Republican US congressman Thomas Massie sparked outrage when he posted a Christmas picture of his family brandishing guns.

Think of the most powerful images, the ones that capture the moment, the unforgettable ones that stay forever, that are etched deeply in memory.

The moment the planes speared into the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, the falling man from one of the towers, the tank man in Tiananmen Square, the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, the hooded figure at Abu Ghraib, children running from a napalm attack in Vietnam.

Now look at the above image.

There is no drama, no gasp of grief or shock/horror. It is inert, almost. But for the togetherness of the people looking out. Happy family, Merry Christmas to all – but for the latent terror in the image. What gifts do they bring? What message?

They are carrying machines that kill, that can rip a head off its shoulders that can make a human body impossible to recognise. They hold these weapons as if each holds a darling little kitten. They are smiling.

Introducing Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, and his beloved, apart from his family: an M60 machine gun, a weapon of choice in the Vietnam War, a collector’s item. Other weapons are an Uzi, the Israeli submachine-gun, a Thompson M1SB, probably a copy of the WWII submachine gun, rifles and two AR-15s, the weapon of choice for massacres in the US.

The picture is captioned: “Merry Christmas! PS: Santa, please bring ammo.”

Perhaps it’s a joke, a bit of a laugh, or something to stir the pot. But then perhaps it’s not. Maybe it’s a state of mind captured forever, not only of this group but of a very large part of America.

Massie tweeted the photograph just a few days after a 15-year-old boy shot dead four at Michigan’s Oxford high school. The boy’s father took him shopping on Black Friday (bargain sales day!) and bought a SIG Sauer semiautomatic handgun. The son Ethan Crumbley posted on Instagram: “Just got my new beauty today. SIG SAUER 9mm.”

His mother reportedly posted the gun saying it was “his new Christmas present”.

The family portrait has provoked outrage, but also approval. More than 80,000 likes, for instance.

Some have defended Massie by saying well perhaps the shot was taken before the deaths, but even so, why after it occurred was it allowed to remain?

The Massies are not the only owners of an AR-15 in America. There are five million of them in circulation. The AR-15 has been used in many school massacres.

There are as many guns in America as people, probably more. How does that make sense?

Kyle Rittenhouse carried an AR-15 interstate so that he could “defend” himself as a militia man during protests in the town of Kenosha. He killed two people and then was found not guilty. He was hailed as a patriot and hero in some quarters.

An organisation called Gun Owners of America awarded him a special AR-15 for “his defence of gun rights in America”. They tweeted: “Join us in saying thank you to Kyle Rittenhouse for being a warrior for gun owners and self-defence rights across the country.”

Donald Trump invited Rittenhouse to his Florida mansion. Trump called him a “really nice young man”.

Of course he would.

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The Washington Post recently reported that a report by the Government Accountability Office of an analysis of Education Department data said that “physical attacks with a weapon nearly doubled early in the Trump administration. In a two-year period, from school years 2015-2016 to 2017-2018, attacks with weapons jumped 97 per cent, according to the most recent data available. At the same time, hate crimes increased 81 per cent and sexual assaults rose 17 per cent.”

The hammer shapes the hand.

What is abhorrent and frightening to us must by sheer size and scale of numbers seem normal to a very large part of the American population. Indeed, in some states, it’s quite OK to tote your weapon, as if you’re carrying the shopping bag or walking the dog.

Of course, the defence to bearing arms is the Second Amendment, ratified in 1791, that “a well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Now the enemy is within that state.

According to one estimate, there are more than 720,000 machine guns circulating in America. Imagine being at the MCG, it’s at capacity of 100,000. You attend each day of the week, it’s full every day, and each day, each person has a machine gun. How would you feel? Frightened or determined to fight back, with a weapon of your own?

At seeing the Massie photo, Philip Ingram, an ex-military intelligence officer, told The Guardian: “There is no way in a modern society these weapons should be in hands outside law enforcement or the military. They are designed for one purpose: to kill people.”

In the hail of praise there are voices of sanity. John Yarmouth, a Democrat from Kentucky, declared, “I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive asshole.”

More than 20 years ago, after the Columbine massacre in which 12 students and one teacher died, songwriter Ani Di Franco wrote To the Teeth.

Part of the lyric is:

The sun is setting on the century / and we are armed to the teeth / We’re all working together now / to make our lives mercifully brief. Every year now like Christmas / some boy gets the milk fed suburban blues / Reaches for the available arsenal / and saunters off to make the news.

Working for change when gun culture is so deeply ingrained is nigh like the eternal task Zeus ordained upon Sisyphus. The arsenal of America is the boulder, each massacre is it rolling back down the hill.

Most Americans in polls say they have weapons for self-defence. Walk along a suburban street and, according to the polls, every two houses out of five will have a weapon.

This is American Gothic. The horror story.

Figures from the Brady organisation in the US to prevent gun violence:

Every day, 316 people are shot in the US, and 106 die. Ninety-five are intentionally shot by someone else and survive, 39 are murdered, 64 die from suicide.

Every day, 22 children and teens are shot in the US, five die, two are murdered.

Every year, 115,551 people are shot, and 38,826 die from the gun; 14,062 are murdered.

Every year, 7957 children and teens are shot in the US; 1663 die from gun shots, 864 are murdered.