America in two pictures

My first image is a famous painting of Manifest Destiny. I think this image is representative of the United States as it is one of the first images created by English American's, designed to motivate the new settlers to expand their culture across the land, showing the beginnings of US innovation and technological development. It signifies the hope and potential for the United States that was prevalent when the first non-natives settled there, showing America as being a land of liberation in the perspective of the settlers. Manifest Destiny was the idea that the unsettled land in the US was given by God to the new settlers, to do with as they felt right. 

I think my second image captures the problems, very well, that arise with the legality of gun ownership in the US, and the irony of the shock that sparks from gun crime. This opposes the first image as, even though the legality of owning a gun can be seen to give a person more freedom, as soon as that gun is used against someone else, the victim loses their freedom, which is essentially in the hands of the government. The ever-increasing development of technology in America has resulted in the development many good things, such as computers, cars and space innovation. However, the development of weapons is also a result of this innovation, and the increasing availability of weapons because of this.