Abstract

What is missing from most analyses of the gun crisis in America is an archetypal perspective. Archetypically, the Constitution is in the domain of the Bible in terms of it being the equivalent of a sacred text for Americans, making the Second Amendment a revered text for gun enthusiasts. It enshrines the insidious concept that people can rise up in armed resistance to an oppressive force, including the US government. The Minuteman is an archetypal mythic image in the American collective unconscious for the Second Amendment. A gun confers wakan (Sioux), sacred power, upon its possessor, allowing them to wield in an instant the archetype of death. This moves conflicts into the archetypal categories of good‐vs‐evil and black‐and‐white, circumventing the system of laws upon which our country is based and averting the dialogue upon which a democracy depends. The cowboy is another mythic image, the lonely gun‐toting individual who fought off beasts and savages to tame the Wild West. The very concept of America as “a shining city on the hill” that inspired our Puritan (archetypal image) ancestors is from the Book of Revelation in the Bible. They were not averse to using guns to exterminate the “heathen savages” they encountered. The arsenal of guns in America amplifies growing tensions around income inequality, increasing corporate power and deteriorating racial relations and inner city conditions.