Attacks on Bush-Cheney HQs highlight fears of gun grabbers
Four recent incidents of violence directed at local Bush-Cheney offices across the nation draw attention again to the reason gun controllers oppose the rights of law-abiding citizens to bear arms for self-defense: they're afraid gun owners think like they do.
- Shots fired into Knoxville Bush/Cheney headquarters
Shot fired at GOP Headquarters in Huntington
A few years ago, psychiatrist Dr. Sarah Thompson published an excellent essay examining the anti-gun mentality from a psychiatric perspective. In the article, Thompson observes how the "projection" of one's own emotions on others translates into a fear of armed citizens.
The irony of (what are likely) Kerry supporters firing shots at Bush-Cheney headquarters is much more understandable when considered in the contact of Dr. Thompson's examination.
Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.
(Excerpts below, entire article available in the OFCC PAC Education Guide):
- About a year ago I received an e-mail from a member of a local Jewish organization. The author...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".
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.
Projection is a defense mechanism. Defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological mechanisms that protect us from feelings that we cannot consciously accept. 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.
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.
The people shooting into Bush-Cheney headquarters in these cities certainly appear to have higher than average levels of rage, frustration, and fear. And they've most definitely lost control of their emotions and endangered others.
This isn't the first time OFCC has come across examples proving Thompson correct. Take, for instance, this email sent by a person angry about the Do Not Patronize While Armed list:
- How pathetic are you people? Let me guess- you are so bitter about being such a fat waste of a life, that you have to hide behind a gun! Do you really have nothing better to do? Don't you have jobs? Families? You really spend this much time and money fighting so you can carry a gun into Arby's? If someone wants to steal your Beef'n'Cheddar, are you going to shoot them? Are you going to accidently shoot me in the process as I'm trying to enjoy my Jamocha shake? You are so pathetic that you have to carry a gun into a Mall or an Amusement park. I can't even imagine how weak minded you have to be to actually make such a big deal about carrying a gun in PUBLIC! I hope you boycott every business on this list. Don't you get it? That's why they put the signs up, because they don't want your business! They don't want deadly weapons in their safe workplace! Do us all a favor and boycott the entire State of Ohio! We don't want you here, you pathetic fat rednecks.
Sound like a person worried that CHL-holders might have the same lack of emotional control as they do? At least this next writer was honest about it:
- I would feel uncomfortable carrying a loaded weapon. Very uncomfortable that I would possibly have the means to end a person's life within arm's reach. That doesn't mean I'm going to do it, or would ever be tempted. Just that fact makes me uncomfortable.
I also would feel uncomfortable knowing that anyone on the street, in the theatre, at a restaurant, at the supermarket could be carrying a loaded gun on their person. And here's why - despite training, despite temperament, despite the best of intentions: I don't trust you. That's simply it, I don't trust you.
Stories of these shootings, and emails like these, highlight Dr. Thompson's observations, and illustrate why Ohioans should never again surrender their right to bear arms self-defense to the radical gun ban lobby. Whether aware of it or not, it isn't CHL-holders gun grabbers don't trust - it is themselves.
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