The Use and Function of Collective Trauma in Securitizing Acts: The Role of Collective Traumas in Securitization in the American Gun Debate

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Master Thesis

The Use and Function of

Collective Trauma in

Securitizing Acts

The Role of Collective Traumas in

Securitization in the American Gun Debate

Jordi Nahumury

S1605895

09-06-2016

Thesis Supervisor: Drs. C.W. Hijzen MA

Second Reader: J.P. Sabou MSc

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ABLE OF

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ONTENTS

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1.1 Academic and societal relevance ... 6

1.2 Research question ... 7

1.3 Reading guide ... 7

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2.1 Securitization ... 8

2.1.1 Components of a securitizing act ... 9

2.1.2 Defining the concept of securitization ... 10

2.1.3 Basic elements for success, intersubjectivity and additional facilitating conditions ... 12

2.1.4 The role of context and audience ... 14

2.2 Collective memory ... 16

2.2.1 Presentism vs. path dependency ... 17

2.2.2 Cultural memory and other terminology ... 18

2.2.3 Collective memory, social context and the audience ... 18

2.3 Trauma ... 19

2.3.1 Historical origins of trauma ... 19

2.3.2 Collective forms of trauma ... 20

2.3.3 Collective trauma and securitization ... 22

2.4 United States gun politics ... 23

2.4.1 Policy development and legislation ... 24

2.4.2 The two sides of the debate and the cultural groundings of their attitudes ... 26

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3.1 Operationalisation ... 30

3.1.1 Concepts and definitions ... 30

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3.1.3 Indicators for the concept of collective trauma ... 32

3.1.4 Type of research ... 35

3.1.5 Methodology ... 36

3.2 Case study ... 38

3.2.1 Type ... 38

3.2.2 Sampling and legitimation ... 39

3.2.3 Data collection ... 39

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4.1 Findings and analysis... 42

4.1.1 First unit of analysis: Period around the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 (Jan. 24, 2013) and the Manchin-Toomey Amendment (Apr. 11, 2013) ... 43

4.1.2 Second unit of analysis: Washington Navy Yard shooting (Sept. 16, 2013) ... 48

4.1.3 Third unit of analysis: Charleston Church shooting (June 18, 2015) ... 53

4.1.4 Fourth unit of analysis: 2015 Chattanooga shootings (July 16, 2015) ... 58

4.1.5 Fifth unit of analysis: San Bernardino attack (Dec. 2, 2015) ... 61

4.1.6 Sixth unit of analysis: Policy for the future (Early 2016) ... 66

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5.1 Conclusion ... 71

5.1.1 Answering the research question ... 71

5.1.2 Reflections ... 74

5.2 Discussion ... 76

5.2.1 Insights and practical recommendations ... 76

5.2.2 Strengths, limitations and recommendations for further research ... 78

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A. Texts of the first unit of analysis ... 87

B. Texts of the second unit of analysis ... 118

C. Texts of the third unit of analysis ... 144

D. Texts of the fourth unit of analysis ... 167

E. Texts of the fifth unit of analysis ... 193

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L

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Table 3.1 An overview of the units of analysis and data collection of both sides 41 Table 4.1 An overview of the securitizing texts of the first unit of analysis 43 Table 4.2 An overview of the securitizing texts of the second unit of analysis 48 Table 4.3 An overview of the securitizing texts of the third unit of analysis 53 Table 4.4 An overview of the securitizing texts of the fourth unit of analysis 59 Table 4.5 An overview of the securitizing texts of the fifth unit of analysis 61 Table 4.6 An overview of the securitizing texts of the sixth unit of analysis 69

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1

I

NTRODUCTION

“That’s why we’re here today. Not to debate the last mass shooting, but to do something to try to prevent the next one. (Applause.) To prove that the vast majority of Americans, even if our voices aren’t always the loudest or most extreme, care enough about a little boy like Daniel [Barden, shot and killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting,] to come together and take common-sense steps to save lives and protect more of our children.”

- Barack Obama, January 5, 2016 (The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 2016, January 5) -

The strategic, political practice of securitization takes place in a situation where the future is undetermined and still subject of debate. It is a practice where the audience has to be convinced that a certain issue poses a threat that is serious enough to impose a certain policy action (Balzacq, 2005, p. 173). Politicians with diverging beliefs, ideas, and understandings of the past try to perform their securitizing act successfully, thereby competing with conflicting moves by their political opponents. In a single political debate, multiple issues can be presented by various securitizing actors as an existential threat, combined with different policy or legislative solutions. To win over the public and make their political battles relatively easier with the backing of democratic support, politicians have to find ways to optimize their securitization efforts and to approach the audience the right way.

The quote of President Barack Obama at the beginning of this chapter is part of a larger speech act, where he tries to securitize the ineffectiveness of current gun legislation. These particular sentences are part of his effort to get the support from the American people for the changes he wants to implement in American gun legislation. The quote shows his use of a collective trauma to win over the people. He makes his appeal to the public by referring to the tragic case of Daniel Barden, a little boy who was brutally massacred, along with 26 fellow classmates, teachers, and other members of the staff, at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The addition of this collective traumatic experience to his securitizing discourse makes it an emotional appeal, aimed at uniting Americans and creating a sense of urgency to take action.

This example from American political practice shows that political actors are not reluctant to use experiences and events from the collective memory to enhance their securitizing

6 | acts, when they think this helps to convince the public of their cause. This brings us to the topic of this research of how aspects of the collective memory of people can influence securitization of a particular political debate. More specifically, the focus of this study is what the role of collective traumas, that have their place within the collective memory, is in the securitizing acts of securitizing actors. How are collective traumas used by them in their texts and what function do these traumas have in their discourse? The political debate, that forms the case in this research, corresponds with the quote and entails a period in the gun debate in the political arena of the United States. From a securitization perspective, this debate is about the securitization of gun control versus the securitization of gun rights and Second Amendment rights.

1.1

Academic and societal relevance

Securitization theory, as an area of knowledge, is closely linked to the multidisciplinary field of crisis and security management. This research connects to this theory and its body of literature. The general aim of the Copenhagen School, who coined the term ‘securitization’, is to understand why certain issues are becoming a security problem and others are not (Balzacq, 2005, p. 176; Williams, 2003, p. 511). Their concept of ‘securitization’ entails that an issue becomes a security issue because it is presented by a securitizing actor as a security issue in a so-called securitizing move (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 24). The Copenhagen School was criticized for their conception of ‘facilitating conditions’ within the securitization framework, which are factors that influence the effectiveness and success of an act of securitization. Although the scholars of the Copenhagen School have made an effort to define these conditions, this effort was, according to the critics, in many ways too narrow and neglected too many factors of influence (McDonald, 2008, p. 564). The role of context and the audience in a securitizing act are key factors that are undertheorized and relatively unexplored (McDonald, 2008, p. 564; Léonard & Kaunert, 2011, pp. 58-60). An exploration of the totality of the factors of context and audience is too broad for this type of study, but the exploration of a specific element of these two factors would be feasible. Therefore, this research will focus on the element of collective trauma in the zeitgeist of the context and in the collective memory of the audience. By applying the concept of collective trauma from trauma theory to the field of securitization, this study focuses at the role of collective trauma, that is part of these unexplored factors, in securitizing acts.

