Exactly

This evolution of gun-ownership becoming almost the sole basis for being an American for so many Americans is probably the greatest societal sickness of my lifetime.

There has been a change in our culture. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, a concerted effort, led by the re-styled and newly politicized National Rifle Association, convinced Americans of a new interpretation of the Second Amendment, an interpretation which the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren Burger, termed a fraud on the American people in an interview with Lepore...

...
“When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.”

Even in Seattle, where we pride ourselves on a civil society, its institutions and behaviors, this shift is now evident. Increasingly, it seems that citizenship is defined not by the community we are and which together we build, but by our right to own and carry a gun. To call this an impoverished notion of citizenship is an understatement. It is an outrage.
 

Via Crooks and Liars.