Dr. Strangelove - Natalie Sharp

 Nuclear War and Gun Rights in the U.S.

Dr. Strangelove was a humorous satire that poked fun at the absurdity of nuclear weapons and their power of complete destruction. In class, we discussed how at first this film wasn’t meant to be a comedy, but after putting together all the facts and plot they realized it was too absurd to not be funny. The U.S. and other powerful countries felt this need to one-up each other with nuclear weapons, the more weapons one country got the more weapons the other countries felt they also needed. It became an endless competition until the doomsday weapon was created to elicit complete world destruction in a rare case. The reality of the situation is that with the creation of these weapons of mass destruction comes the actual destruction of the world. These ideas around nuclear weapons really reminded me of how guns are viewed in the U.S. today. We have created these awful killing weapons of mass destruction and with their creation comes their use. According to the gun violence archives, in the U.S. there were 647 mass shootings and more than 44,000 people dies from gun violence in 2022. We are the only developed country to have these kinds of gun violence issues and a lot of that is due to our practically non-existent gun laws and gun culture. There is a similar belief to nuclear weapons that the more gun that exists the more people need to have their own guns for protection. This cycle has continued to the point where guns have become extremely commonplace in the U.S. and kill so many people each year. Similar to nuclear weapons, their creation has led to so much destruction, rather than protection. Now schools, churches, and public spaces have become targets for people wanting to take out their anger and this has resulted in an insane amount of tragedies every year. Yet, for some reason, our government does not want to do anything about it because the more guns we have the more power we can have over others.