes to play when violence erupts is that of a community, sure people come closer in times of tragedy, but does it also pulls us further apart from one another? By this I mean the mistrust of communities and how people start to grow fearful of their neighbors, all through tragedy. Corporations can be on either side of the violence they can be put right with the bad guys, and be portrayed as the money grabbers however they can also have a massive impact on regulations. Such a situation was shown when the two victims, Richard and Mark, went to the K-mart headquarters to ask them to please stop selling the bullets that were used to shoot them. The results of the guys asking K-mart to stop selling the bullets, that are still located inside of them, turned out to be successful with K-mart promising to stop selling the bullets. Most of the time guns and gun corporations are posed as the criminals throughout the violence
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