The more and more I am looking at the new civility, as we go through yet another national conversation on guns, the more convinced I am that our original supposition that the prime driver in the gun control debate is a visceral fear of guns is completely wrong. Jeff Cooper coined the term “hoplophobia,” but I think it’s turning out to be way off the mark. Not that I don’t think there are people out there who are afraid of guns, but in the national debate, they aren’t who we’re dealing with.
Take a look at this article from Twitchy on sexist heckling of a woman pro-rights supporter as just one example, or this catch from Miguel of the Coalition to Stop Gun Ownership’s Facebook page. Clayton speaks of the fire eaters. Something I read earlier from Michael Bane sort of tied all this together for me. They aren’t afraid of your guns, they don’t hate your guns. They hate you, or to quote Michael Bane’s article, “It’s not the guns they hate…it’s us.”
I think this is absolutely correct, and everything we’ve been seeing in the media and from the gun control organizations seems to back that up. It fits with the article I did earlier on the cultural changes the coastal elites are seeing being the root cause of this latest backlash. We’ve been too successful for our own good. As long as gun ownership were confined to old, fat white guys (OFWGs), they were content to tolerate it. The changing face of gun ownership worries them, not because of a fear of guns, but for fear and loathing of the people who enjoy them, who increasingly are looking like them. If something isn’t done soon, they may have to take the opinions of gun owners seriously. Gun control is a movement of old white people, but they aren’t going to go down without a fight.
I am old fat Hispanic, pro gun and probably seen as a traitor to La Raza.
Screw ’em. they are to the left of Hugo Chavez anyway and I don’t do sombreros or sarapes. I do siestas though. rather refreshing.
Gun control is a way for democrats to get back at those that didn’t vote for them.
I think there’s some truth to that, but the prime motivator is a strong disdain of bitter clingers. I mean, even when Bill Clinton was warning about gun control, he couldn’t hide his condescension. So yes, I think there’s a little bit of paybacks going on here, and that’s fed by the fact that Obama won re-election with a voting majority far more left of center, far more young, and far more urban, than any other President in recent history. But I still think the root causes are deeply cultural.
What ever happened at all that “brining the country together” talk we heard back in 2008?
That only applies if you agree with them…
To quote the Instapundit:
The elites always hate it when the common people can unseat them, and an armed populace entails the ability to sweep away the elites when necessary.
Go all the way back to the middle ages and the elites were complaining about those “evil crossbows” that let a dirty peasant take down an armored knight. Ramp that up even more with the advent of firearms…
I believe things are often as simple as the human proclivity for pack behavior, which translates into team sports and political parties, and our natural loathing for The Other.
From my perspective, one of our (gun rights advocates’) problems is we have allowed our issue to be bundled with a whole laundry list of issues with which it has no rational connection, and to a great extent we have done it to ourselves; but when the left points to us, it is now pointing to a hated stereotype that doesn’t necessarily apply. We can protest that it shouldn’t, but they can find more than enough anecdotal examples to demonstrate emotionally that it does. So yeah, “we” are hated along with our alleged allies.
It is better to be feared than loved.
Lets lose all this “reasonable” crap that has never done us a lick of good and strike some real fear into the hearts of our enemies.
Problem is, except for politicians who we can reasonably put in fear of losing their next election, “real” fear isn’t going to be found short of our cold civil war turning dirty or worse. Which of course is one of the reasons we’re working so hard to spike the current gun control efforts, especially at the national level.
Although … who knows what will happen in NY state; we may be surprised. I suppose it’s a basic principle that as they push into new territory in large leaps instead of slow frog boiling they can’t really know what the “resistance”, as Obama put it, is going to be.
“‘Gun control’ is not about the guns. It’s about control.”
That’s where I see this going. They don’t hate the guns, the magazine capacity, or the ammunition. They hate us, with a passion. They hate our ideology. They hate our independence. They hate our self-reliance. They hate our thought processes. They hate our logic, and that our arguments and rebuttals are more effective and realistic than theirs.
And they hate, perhaps more than anything else, that we won’t be controlled, and that as long as we’re armed we can’t be controlled. That’s the bottom line. They hate us because they desire absolute control, and we are the barrier to everything they desire. They want everything, but they can’t have it while we roam this Earth. We are the trump card, the ace in the hole, the only thing that ensures the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Framers’ wisdom live on in this world.
I agree with Kurt Hofmann, over at “Armed and Safe”: “I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable.” They can keep their hate. We are better than this.
I recently stumbled over a graphic I like, a picture of some marchers with a banner saying “No matter who they elect, we are ungovernable.”
File that one next to “No Matter What I Say, You’ll Say It’s Racist”.
As an official OFWG myself, I’m proud to be a traitor to my demographic by supporting gun rights for EVERYBODY.
Archer hit it on the head. They fear our love of liberty, our desire for self-reliance. We must stand strong, or our world as we know it dies.
This is a great point. I used to be gobsmacked by the cognitive dissonance required to hate guns but support their use by police and military, and even sometimes own a few themselves! Now I see that this isn’t contradictory at all because they don’t really hate guns–as you said, they hate us.
When they talk about “keeping guns out of the wrong hands,” they’re not talking about criminals, they’re talking about us. So when we point this out, it’s not really some kind of revelation to them. They already know it. It’s what they actually want.
Ever argued with a gun owner in support of gun control for guns they don’t own? This is probably what you’re butting up against. It’s prejudice, plain and simple.
I agree. There’s no revelation. They know exactly what they’re after.
Nevertheless, the conversation needs to be had – as publicly as is appropriate – because it affects the opinions of the silent bystanders. They’re the people sitting on the fence, who haven’t decided which side they support, and who can still be swayed one way or the other. And whether they realize it or not, they’re listening.
It’s the old adage: A lie left unchallenged becomes the truth. It’ll feel like pulling teeth, having to defend your position over and over (and over), but it still must be done.