We choose here to emphasize one overriding theme, what we call the American habit of violence, as it overlaps with a second important pattern, the sustained polarization of good and evil. America is by no means the only nation of settlers with a history of extreme violence toward the native population; nor are we the only society guilty of centuries of black slavery. But America is special in creating so extreme and long-standing a practice of gun-centered killing, along with a reverence for the gun that has rendered it a sacred object. The overall ideological phenomenon can be given an awkward but revealing name, "gunism." Nothing symbolizes control or ownership of death better than the gun. By holding a loaded gun in one's hand, one takes possession of life and death.
— Robert Jay Lifton, Greg Mitchell, Who Owns Death?