Why Some People Hate Guns
posted in Culture, Firearms, Politics |In an earlier post, I explained the psychosis of Bush-hatred using the psychological term reaction formation — "behavior or emotion that is the polar opposite of the way someone is or should be feeling, because the authentic emotion is too frightening to deal with." I think it's also a good explanation of why some people hate guns, or are irrationally scared of them.
Many people believe the liberal notion that criminals become such for reasons almost completely outside their control. They believe that otherwise law-abiding people turn to crime because of poverty, lack of education, lack of opportunity, discrimination or other factors. And it's society's fault that this happened, because we didn't adequately address these wrongs.
Sometimes it's almost as if liberals wish to convey some sort of dignity to criminals. I remember talking to my cousin and his wife almost twenty years ago; my cousin was a parole officer in Dallas, and his job required face-to-face contact with dozens of parolees each week. I asked him if he carried a gun, and he seemed shocked at the idea. His wife said, "But it might make them mad if they knew he had a gun." It took me a while to decipher her response; she was essentially saying that the parolees had a right to be indignant if they found that that they weren't explicitly trusted. It wasn't their fault they were convicted criminals, and they were fine now, unless society failed them again. And if my cousin carried a gun because some of them had been violent in the past, well, he was failing them.
It's true that many people make a series of bad choices due to bad experiences, and if helped, they turn their lives around. Christian prison ministries prove that daily. But these changes take time – they don't happen instantly. Despite that, many of the anti-gun crowd also insist that we not resist when attacked, I suppose in hope that it will make the attacker rethink his whole life on the spot, and go home and pick daisies.
An even more radical offshoot of this philosophy is that many people commit crimes that wouldn't otherwise, just because they had access to a gun.
So liberals have the idea that no one is inherently bad, and it's our fault when they are, either by failing them as a society or by leaving guns laying around. It's a warm, fuzzy little idea, and gives the impression that if we just do the right things, no one will do bad things.
The reality is the opposite: some people are just bad. Just because we can trace the circumstances and decisions that lead them to become bad doesn't mean that if we are nice to them that they will become nice.
Apparently that reality is so frightening or abhorrent that many people subconsciously decide to fear and/or hate the concept of self-defense and the most effective means to that defense, a personal firearm.
The good news is that this psychosis can be "unlearned." Sometimes it happens just by an honest evaluation of facts. Other times it's because someone introduces them to the sport of shooting, and they find out that guns are actually enjoyable. Sadly, sometimes it's because of personal experience with violent crime.
If gunowners will introduce as many people as possible to lawful enjoyment of firearms, we can reduce violent crime. That's a fact.
