I’m late linking to this post by Dr. Helen, since I tend to keep things open in tabs that I mean to blog about, and sometimes I don’t. But I wanted to get back to this one:
I think the point about gun owners being less outraged than non gun owners is an important one. If you listen to many people who are adamant gun control supporters, they often (mistakenly) believe that people simply shoot others because they are impulsive and angry, and a gun is nearby. My guess is that this is projection. This is what they feel they would do because they do not know how to modulate their own anger. They do not trust their own instincts (maybe with good reason!) and project their anger and inability to control themselves onto others.
A question in my mind is whether these people avoid weapons specifically because they consciously believe they could not handle them? Or do their anger issues unconsciously create an aversion toward weapons? Its difficult for me to understand the mindset. Why don’t such angry people fear people with baseballs bats, kitchen knives, or golf clubs? All are pretty deadly weapons in the hands of someone who can’t control their anger. The other curious thing is whether these people, given access to firearms, would actually fly off the handle and kill someone. I suspect they probably would not. I’d imagine these people are probably more frightened of their own temper than anything, which is difficult to understand given that to not be in jail, that person would have had to exercise a considerable degree of self-control if they did have a temper.
I am sure there are some people out there in the anti-gun world who are very conscious of their own limits and project them onto others.
The political class has many members who are substantive thieves and liars…so naturally what do they think business people are?
I think there is some population that feels terrified at being responsible for their actions and themselves at the level it takes to carry a firearm. It is not, in my experience, a task you can take lightly because you do hold the key to oblivion in your hands. Firing on or otherwise injuring an innocent by negligence is an ugly contemplation. Or should be. It has to be balanced with firing too late on a real threat, but I dunno which might be worse.
That other people can step up to the responsibility can be an embarassment for those unable. They don’t like it and in our society where no one can be offended, can get het up about it. Some people are terribly incompetent and are exceptionally fearful of being found out, often leading to sociopathic behaviors.
Sheep rarely like the sheepdogs, even if a few understand why the sheepdogs are there.
Why guns and not things like knives and baseball bats? Despite having been around for hundreds of years now, firearms still fall under the, “Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic,” heading.
You pull a trigger, someone dies. Even to someone versed in the technology, chain of events, and causality of the situation, just experiencing the whole pull-a-trigger-and-a-hole-suddenly-appears-in-what-you-were-aiming-at can be kind of… not surprising, but another word similar. Instead, with things like baseball bats, knives, and whatever else, the cause and effect are not only obvious, but obviously demonstrated.
And what people do not understand, they fear. Sure, the information to understand what is going on is freely available out there, and the odds are, most, if not all, hoplophobes consciously understand exactly what transpires between the pulling of a trigger and the bullet hitting its target. However, the unconscious portion of their minds revolts at the invisible death, and given how hoplophobes and anti-rights individuals are so terribly governed by their emotions and gut feelings… well, the conclusion is as logical as that of a trigger-pull.
Compound that animalistic fear with Mr. Schell’s comments about responsibility, and you have the makings of a true, died (sic) in the wool hoplophobe.
Linoge sort of echoes something I’ve been saying for some time… there seems to be this concept that a firearm is some sort of black magic / voodoo which produces some mysterious, evil outcome in result to a simple gesture (point and squeeze).
My ‘solution’ to this misunderstanding is to re-introduce firearms education into high school, or even junior-high, education. After all, we still have auto-shop, and a firearm is a much simpler machine than a car!
Personally, I’m pretty f*cking sick of seeing some ignorant kid killing a friend because he didn’t know how to properly unload a gun (check that chamber, dude), or some punk-ass gang member killing everybody EXCEPT his target because he didn’t know how to aim. Firearms can teach valuable lessons in physics, geometry, chemistry, and so forth… lessons worth learning, and probably more interesting than just the dry classroom crap currently on the books. It’s not magic.
Speaking of magic, I am unable to understand the antis who atribute magic properties to guns.
We often hear of those fearful of guns because they “just go off”, as if the inanimate object had a life of its own. Perhaps they are concerned about evil spirits-after all, don’t guns “cause trouble”,or “cause crime”, as if there was no human being responsible for his own actions involved in the process. And of course the intent of all gun owners and gun makers is evil-to inflict as much death on the unsuspecting innocent as possible.
I would not want to have the thoughts and fears of these people in my head, and I certainly don’t want them dictating the terms by which I live my life.
mark
Anti’s focus on the object since it is conceivably simpler to get rid of the object that the criminal mindset. MAny socialy minded individuals do think very simply. Like welfare given to solve poverty. Rather than realizing that humans will take the easy path if offered and will live off others rather than work if they are not required. The welfare reform while did not solve poverty, did push a fair number of people into having to work.
I also agree about the projection. Many of these people are very angry and do not trust themselves. There was a comment in Dr. Helen that the desire to get laws about everything is a childs desire for the adult to regulate behavior rather than regulating it themselves.
Perhaps the question, “Why are anti-gun people so violent?” should be rephrased. A more apt question might be, “Why are violent people so anti-gun?”
I believe (unencumbered by facts and data…just IMHO) that there is a selection process that goes on in the anti-gun groups. People who tend to project their own unrestrained violent tendencies onto others are also people who tend to join those types of groups. Once surrounded by like-prejudiced folks, they tend to blank out any facts or data which would require them to revise their world-view.