To understand the gun debate, look at America’s stories

+ demolishing schools after mass shootings US Edition - Today's top story: Look at 3 enduring stories Americans tell about guns to understand the debate over them [View in browser]( US Edition | 23 June 2022 [The Conversation]( How we see an object influences what we do about it – and guns are no exception. Greg Dickinson, a communications professor at Colorado State University, and rhetoric scholar Brian Ott argue that Americans’ attitudes toward firearms are deeply shaped by three enduring stories our national culture has handed down about them. One of them, for example, is that guns are “quintessentially American,” woven into how we imagine the country’s history, especially the “Wild West.” This familiar story associates guns with freedom, Manifest Destiny and even God. Each new wave of gun violence in the United States produces lots of debate, but usually little action. To understand why, they suggest [a close look at how we talk about guns in the first place]( – not just in talking points, but in everyday culture. Also today: - [Shortages abound, but not for fireworks]( - [Women are iced out of engineering]( - [Elvis: An icon of consumerism]( Molly Jackson Religion and Ethics Editor Today's newsletter supported by [Readers like you]( A family poses in front of their sod house in Custer County, Neb., in 1887. Bettmann/Bettmann via Getty Images [Look at 3 enduring stories Americans tell about guns to understand the debate over them]( Greg Dickinson, Colorado State University; Brian L. Ott, Missouri State University The ways Americans talk about firearms is full of contradictions, two communication scholars explain – and that powerfully shapes the country’s approach to gun policy. Ethics + Religion - [Abortion and bioethics: Principles to guide U.S. abortion debates]( Nancy S. 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