THE US GUN CULTURE

The US Gun Culture 

The United States is one of the countries where gun violence is more present. We have seen a document from the Brady Campaign where they show the number of people killed in the US because of gun violence compared to other develloped countries. We can see that the difference is pretty big. 

But before showing other examples of documents, let's just give a quick look to two main definitions. 

The Founding fathers of the United States were the individuals of the Thirteen British Colonies in North America who lead the American Revolution against the authority of the British Crown and established the United States of America.

Another key definition is National Rifle Association which is an american non profit organization which for gun rights. It was founded in 1871. The group has informed its members about firearm-related bills since 1934, and it has directly lobbied for and against legislation since 1975.

This document is a cartoon from Steve Sack called Gun Lobby and Congress from 2010.

In this document we can see two characters downwards from the Capitol. One is dressed in brown and has a bag with the dollar sign written on it, and a briefcase where we can read "Gun Lobby". He says to the other character "Now, where were we, before we were so rudly interrupted...". The other character dressed in blue has also a briefcase with the word "Congress" on it. Both men are smiling. The men with the moustache seems to be giving the dollar bad to the other man as if they were negociating something just before being "interrupted". He is bribing him. We suppose that this man is from the NRA (National Rifle Association). From the Congress, we can see blood flowing down the stairs as if a tragedy was happening inside of it. This tragedy is probably assosiated to a gun attack. The gun lobbist man let us think that he makes business with the gun sale. It is a critic of the bribery done by those people (in this example the NRA) who create business thanks to the gun sale. 

The next document we are going to talk about is a caricature from Dave Grandlund called Second Amendment and NRA (2013).

This document compares two types of man ownering guns. The statue from the left is a statue from someone from the Founding fathers' age, and the one on the right is from someone from nowadays. Let's talk first about the one on the left. It is a statue, as we already described, from someone around the 19th century. The statue is represented with a simple riffle and dressed as a soldier from that age. He seems to be a soldier fighting in the Independance war. This statue doesn't bother anyone because we see it as an usual ancient soldier with just one riffle. Compared to it, we see the other soldier from the right, owning 3 dangerous riffles, and with ammunition under him. We also notice two hand guns hooked on his knees. We can conclude that this man is full of armament. This is also a critic about the NRA because in this man on the right is a amendment defined by the NRA. It seems that the NRA gives too many armament to civil or army people. It arrives to a level that it is ridiculous. With just one weapon is fine to 

The idea of progress: quality and quantity

Quality versus Quantity

Quantity

Quality

Mobile phones have been invented in the 70's by the company Motorola. Since those years, mobile phones have changed a lot. When they were created, mobile phones were harder to get, because it was a new invention, but since that time, more people get phones until it became one of the most important things people use in their dailylife. Even if mobile phones are one of the best inventions humans have invented, everybody probably noticed that even if more people manage to get phones easily, they are not as good as they were before. 

In our first document, we see the purcentage of people that owns a mobile phone in 2013 and in 2017.  We can see that just in 5 years that number increased a lot. Nowadays, the mobile phone became such an useful tool in our society, but those technological advices are not as good as we think. Every new phone that is selt in the trade, is with the years, more and more breakable. This is because of the planned obsolescence. 

The planned obsolescence is a purposefully implemented strategy that ensures the current version of a given product wil become out-of-date or useless within a known time period.

The second document I have chosen is kind of a parody of this planned obsolescence. In that document we see a mobile phone of a few years ago and a new one. We can conclude that the new phone is more fragile than the old one, because it describes what it could happen if the two mobile phones fall to the floor. The new one breaks his screen, and the old one breaks the floor. Saying this, the author wants to criticize the "strongness" of the new technological inventions.