The societal relevance of this research has to be found in an improvement of the awareness for and a better understanding of the use and function of collective trauma in the

7 | securitizing texts of politicians. The benefits for the practice of professionals are that they can optimize and improve their securitizing efforts by consciously taking into account collective trauma, gain a more complete understanding of the reaction of the audience and can predict and take into account the usage of collective trauma by their political opponents. For society as a whole and in specific the audiences of securitization the benefits are that they can better understand the securitizing discourses and constructs of the securitizing actors and can better anticipate to these acts. The practical benefits are not only applicable in relation to collective traumas of the past that have a place in the collective memory of people, but also are also applicable in anticipation of new events and incidents that entail a collective trauma.

1.2

Research question

The background to this research and the relevance that this explorative study tries to achieve lead to the following research question:

How and to what extent is collective trauma used and what is its function in the discourse of securitizing acts by political actors in the case of the American gun debate in the period between the introduction of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 and the presidential election race until early 2016?

1.3

Reading guide

The second chapter starts with an introduction and critical discussion of the various bodies of literature this research touches upon. An exploration of the fields of securitization theory, collective memory studies, trauma theory and American gun politics contribute to a more accurate notion of the position of this study with regard to these field and to a complete picture of the theme and research question. This sets the scene for the third chapter that entails the research design. The operationalisation and the case design are laid down in this chapter. Subsequently, the fourth chapter discusses the findings and analyses of results and the last two chapters comprise the conclusion and discussion.

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NOWLEDGE

This chapter explains the analytical framework of this study by setting out and defining the relevant concepts that can be distilled from the various areas of knowledge that are part of this research. The first section introduces the Copenhagen School’s theory of securitization and describes the debate within the framework of securitization that is central to this study together with all of its relevant aspects. It discusses the definition of securitization, the components of a securitizing act and the factors of success before zooming in on the debate that revolves around the facilitating conditions, specifically the role of context and audience. The subsequent section describes the field of collective memory studies and discusses the concept of collective memory and its relation with the context and target audience of securitization. The third section of this chapter moves to a very specific area, that lies within the collective memory of every community of people, namely collective and national trauma. This section generally describes the field trauma theory and defines the concepts of collective and national trauma, after making a clear distinction between individual and collective trauma and discussing various forms of collective trauma. Finally, the last section gives an overview of gun politics and related law reform as a field of study in the United States and how this national debate between gun control and gun rights advocates developed over the years until January 24, 2013, when a bill was introduced in the Senate that was called the Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) of 2013.

2.1

Securitization

Over the past decades, social constructivist approaches have been gaining ground in the field of International Relations (IR). Social constructivism has increasingly challenged the traditional theories of realism and liberalism and has established itself as a bridge between the rationalist approaches and the interpretive approaches in the IR spectrum. In the field of security studies, a key area within International Relations, an important body of work on the social construction of security has been contributed by the so-called Copenhagen School. Ole Wæver (1995), one of the architects of the Copenhagen School, introduced the concept of securitization in the 1990s and this concept was developed further in Security: A New Framework for Analysis by Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde (1998). The aim of this newly developed

9 | securitization framework was to come to a better understanding of the social and political dynamics of security.

These early works on securitization theory discussed the nature and meaning of the concept of security and the question of why some issues are turned into a security problem, whereas other issues do not receive public or political attention (Balzacq, 2005, p. 176; Williams, 2003, p. 511). The constructivist background of the Copenhagen School leads to a securitization approach that comprises the idea that the meaning of a concept, in this case security, is determined by its usage (Buzan, Wæver & De Wilde, 1998, p. 24). In other words, something becomes a security issue because it is presented in practice as a security issue through a so-called securitizing act and not because of its analytical or philosophic definition (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 24).

The Copenhagen School rejects the traditionalist, state-centric notion that security is restricted to only the military and political sector and argues instead that it extends to the economic, societal and environmental sector (Buzan et al., 1998, p. vii; McDonald, 2008, p. 567; Vultee, 2010, p. 34). It is therefore not surprising that an important part of research in this field of study tries to define and identify the variety in the dynamics of securitizing acts in these different sector-specific contexts (Buzan et al., 1998, pp. 7-8; McDonald, 2008, p. 567). Consequently, the securitization framework has been applied in a variety of fields and contexts, ranging from health care to terrorism.

Before this section commences an effort to find a useable definition of the concept of securitization, it tries to enhance the understanding of the securitization framework by breaking it down into the various components that constitute an act of securitization. A good understanding of these components is necessary for the subsequent discussion of definitions of securitization.

2.1.1 Components of a securitizing act

The first component that is a precondition for an act of securitization is the presence of a so-called securitizing actor. This actor is the one who securitizes and this is traditionally, in the field of securitization theory, a political or state actor that has a substantial amount of power, although critics have argued for an inclusion of more actors with so-called agency, irrespective of their official political power, who do not immediately fall into the category of actors who can be labelled as statist or institutionally powerful (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 32; McDonald, 2008, p. 564). The next two components are the referent subject and the referent object of the

10 | securitizing act. The former refers to the issue that is presented by the actor as an existential threat and, thus, a matter of high priority (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 26). The latter component of the securitizing act relates to the audience that is the target of securitization (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 32). In the case of politicians this target audience is often his or hers electorate or the citizens of a nation as a whole. With an actor, an issue and an audience present, the components of securitization are almost complete. But, it cannot be called a securitizing move without a specific aim of the securitizing act. This fourth and last component is, therefore, the desired end result of the securitizing act (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 25). For office holders this can be in form of specific policy measures or actions as a reaction to the issue presented as an existential threat.

Only when all these components are present, it can be called securitizing move. Thus, a securitizing move or act means that a certain issue or object is presented by an actor through a discourse or a speech act as an existential threat in need of a policy or emergency reaction (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 24; McDonald, 2008, p. 566; Williams, 2003, p. 513). Now the four main components of a securitizing act are clear, it is time to turn to the discussion about the definition of securitization.

