Life, liberty, and the handgun: The function of synecdoche in the Brady Bill debate

This essay identifies the debate over the Brady Bill as part of a longstanding public argument rooted in two conflicting views of handguns that conceptualize competing social realities, and it argues that the social constructions of the handgun, in divergent synecdochic forms, shape the debate and maintain controversy over gun control. The divergent representations of the handgun in the debate are viewed as tactical components of competing discourses that function to sustain the practice of handgun ownership rights on the one hand, and to replace that practice on the other. Thus the critical task in this essay is to identify these synecdochal representations of the handgun as vital to both the construction and maintenance of competing social realities in the debate over the Brady Bill, and to demonstrate how such representations serve as divergent rhetorical constructs for competing interests.

Key concepts:

• life
• liberty
• handgun
• synecdoche
• representation
• ideograph
• representational ideograph
• ultimate terms
• god terms
• social transformation of meaning