Notion forms of power

GUN CONTROL

I'm going to talk about the notion of "Places and forms of power", first of all I will give you a definition of this notion. To me, the notion of places is about big and sometimes political sites where people can apply power such as The White House, the Elysée Palace, the Pentagon, The House of commons. The notion of forms is more general we can make out different kinds of power for instance, political power, legislative power, executive power.
In order to illusrate the notion, we worked in class on gun control in the US.I wonder why are Americans really divided concerning "the right to bear an arm" as it is written in the second amendment of the American Constitution?  

We will see that the ideo of freedom is closely linked to the notion of power.  

This document is an excerpt taken from a book written by Michael Bellesiles and published in 2000. It's entitled a gun culture. It raises the issues of gun culture and gun control in America.The author tries to account for the origins of gun culture in the US  The text starts with  examples. First, on march 24, 1998, two boys named Adrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson they were eleven and thirteen. One day, they went to school but they had three rifles and seven pistols, they shot at everyone. They killed four children one teacher and wounded ten other people. We can see two pictures, there are the front covers of two famous American magazines. They are two photographs of Andrew Golden; one when he was a toddler and one when he was a teenager. He is wearing a battle dress and he has a gun. They were Christmas presents; it shows that In America some children grow up with guns.
We can say that guns were part of his daily life since he was a baby. Then, Bellesiles alludes to the shootings at Columbine High School. It happened in Colorado in 1999. In the first two paragraphs, he has an informative tone while he expresses his feelings in the third paragraph, he seems to be outraged by the  parent's attitude. He doesn't understand how parents can offer weapons for christmas. Guns symbolize violence, death whereas Christmas symbolizes family, joy, life.
He speaks about today's situation in the Us. He gives statistics and figures he has a more general vision of the situation. He makes comparisons to show that more people die in the US because of guns than in one week in Europe in one year; it indicates that guns are a big and general problem in the US. This problem has made  elementary schools establish metal detectors to prevent children from bringing  guns to school. Finally Bellesiles tries to find the causes of this problem. First, guns are part of their culture as we can see inAmerican movies. Then, the American media focus on sensional news such as robberies, murders and car chases. People feel in danger so they think they have to protect themselves. In fact, the media create a climate of fear and paranoia. Moreover, video games are more and more violent and they train children to kill other people without thinking.

This document shows the huge problem of guns. This is the other aspect of guns in the Us. Americans see this right as a freedom but we have the impression that American aren't aware of the danger of firearms.

Now, I want to present a video. This document is a cartoon taken from the documentary film Bowling for Columbine , it sums up the history of the USA. It shows that American history is build on fear and violence. Americans use guns to protect themselves.
First, British protestants were afraid of religion persecution so they went to the New World. Then, they arrived in America, they were scared of Native Americans so they killed them. Later on they were frightened by witches so they burnt women. Next, they were scared of the British authority so they declared a war and they got their independence. After that, they were afraid of work so they created slavery. Then, they were afraid of black people so they created the second amendment they bought colts, they created the KKK, the NRA and white surbubs. Of course this document is a caricature thanks to exaggerations and simplifications. At the same time it describes Americans as paranoiac people. Yet, it's build on true events and on the idea that the essential problem of Americans is their fear.

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