2.1.2 Defining the concept of securitization

As is the case with many academic concepts, there is not one, generally accepted and uncriticised concept of securitization. This section tries to find, within the conceptual discussion, a concept of securitization that can be used in this research. As securitization is the main concept of the Copenhagen School, their key proponents Buzan, Wæver and De Wilde were the first to describe the practice of securitization. They stayed relatively close to the four components which were described in the previous paragraph and this led to the formulation of a first composed definition:

“Thus, the exact definition and criteria of securitization is constituted by the intersubjective establishment of an existential threat with a saliency sufficient to have substantial political effects (…) only if and when the audience accepts it as such (…) only that the existential threat has to be argued and just gain enough resonance for a platform to be made from which it is possible to legitimize emergency measures or other steps that would not have been possible had the discourse not taken the form of existential threats, point of no return, and necessity.” (Buzan et al., 1998 p. 25)

One of the main points of criticism of this tentative definition is that it understates the importance of the context of the securitizing practice. In this way, by following the directions of the Copenhagen School, the act of securitizing a certain issue begins to look like a

‘three-11 | step program’ that in the end leads to successful securitization, whereas it is highly plausible that the role of context and the various actors that are involved, including the audience, makes the formula for success significantly more difficult (this formula for success is discussed in more detail in the next paragraph). The Copenhagen School’s definition of securitization comes across as a conventional procedure that Thierry Balzacq (2005), professor of Political Science and International Relations, compares with the formal and fixed character of an act of marital union (p. 172). Balzacq (2005) comes with a view on the securitizing practice, contrasting with the formality of the Copenhagen School’s definition:

“(…) securitization is better understood as a strategic (pragmatic) practice that occurs within, and as part of, a configuration of circumstances, including context, the psycho-cultural disposition of the audience, and the power that both speaker and listener bring to the interaction.” (p. 172)

He emphasizes that securitization is more than a list of conditions that need to present for it to work. To Balzacq (2005), a securitizing act is a strategic project that is intersubjective, dynamic and its outcome and practice are heavily dependent upon the circumstances (p. 172). Both context and the audience, including their psychological and cultural character and nature, are a vital part of these circumstances. Balzacq’s view of securitization, with a prominent place for context, reflects the sociological model that emphasizes the non-discursive aspects of securitization such as audience and contextual circumstances (Balzacq, 2011a, p. 22). This model is the counterpart of the philosophical model, that is close to the conception of the Copenhagen school, which emphasizes the speech act, neglects non-discursive aspects, and leans towards the view that security is a self-referential practice (Balzacq, 2011a, p. 19).

Balzacq (2005) formulates the following definition of securitization that takes into account strategic and circumstantial elements:

“(…) securitization is a sustained strategic practice aimed at convincing a target audience to accept, based on what it knows about the world, the claim that a specific development (oral threat or event) is threatening enough to deserve an immediate policy to alleviate it.” (p. 173)

This definition of securitization pays attention to the context of an act, but still acknowledges the basic components that can also be found in the definition by Buzan, Wæver and De Wilde. Therefore, this definition of Balzacq will be the starting point for this research when a securitizing act is scrutinized. What, furthermore, becomes clear from this short discussion of definitions is that it is not straightforward that a securitizing act becomes a success and that there are various factors and conditions influencing the level of success. The next paragraph discusses these factors and conditions, from the more basic formula of success formulated by

12 | the Copenhagen School to the factors influencing success that were added at a later stage by critics and other scholars.

2.1.3 Basic elements for success, intersubjectivity and additional facilitating conditions In paragraph 2.1.1 the basic components of a securitizing move or act were described. But, simply performing a securitizing move, where all components are present, does not automatically lead to a successfully securitized issue. Buzan, Wæver and De Wilde (1998) state that successful securitization consists of three elements: (1) the positioning of an issue as an existential threat, (2) which requires special or emergency actions and (3) which is accepted by the audience as such a threat (pp. 24-25). Only when all three elements are present after a securitizing move, one can speak of a securitized issue. So, the success of a securitizing move depends upon the cogency and persuasiveness of the securitizing actor to not only convince the target audience that a certain existential threat exists and is affecting them, but also to convince them that certain actions or measures are necessary in response to this threat. This emphasizes the importance of intersubjectivity in securitization. By accepting a securitizing act, the audience establishes through interaction a shared meaning of the elements of the act with the securitizing actor (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 25). A failing securitizing move means that this intersubjective establishment of a threat, in combination with necessary measures, between actor and audience, has not been successful.

These three elements form the basic conception of the Copenhagen School of the formula for successful securitization. It is important to look at what conditions influence these elements of success in a positive or negative way. Therefore, this paragraph now turns to the facilitating conditions of successful securitization that are influencing the intersubjective establishment of a securitized issue. According to Buzan, Wæver and De Wilde (1998), a successful securitizing act is, in the end, the right combination of factors of language and factors of society (p. 32). They place the facilitating conditions of successful or unsuccessful securitization in an internal and an external category. The former category contains linguistic-grammatical factors (Buzan et al., 1998, pp. 32-33). The latter is made up of two factors: (1) the social capital or power of the securitizing actor and (2) specific features of the threat that hinder or facilitate securitization (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 33). The ‘quality’ of the securitizing actor or the threat issue is in their view highly important in relation to these facilitating conditions.

13 | Thierry Balzacq, however, characterizes securitization as a strategic or pragmatic act with an important role for intersubjectivity and the circumstances surrounding the act (Balzacq, 2005, p. 172). He discusses three sets of conditions that determine to what extent securitization is effective. The first set of factors that influences the effectuation of securitization is the audience and, on the one hand, its nature, in terms of its frame of reference and its willingness to be convinced, and, on the other hand, its status, in terms of the ability to mandate the securitizing agent (Balzacq, 2005, pp. 173, 192). The second set is related to the effect of context, in form of relevant features of the spirit of the age and the situation at hand, on the response of the audience to the speech act of the securitizing actor (Balzacq, 2005, p. 192). The final set of factors concerns the power and agency of words that are used by the securitizing actor that is strongly linked with the position of the actor (Balzacq, 2005, p. 192).

