Not even if he's using a crossbow?
Posted on 12/03/2012 5:34:47 PM PST by Mozilla
“You don’t need to have a gun; the police will protect you.”
“If people carry guns, there will be murders over parking spaces and neighborhood basketball games.”
“I’m a pacifist. Enlightened, spiritually aware people shouldn’t own guns.”
“I’d rather be raped than have some redneck militia type try to rescue me.”
How often have you heard these statements from misguided advocates of victim disarmament, or even woefully uninformed relatives and neighbors? Why do people cling so tightly to these beliefs, in the face of incontrovertible evidence that they are wrong? Why do they get so furiously angry when gun owners point out that their arguments are factually and logically incorrect?
How can you communicate with these people who seem to be out of touch with reality and rational thought?
One approach to help you deal with anti-gun people is to understand their psychological processes. Once you understand why these people behave so irrationally, you can communicate more effectively with them. Defense Mechanisms
Projection
About a year ago I received an e-mail from a member of a local Jewish organization. The author, who chose to remain anonymous, insisted that people have no right to carry firearms because he didn’t want to be murdered if one of his neighbors had a “bad day”. (I don’t know that this person is a “he”, but I’m assuming so for the sake of simplicity.) I responded by asking him why he thought his neighbors wanted to murder him, and, of course, got no response. The truth is that he’s statistically more likely to be murdered by a neighbor who doesn’t legally carry a firearm1 and more likely to be shot accidentally by a law enforcement officer.1
How does my correspondent “know” that his neighbors would murder him if they had guns? He doesn’t. What he was really saying was that if he had a gun, he might murder his neighbors if he had a bad day, or if they took his parking space, or played their stereos too loud. This is an example of what mental health professionals call projection – unconsciously projecting one’s own unacceptable feelings onto other people, so that one doesn’t have to own them.3 In some cases, the intolerable feelings are projected not onto a person, but onto an inanimate object, such as a gun,4 so that the projector believes the gun itself will murder him.
Projection is a defense mechanism. Defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological mechanisms that protect us from feelings that we cannot consciously accept.5 They operate without our awareness, so that we don’t have to deal consciously with “forbidden” feelings and impulses. Thus, if you asked my e-mail correspondent if he really wanted to murder his neighbors, he would vehemently deny it, and insist that other people want to kill him.
Projection is a particularly insidious defense mechanism, because it not only prevents a person from dealing with his own feelings, it also creates a world where he perceives everyone else as directing his own hostile feelings back at him.6
All people have violent, and even homicidal, impulses. For example, it’s common to hear people say “I’d like to kill my boss”, or “If you do that one more time I’m going to kill you.” They don’t actually mean that they’re going to, or even would, kill anyone; they’re simply acknowledging anger and frustration. All of us suffer from fear and feelings of helplessness and vulnerability. Most people can acknowledge feelings of rage, fear, frustration, jealousy, etc. without having to act on them in inappropriate and destructive ways.
Some people, however, are unable consciously to admit that they have such “unacceptable” emotions. They may have higher than average levels of rage, frustration, or fear. Perhaps they fear that if they acknowledge the hostile feelings, they will lose control and really will hurt someone. They may believe that “good people” never have such feelings, when in fact all people have them.
This is especially true now that education “experts” commonly prohibit children from expressing negative emotions or aggression. Instead of learning that such emotions are normal, but that destructive behavior needs to be controlled, children now learn that feelings of anger are evil, dangerous and subject to severe punishment.7To protect themselves from “being bad”, they are forced to use defense mechanisms to avoid owning their own normal emotions. Unfortunately, using such defense mechanisms inappropriately can endanger their mental health; children need to learn how to deal appropriately with reality, not how to avoid it.8
(This discussion of psychological mechanisms applies to the average person who is uninformed, or misinformed, about firearms and self-defense. It does not apply to the anti- gun ideologue. Fanatics like Charles Schumer know the facts about firearms, and advocate victim disarmament consciously and willfully in order to gain political power. This psychological analysis does not apply to them.)
“I’d rather be raped than have some redneck militia type try to rescue me.” - Sandra Fluke
I’ve had a real live firearm at my disposal for over fifty years. I’ve been subjected to all the assinine behavior from friends, neighbors, relatives and other drivers that you have. I have never had occasion to point a gun at someone or suggest to anyone that I might. Perhaps I’m a saint but there is ample evidence to the contrary.
To steal from ESPN, you must be buttah, cuz you're on a roll...
And progressives are about power & control.
What could be more of an anathema to a control freak than those whom they wish to control having the means to deny them that control?
“I’d rather be raped than have some redneck militia type try to rescue me.” \
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Sounds to me like she would rather be raped than do a lot of things.
Hmmm..... Must be what is going with my friend.
I have been getting all kinds of objections from her over the last year and and I’m honestly and sincerely, with no evasion of mind in myself whatsover (only those who know will get that) so overloaded I’m done.
Whatever her problems are and that of her Cornell grad of childish and Irish Poosy whipped intellect are I’m done.
I don’t need the chaos.
If they want to be boring and stiff have at it.
Life was meant to be lived for fun and to do interesting things.
The violate my tagline and it’s time to part ways.
I recall “Tis the Season” and I like to keep it that way at least 360 days a year.
Audi Fking Oce.
Yuh ain’t interesting and you ain’t no fun no more
You have issues and I’m cancelling my subscription.
It has been my opinion from the get go; people that don’t trust others to have guns are afraid that others are as crazy and hateful as they are.
“I’d rather be raped than have some redneck militia type try to rescue me.” - Sandra Fluke
Obama’s sons stand ready to do just that, as do the followers of another rapist, MoHAMmed
If I see a bumper sticker for Zero on your car or suspect you to be a supporter, very likely rescue will not be forthcoming from me............
did you guys see the anti-prepper screed yesterday??
it was written by a retired emergency management “expert”
it was pretty horrendous
Thanks. These articles were too good to not post.
I think it was Michael Medved who touched on this reasoning, too. He said that conservatives look at the morality of the user; guns are not good or bad, it is the person holding it that is good or bad. Nukes aren’t bad in and of themselves, but nukes in the hands of Iranians are bad while in the hands of Americans are good.
Liberals are materialist. They don’t think of good and evil in spiritual matters, mostly writing off the soul. If there is good and bad, it is based on the feelings of each person, and thus impossible to be universal. But THINGS, materials objects, that can be used to hurt others are bad. To a liberal, you cannot decide if the other person is good or bad since that can change. But liberals can decide that all guns, all knives, all bombs are bad. And they assume that if you get rid of all the bad THINGS, then people cannot do bad no matter their impulses.
Was that the one where preppers were called greedy? Then the semi-apology where general prepping for a disaster was reasonable, since FEMA promoted it, but prepping for an end of the world was still greedy and bad?
That is the one.
Where if you can’t save everyone, then you should save no one... apparently
Of course the government exempts itself from this idea
“selfish” wow...
The evil gun trope was made into a movie in 1989 with "Blue Steel" starring Jaimie Lee Curtis and Ron Silver. Silver played a guy who took a gun from a robbery scene. Taking the gun turned Silver's character into a homicidal maniac. I think many libs seriously believe mere possession of a firearm turns normally nonviolent people into pyschopathic killers.
This is a classic article.
Does anyone recall To whom Dr Thompson is married? His name escapes me. He too is prominent in the freedom fight. Thanks.
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