Another point of criticism about the Copenhagen School’s securitization framework was formulated by Matt McDonald, scholar in the field of International Security. McDonald (2008) argued that the securitization framework was too narrow in at least three ways (p. 564). First, the form of the securitizing act, that constructs security, is defined solely in terms of speech acts by dominant, political, state actors and neglects and overlooks other types of acts and actors (McDonald, 2008, p. 564). This particular shortcoming of the Copenhagen School’s securitization is shared by various other critics who also focus on improving and redefining this narrowly defined form of the securitizing act (Bigo, 2002; Hansen, 2000, 2007; Möller, 2007, Wilkinson, 2007; Williams, 2003). Second, when analysing the context of the act, the framework only looks at the intervening moment, whereas security can also be constructed incrementally over a certain amount of time (McDonald, 2008, p. 564). Finally, the securitization framework is narrow because the nature of the act is only defined in terms of threats and danger, which gives a negative and reactionary meaning to the concept of the politics of security (McDonald, 2008, p. 564). By gaining insight in this narrowness of the securitization framework, McDonald (2008) tries to improve the potential analysis of conditions that are affecting effectiveness. He emphasizes the underspecified dynamics of the framework and, more specifically, the under-theorization of the context of the act, such as the audience and other facilitating conditions, and its possible contribution or impediment to the success of the securitizing act (McDonald, 2008, p. 564).

In both of these critiques and additions, the authors emphasize the Copenhagen School’s understatement of the role the context of the act as an influential set of conditions with regard to the outcome of the act. Both Balzacq and McDonald address the shortcomings of the Copenhagen School’s conception of the facilitating conditions for success in securitization and

14 | call for more attention for and better specification of the facilitating conditions in general and in specific the context of the securitizing act, that can range from the type of actor or audience to the physical circumstances or elements of the zeitgeist. This study now zooms in on the role of context in relation to the outcome of the securitizing act and, in specific, the role of the audience.

2.1.4 The role of context and audience

Léonard and Kaunert (2011) give an overview of the critique about the undertheorization of the audience as important facilitating condition. The first widely expressed critique concerns the overall uncertainty that surrounds the Copenhagen School’s conception of the role of the audience (Léonard & Kaunert, 2011, p. 58, 60). Specifically, two aspects of the role of the audience stand out that are vague and unclear. First, although the Copenhagen School mentions the importance of the audience’s acceptance, it is unclear and not well-defined what is meant by this acceptance and what it entails (Léonard & Kaunert, 2011, p. 58). The second aspect is the vagueness about how to identify the target audience of securitization (Léonard & Kaunert, 2011, p. 59). The Copenhagen School, through the words of Ole Wæver in a 2003 draft paper, have tried to bring more clarity with regard to its conception of the audience:

“Audience is those who have to be convinced in order for the securitizing move to be successful.” (Léonard & Kaunert, 2011, p. 59)

Wæver’s attempt to take away some of this vagueness does not really deal with any of the abovementioned problems. Although this definition is slightly more specified, it is still not a definition that is really useful to the practice of analysing securitization and the role of the audience. In the same paper, Wæver subsequently states:

“Although one often tends to think in terms of ‘the population’ or citizenry being the audience (the ideal situation regarding ‘national security’ in a democratic society), it actually varies according to the political system and the nature of the issue.” (Léonard & Kaunert, 2011, p. 59) Here, Wæver acknowledges that audience can differ per situation and is often a more specified community of people than just the population as a whole, but he gives no real direction about how the audience could be operationalised in empirical research.

The second point of critique to the concept of audience as it is conceived by the Copenhagen School is that there is a paradox between the portraying of securitization as a intersubjective practice and as a self-referential practice (Léonard & Kaunert, 2011, p. 60). On the one hand, the Copenhagen School emphasizes audience acceptance and the construction of

15 | shared understandings between actor and audience, but, on the other hand, they place great emphasis on the speech act and the securitizing actor and leave the audience rather unspecified and undertheorized (Léonard & Kaunert, 2011, p. 60).

Finally, scholars have been critical about the oversimplification of the audience (Léonard & Kaunert, 2011, p. 60). Audiences do vary, there is a wide array of possible, differing characteristics, and there can be more than one audience involved in a securitizing act (Léonard & Kaunert, 2011, p. 60). As has already been stated in the previous paragraph, Balzacq addresses this same point and is critical about the formality of the Copenhagen School and their neglect of the possible impact of different contexts and audiences. Mark B. Salter (2008), scholar in the field of Political Studies, came up with a reconceptualization of the audience by introducing different types of audience settings, like elite or popular, which are different audience communities (p. 322). He argues that:

“In each of these different settings, the core rules for authority/knowledge (who can speak), the social context (what can be spoken), and the degree of success (what is heard) vary.” (Salter, 2008, p. 322)

With this reconceptualization of the audience, Salter addresses the fact that the audience can be different in each setting and, furthermore, emphasizes the importance of social context.

Focusing specifically on context and audience, the core of the debate about the facilitating conditions of successful securitization comes down to, as Balzacq formulates it (2005),

“the practically important question of what the proportionate causal weight of audience and context are in securitization theory.” (p. 178)

Although, this research is not aimed at drawing any conclusions with regard to the relative causal weight of context and audience, this study tries to make a contribution to the understanding of the role of context and audience in the securitization framework on a practical and theoretical level. It approaches this debate about facilitating conditions from a new perspective that takes as a starting point that there is some weight in the role of the audience and the context of the act with regard to the success and outcome of securitization and that has been touched upon lightly by Balzacq (2005):

“To persuade the audience (e.g. the public), that is, to achieve a perlocutionary effect, the speaker has to tune his/her language to the audience’s experience.” (p. 184)

As Balzacq emphasizes, it is the aim of the securitizing actor to make an appeal to the experience of the audience and communicate, in this respect, at this same level with the audience. The experience that needs to be understood by the securitizing actor has a strong

16 | connection with the psychological and cultural character of the context and audience. It is the aim of this research to better understand the factors influencing the outcome of the act and, thus, the psychological and cultural character of both audience and context.

A better understanding of this character might be reached by adding insights from collective memory studies. The collective memory of people has a clear link with audience experience and the context. This specific memory is a defining trait of the context in relation to the spirit of the time when the act takes place and the people that are being addressed. Elements of a collective memory, as a part of the referent object, i.e. audience, and something more abstract that can be called the zeitgeist or spirit of the time, could well influence or affect the outcome and effectiveness of a securitizing act. It is quite conceivable that when the same speech act is being addressed to two different audiences, with each a very different social, ethnic or national background, it leads to a very different outcome. Let alone that the moment in time of the speech act would also have been different, for instance decades apart. Although many factors can create these difference between audience, time and place, the collective memory is one of these factors. It is both dependent on the audience and the time and is, therefore, a crucial element of the context. The next paragraph will elaborate further upon the concept of collective memory and insights from this particular field.

2.2 Collective memory

One of the main critiques to the field of collective memory studies is that it has failed to come to a conceptual understanding of collective memory that is different from the individual concept of memory (Kansteiner, 2002, p. 180). Both the difference and the relationship between the collective and individual memory has not been clarified and conceptualized. Some even argue that an individual memory does not exist, because it cannot be studied, let alone conceptualized, without referring to the social context (Kansteiner, 2002, p. 185). Nonetheless, the individual memory is studied a lot in terms of emotional and psychological dynamics, but this leads to methodological mistakes when a collective memory is treated as an individual one (Kansteiner, 2002, p. 185). In this manner a collective memory is seen from an individualistic approach as an aggregation of multiple individual memories, a so-called collected memory, instead of a collective memory which has dynamics of its own and cannot be reduced to individual memory processes (Olick, 1999b, pp. 338, 341). So, the focus will now be on the concept of collective memory instead of the conceptually unsettled individual memory.

17 | 2.2.1 Presentism vs. path dependency

Any discussion about the field of collective memory studies starts with the works of French philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, who was the founder of the concept of collective memory. Halbwachs was the first to write about the existence of a collective memory, that serves as a social framework for memory and contains shared representations of the past (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 38). These representations in collective memory are the product of an ongoing, ever-changing process, fuelled by social change and changes in the collective (Schwartz, 1982, p. 375). The abovementioned idea that the individual memory cannot be seen separate from the collective memory, and therefore the social context of the time, originates from Halbwachs. He argued that the individual memory interacts with the social framework of memory and takes part in it in order to exist and function (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 38).

The presentist stance of Halbwachs, meaning that our commemorative understanding of the past is entirely dictated by current, social context and is, therefore, always relative and never objective and constant, has received critique by scholars who are leaning more towards path dependency (Olick, 1999a, p. 383; Saito, 2006, pp. 354-355; Schwartz, 1982, pp. 376-377). These scholars argue that present collective memory is limited, but not determined, by the original construct and later commemorations of the object of memory (Olick, 1999a, p. 383; Saito, 2006, p. 355). It can be reshaped, but within the limits of the past (Saito, 2006, p. 355). Jeffrey K. Olick, contemporary scholar in Cultural Sociology and Sociological Theory and expert in the field of memory studies, addresses this critique on Halbwachs’ presentism in his model of collective memory. Olick (1999a) states that collective memory and commemoration do not solely represent an objective point of reference or lesson of the past or the social context of the present, but it rather expresses the altering interactions between the two (p. 381).

His model consists of three factors that make up a collective memory: (1) the politics of memory, that represents the dependency on contemporary context and circumstances, (2) the history of memory, that is the development over the long term of memory and forms of commemoration, and (3) the memory of memory, that is the path dependency and periodicity that relates to past and present (Olick, 1999b, pp. 381, 383). This discussion represents a key debate in memory studies that is about whether a collective memory is mainly dependent upon the past, the context and construction in the presence or a combination together with the path that the memory and commemorative practices have travelled since the beginning.

18 | 2.2.2 Cultural memory and other terminology

The field of collective memory studies have accumulated a lot of new terms over the years. New terms, words and phrases have been introduced by various scholars in memory studies and the size of the collection of terminology has grown significantly. From social memory and national memory to public memory and counter memory, they all make an addition to the field of collective memory studies and try to distinguish themselves from their predecessors (Kansteiner, 2002, p. 182). One particular approach, that distinguished itself from Halbwachs’ reliance on social context and change in his discussion of the collective memory, was developed by German Egyptologist Jan Assmann. Assmann (1995) introduced the term ‘cultural memory’ as the complete opposite of the idea of a memory, that he calls a ‘communicative memory’, that is under the influence of the contemporary context of everyday (pp. 128-129). Cultural memory is distanced from the contemporary context and has various fixed points of past events that are kept in memory because of the cultural formation in, for example, monuments and texts or through institutional communication, like practice and recitation (Assmann, 1995, p. 129). Assmann tries to overcome the discussion between the role of past and present in a collective memory by making a distinction by separating these two in different types of memory.

2.2.3 Collective memory, social context and the audience

The collective memory is thus a kind of social framework for the memory and consists of shared representations of the past. Regardless of whether you take the stance of presentists or path dependents, the place in time is of the essence. Both approaches leave to a greater or lesser extent room for the social context of the present time to shape a collective memory, so the status of this collective memory at a given moment is unique and incomparable with this same collective memory from another place in in time (Saito, 2006, p. 355; Schwartz, 1982, p. 375). It is an ongoing and ever-changing memory that cannot be seen separately from the social context, either because it is solely dictated by the current context or because it is reshaped by this context within the limits of history and the path towards the now (Saito, 2006, p. 355; Schwartz, 1982, p. 375). Furthermore, the community that makes up this collective group of people and share a collective memory is essential and makes a certain collective memory unique. All moments and experiences that have formed this community are collected in its collective memory.

19 | As the previous section indicated, the audience and context are affecting the outcome of a securitizing move and this section shows that the collective memory is an important part of this same audience and context. Therefore, the collective memory should be taken into account when scrutinizing these two facilitating conditions of securitization. Each securitizing act can be viewed as an opportunity of reshaping the collective memory in light of the present social context. In this way, Balzacq’s statement that the securitizing actor needs to tune his or her language to the experience of the audience sounds like a direct reference to the need for awareness of the audience’s collective memory (Balzacq, 2005, p. 184).

Moments and experiences within the collective memory of an audience may also include collective traumatic events. These tragic and dramatic events are often key defining moments in the history of a community and have a great potential for reshaping the collective memory. Therefore, these traumas are very likely to become part of the collective memory. The next paragraph discusses insights from trauma theory, specifically focused on collective forms of trauma, and explores the concept of collective trauma as a part of the collective memory and as an interesting perspective on the elements of context and audience in the securitization framework.

2.3 Trauma

Just as the concept of collective memory was distinguished in the previous section from the individual memory, the conceptual difference between individual trauma and collective forms of trauma should be made clear. Therefore, this section explores the historical origins of the concept of trauma in an individual sense before proceeding to a discussion about collective trauma.

2.3.1 Historical origins of trauma

The field of psychoanalysis, headed by Sigmund Freud, started as a theory of trauma (Bohleber, 2007, p. 329). This means that since psychoanalysis gained prominence in the late 19th century, trauma has been a concept of study and the subject of numerous academic debates. Trauma theory has developed in psychoanalytic theory by means of two key models: the psycho-economic model and a model based on object-relations theory. The psycho-psycho-economic model describes a situation of trauma as an isolated case of excessive excitation leading to anxiety that cannot be controlled by the psyche, overpowers the ego and creates a situation of total

20 | helplessness (Bohleber, 2007, pp. 338-339). In contrast, object-relations theory puts the relationship with the object at the centre of the trauma, meaning a more intense object relationship can lead to a trauma of greater quality (Bohleber, 2007, p. 339). Consequently, a greater trauma represents a greater damage to the object relationship and an internal communications breakdown between the representation of the object and the self, that causes the emergence of secluded fragments of the traumatic experience (Bohleber, 2007, p. 339). These models laid the foundation for the concept of trauma in contemporary trauma literature.

A dominant, modern-day conception of trauma is relatively close to what is known as ‘physical trauma’ and sees it as an experience that threatens the individual’s well-being or health (Brewin, Dalgleish & Joseph, 1996, p. 675). In congruence with the physical variant, these authors conceive a traumatic experience as not necessarily outside the ordinary, because many phenomena with trauma potential take place each year and affect many people and because, moreover, a minor incident can have major consequences (Brewin et al., 1996, p. 675; Suedfeld, 1997, p. 850). Others have portrayed traumatic experiences closer to extraordinary events as radical changes with explosive quality and an important element of shock (Neal, 2005, p. 3). Apart from the discussion if trauma constitutes an ordinary or an extraordinary event, an important element of a traumatic experience is the disintegration of a person’s assumptions by the trauma about him- or herself and the world together with the feeling of vulnerability it creates (Janoff-Bulman & Sheikh, 2006, p. 325).

2.3.2 Collective forms of trauma

A trauma can affect the mind of one individual, but it can affect a larger group of people too. These forms of macro-level trauma represent something more than simply adding up individual traumas (Suedfeld, 1997, p. 849). Although the similarities are that the trauma can have long-lasting effects in the memory and it permanently changes the subject (group), the difference is that the macro-level trauma is shared and can create a cohesive effect (Neal, 2005, p. 4). When a breakdown of assumptions, like security or invulnerability, is experienced at the broader level of society, that transcends all the paralleling individual traumas, a whole country can be thrown into a state of national trauma (Janoff-Bulman & Sheikh, 2006, pp. 325-326).

The concept of national trauma has generated a specific branch of literature within trauma theory that specifically looks at the psychological reactions of a whole nation to traumatic events. National trauma has been defined by Witztum and Malkinson (1998) as:

21 | This concept has been used in academic literature in mainly two contexts: (1) in a cultural context to discuss collective experiences of traumatic events that change society and (2) in a mental health context as a professional category (Plotkin-Amrani & Brunner, 2015, p. 526). A national trauma is just one form of macro-level, collective trauma, but it is a form where the population or community that is affected is very clearly defined. This has the advantage that it entails a specified population that can be used in practice or research, but the downside is that it generalizes, treats a national population as one and makes no acknowledgement of diversity within this population (Janoff-Bulman & Sheikh, 2006, p. 328; Neal, 2005, pp. 5-6). Other terms of collective trauma in the cultural sense are more specific in terms of the community that is affected or the type of event.

One of these more specific forms of collective trauma is the trauma that is caused by dramatic and stressful events in the political sphere. This form of trauma, that is the result of traumatic political events, is a relatively new field of study (Raviv, Sadeh, Raviv, Silbertstein & Diver, 2000, pp. 299-300). This so-called collective political trauma is defined by Yaacov Vertzberger (1997), expert in the field of International Relations and Political Psychology, as:

“(…) a shattering, often violent event that affects a community of people and that results from human behaviour that is politically motivated and has political consequences.” (p. 864)

Collective political trauma can not only affect an already existing community, but it could also create communities by connecting people that now have a common tie of a shared, traumatic experience (Vertzberger, 1997, p. 864). Of course, this is also applicable to other collective forms of trauma.

Another form of collective trauma is cultural trauma. Cultural trauma was coined by Jeffrey C. Alexander (2004), key figure in contemporary Cultural Sociology, and describes the situation when a collective group of people is subject to a tragic or dramatic event which scars their collective memory and consciousness and alters their identity in a definite and significant way (p. 1). Events in form of social crises happen regularly, but before they become a collective trauma, they have to transform into a cultural crisis through a process of socially constructing a traumatic event (Alexander, 2004, p. 10). As Alexander (2004) puts it:

“For traumas to emerge at the level of the collectivity, social crisis must become cultural crisis. Events are one thing, representations of these events quite another. Trauma is not the result of a group experiencing pain. It is the result of this acute discomfort entering into the core of the collectivity’s sense of its own identity. Collective actors “decide” to represent social pain as a fundamental threat to their sense of who they are, where they came from, and where they go to.” (p. 10)

22 | The point made by Alexander, that cultural trauma is socially constructed, has received some critique. Although, the value of his constructivist approach to trauma is acknowledged, critics point at the tendency to overlook the psychological and emotional dimension of the cultural trauma that cannot be simplified into a purely, discursive construction (Saito, 2006, p. 358).

Where national trauma and collective political trauma were more event-centred, cultural trauma focuses more on the social process and the question of why some events become a cultural trauma and others do not. This discussion of the various forms of collective trauma, cultural or psychological, constructed or not constructed, shows that they all recognize, to a certain extent, that certain events, that are sufficiently devastating and traumatizing, have an ability to affect whole nations or groups of people. From the perspective of all these aforementioned varieties, a collective trauma of the size of a national trauma is possible and not ruled out in advance.

A contrasting viewpoint that completely denies the ability of these events to affect a nation is expressed by Ido de Haan (1998), scholar in the field of Political History, who states that no such thing as a national trauma can exist (p. 198). He argues that the existence of national traumas would suggest that a nation is a unified body that acts collectively, whereas this would strongly overlook the social divisions and political tensions in a society (De Haan, 1998, p. 198). Therefore, arguing or declaring that something is a national trauma is in his view hypocrite, politically naïve and nothing more than a metaphorical construction and, moreover, has no additional value in explaining the event (De Haan, 1998, pp. 197-198). Although this plea for the acknowledgement of diversity within a nation is a valuable contribution to the conceptual discussion of national trauma, De Haan does not deny the occurrence of this discursive construction of national or collective traumas in practice by politicians. The use and function of national trauma and other forms of collective trauma is, therefore, still an interesting phenomena to study in the securitizing discourse of politicians.

2.3.3 Collective trauma and securitization

The combination of securitization and trauma has been touched upon in previous research. Jenny Edkins (2002), professor of International Politics, has focused in her research on the link between traumatic events and securitization. She scrutinized securitization, next to criminalization, aestheticization and politicization, as one of the possible reactions to large, traumatic events (Edkins, 2002, p. 243). Other studies, not related to securitization, have also focused on reactions after trauma and the great potential for change. What is crucial about

23 | collective traumas is that it has pervasive effects and consequences for the future of a country and can lead to significant changes. Many of these possible effects and responses within a nation, such as patriotism, increased moralizing, policy change and infringements on civil liberties, have been the topic of academic research (Janoff-Bulman & Sheikh, 2006, p. 326).

Collective trauma and its potential for change is also relevant to the field of securitization. The aim of securitizing acts is to achieve some kind of (policy) action or change and this is the point where collective traumas can be of help. The right timing, in the wake of a collective trauma event, or the right use of collective traumas in the speech acts, tuned to the audience’s experience, can help a securitizing actor to successfully securitize a certain issue. At the same time, a securitizing act reshapes the traumatic event. Collective traumas, as an undeniable part of the collective memory, are just as the whole collective memory shaped by modern-day politics of the memory, like the current social context and in this case a securitizing act. It is the role of collective traumas, that have settled in the collective memory of a community, in securitizing acts that is the central focus of this study. Are collective traumas used in securitizing speech acts, how are they used and what function do they have in the discourse?

These questions are of importance when securitizing moves are analysed from a perspective of the field of trauma studies. The definition of collective trauma which is used in this research is a combination of the abovementioned definitions of national trauma and collective political trauma. In addition to the characteristics of the nature of the trauma that both of these definitions contain, it combines the unspecified type of events of national trauma and the undefined population of collective political trauma. The definition of collective trauma, thus, becomes: ‘a shattering, catastrophic, often violent event that has a pervasive effect on a community of people or nation as a whole’. The undefined aspects of population and event in this definition gives some freedom with regard to the traumas that are distilled from the analysis. The design of this analysis in relation to operationalization, methodology, and case is discussed in the next chapter. The final section of this chapter focuses on the American gun debate and serves as the background for the case design that is used in this study.

2.4 United States gun politics

The American gun debate is arguably one of the most heated topics in recent political and societal discussions in the United States and has been an area of controversy in the political arena for many decades. As the historical overview in this paragraph will show, the

24 | development of the American gun debate and gun policy has been influenced on various occasions by collective trauma events due to the involvement of guns. This direct link of the gun debate with collective trauma is an important reason why this debate serves as a case in this research, because there is a relatively better chance that there is at least some collective trauma usage in the texts that can be analysed. This is important because collective trauma needs to be used in order to analyse its function in the discourse. Furthermore, an analysis of both use and function allows for a better discussion of possible theoretical implications. Additionally, other important reasons to use this American debate as a case are the presence of two clear political camps in the debate and the excellent media coverage and registration of various securitizing acts.

The first paragraph gives an overview of the historical development of policy and legislation in the area of gun control and gun rights by discussing the key moments until the Assault Weapons Ban of January 24, 2013. The second and final paragraph deals with the question of who are on both sides of the debate and what they stand for. Furthermore, this paragraph discusses some key debates in academic literature that try to answer questions like what is the gun debate really about, how can it move forward, and what explains the deep division between the two sides.

2.4.1 Policy development and legislation

Up to the introduction of the Assault Weapons Ban of January 24, 2013, and the Manchin-Toomey Amendment of April 11, 2013, the history of gun politics in the United States has been a long one with many introduced bills, lawsuits and alterations in legislation. Some of these were key defining moments that changed the debate significantly and had a defining and lasting effect on gun control or gun rights up to the present day. These key moments are the ones being discussed in this paragraph.

Three key legislative acts in the area of gun control are discussed here. The first act is the Gun Control Act of 1968 that was adopted after a period of several assassinations and whose content was influenced by these assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Hogan & Rood, 2015, p. 365). The Gun Control Act, which replaced the less comprehensive Federal Firearms Act of 1938, aimed at prohibiting unlicensed interstate transport of weapons and ammunition, prohibiting sales to minors and people who were from another state and introducing some form of registration (Cooper, 2015, pp. 357-358). In addition, a list was created in the Gun Control Act of groups of persons, like minors,

25 | fugitives, people who were convicted, people who are mentally ill and addicts, who were prohibited from gun ownership or gun trade (Cooper, 2015, p. 358). But, these measures did not stop the availability of guns to these pre-defined groups, who could still buy their guns from non-dealers, and the legislation was, consequentially, not that effective (Cooper, 2015, p. 358).

The second legislative act was introduced in the wake of the assassination of John Lennon and the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan (Hogan & Rood, 2015, p. 365). This Brady Act of 1993 introduced a system of background checks and stated that a handgun cannot be sold to an unlicensed individual unless he or she would cooperate in a procedure of identification and registration (Cooper, 2015, p. 360). Again, if this person is part of one of the earlier mentioned pre-defined groups, he or she is not allowed to buy the handgun (Cooper, 2015, p. 360).

The third and final piece of gun control legislation is the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 that was inspired by a school shooting in California in 1989 (Cowan, 2012, December 16). This ban forbade, for a ten-year period, to manufacture, sell or possess several types of firearms that were defined as assault weapons together with some large capacity magazines (Cooper, 2015, p. 161). After the expiration of the Ban in 2004 a handful of states maintained the ban on the specific magazines (Cooper, 2015, pp. 161-162). Overall, the effects of these legislative acts were mixed. In the political and legislative process, efforts of gun control legislation were, throughout history, always confronted with the long-established precedent of gun ownership and use and appeals to Second Amendment rights (Cooper, 2015, p. 374).

This Second Amendment rights involve the fundamental right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defence (Cooper, 2015, p. 354). This rights has always clashed with gun control efforts in the American gun debate. One general discussion that fuelled debates surrounding this Second Amendment right is whether the original Second Amendment text in the Constitution should be interpreted in an ‘originalist’ fashion, meaning how the founders originally understood it (Cornell & DeDino, 2004, p. 488). This originalist rhetoric is still often heard in the gun debate. Throughout the years, the Second Amendment rights in relation to gun control have evolved and have been redefined in several US Supreme Court decisions.

Two recent landmark cases are of key importance. First, in District of Columbia v. Heller the Supreme Court concluded that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right and is not dependent upon service in a militia (Cooper, 2015, pp. 344, 364). Second, in McDonald v. Chicago the Supreme Court opined that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear guns is not only applicable to the federal government, but also to state and local governments (Cooper, 2015, pp. 345, 365-366). Although the Supreme court stated in District

26 | of Columbia v. Heller that this Second Amendment right is not an unlimited right, the effect of both decisions is that there is little room to manoeuvre for federal and state governments and it is much more difficult for them to regulate the usage and possession of guns by individuals (Cooper, 2015, pp. 344, 364). The Supreme Court has not given any guidance on how the various governments can regulate guns and at the same time uphold the individual’s right to keep and bear guns and how this not unlimited right can be limited in practice (Cooper, 2015, pp. 366-367). Gun politics in the United States remains a controversial and complex policy area and a struggle between gun control and the rights of law-abiding citizens.

2.4.2 The two sides of the debate and the cultural groundings of their attitudes

The American gun debate is predominantly fought by two opposing camps in American politics and society: the gun control advocates, who are pursuing stricter gun regulation, and the gun rights advocates, who are emphasizing the Second Amendment and its right to keep and bear arms. Although the majority of the Americans are relatively moderate in their opinion about guns, the debate is lacking rhetorical leadership because it is hijacked on both sides by radical advocates and heavily influenced by gun manufacturers and special interest groups with abundant funds (Hogan & Rood, 2015, pp. 359-360). The special interest groups are influential non-profit organizations that are actively recruiting politicians in the Senate and the House of Representatives and are funding campaigns (both political and advertisement) that support their cause. The Brady Campaign and the Americans for Gun Safety Foundation are important examples of non-profit organizations that aim for more gun control and the main non-profit organization that defends the right to bear arms is the National Rifle Association (NRA). These influences create a debate that is filled with emotions, misconceptions, political games, and struggles for power, influence, and money. But when this debate is cleared from all rhetoric and framing, it boils down to the rather simple and straightforward question of whether the availability of guns makes American society more safe or less (Braman & Kahan, 2006, p. 570). Although the question of whether guns make society safer or not seems a simple one, in practice the debate is often not constructive and finds itself in a situation that can be best characterized as a deadlock. Practice shows that the answer is often sought by employing all kinds of empirical methods, which leads to great arsenals of statistics on both sides that can be fired at each other in speeches, debates, and interviews, without getting anywhere (Braman & Kahan, 2006, p. 570).

27 | The history of gun control proponents has been one with mixed success, but all pro-gun control parties and organizations involved always opted for a centralized strategy (Goss, 2004, pp. 696-697, 703). This stemmed from the logic that guns can be transported and people who want guns can move around (Goss, 2004, p. 696). Therefore, only a nationwide policy would have effect and local or state regulations are useless (Goss, 2004, p. 696). Furthermore, a political discourse that is frequently used by gun control advocates, often in context of shootings, is that an unlimited access to guns must, at a certain point, lead to terrible consequences and, undeniably, creates human tragedies (Collier, 2014, p. 103).

Two political discourses that are often used by the gun rights proponents to justify and rationalize their standpoints can be divided in a neo-liberal line of reasoning and a more radical line of reasoning. The neo-liberal discourse emphasizes high crime levels and the failure of the state and the police to ensure protection and security as a justification for the individualistic, private solution of wearing a gun (Carlson, 2012, p. 1114). The radical discourse is about justifying gun ownership by emphasizing misconduct, violation and abuse by the police on top of their shortcomings in crime prevention (Carlson, 2012, p. 1114).

Gary Kleck (1996), criminologist and well-known for his works on guns and violence, studied national survey data to determine whether the fear of crime, prior victimization, and high crime rates influence the support for gun control (p. 387). He found no support for a causal relationship between increased gun control support and non-political criminal violence and states that the historical record shows that the passing of past gun control legislation can be mainly attributed to political threats or violence, like riots and assassinations (Kleck, 1996, pp. 400-401). This was also visible in the first paragraph that discussed the historical development of gun control. Kleck (1996) gives another explanation for a higher support of gun control and argues that:

“Instead of gun control support being seen as a response to crime, it would seem more useful to see it as the product of membership in culturally conflicting social groupings.” (Kleck, 1996, p. 401)

The influence of the factor of cultural context or background as an explanation for the divides in the gun control debate is shared by many authors in gun debate literature.

Donald Braman and Dan M. Kahan (2006), both specialists in the fields of Cultural Cognition, Criminal Law, and Evidence, acknowledge the inability of statistics to help the debate to move forward because this does not address the fundamental differences in the cultural worldview of the opposing groups, that includes different conceptions of the social meaning of guns and conflicting visions of what constitutes a good American society (Braman

28 | & Kahan, 2006, pp. 570, 606). The cultural worldview of most gun control advocates can be described as egalitarian and communal and to them guns represent the continuation of undesirable hierarchies in society, the prevalence of force and not caring about the welfare of other people (Braman & Kahan, 2006, pp. 570, 606; Chemerinsky, 2004, pp. 481-483). The worldview of the gun rights advocates has a more hierarchic and individualistic focus and see guns as symbols of individual independence, man’s control over nature and honour (Braman & Kahan, 2006, pp. 570, 606; Chemerinsky, 2004, pp. 481-483).

In an earlier work, Kahan (1999) described the origins of these competing cultural styles and the meanings that motivate and fuel these sides. The positive meanings about guns by anti-gun control proponents originate from two historical sources: the militia heritage and the frontier heritage in America (Kahan, 1999, p. 454). The opposition to gun control highly valuates these meanings and sees guns as symbols of individual reliance, civic virtue, self-defence (Kahan, 1999, pp. 454, 457). The gun control advocates share these meanings with their opponents, but have a totally different, negative valuation of them, mainly due to an aversion to gun use and violence (Kahan, 1999, p. 456). In addition to this aversion, they see guns as denying civic solidarity and this negative, social meaning about guns has two other origins (Kahan, 1999, p. 457). First, the refusal to accept and comply with gender hierarchy and the corresponding image of a gun as a symbol for the status of men (Kahan, 1999, p. 456). Second, anti-racism sentiments play an important role, because, in addition to the image of a gun as a symbol of male dominance, the gun is also a symbol of white male domination (Kahan, 1999, p. 457).

Erwin Chemerinsky (2004), prominent scholar in US Constitutional Law and pro-gun control advocate, acknowledges the deep division in the gun debate between the conservatives, that emphasize individual rights, and liberal progressives, that stress the importance of collective rights, but is not satisfied with the cultural explanations for this divide (pp. 481-483). He discusses three possible cultural explanations for the differing visions and attitudes that, in his view, fall short. The first explanation, which entails that the divide is created by differing personal experiences, might explain to some extent different personal views about weapons, but it does not account for the consistent choice of conservatives for individual rights or the choice for collective rights on the other side (Chemerinsky, 2004, pp. 481-482). The second cultural explanation states that this division in attitudes exist because it is grounded in the perceived need to secure oneself from an oppressive government (Chemerinsky, 2004, p. 482). Although this argument is often heard in anti-gun control discourse, this explanation is completely out-of-date and out of place in a society where citizens, in more than two centuries,