Silver Supporter
- Messages
- 6,072
- Reactions
- 15,024
The "My Month With a Gun" series, by Heidi Yewman contains a buried admission that I think fuels the unreasoning hatred of guns by most anti-gun people.
A Response to "Stupid, Immoral, Dangerous, Coward: My Month with a Gun"
"Yewman wants her readers to believe that if you have a gun, you have to consider that the world is a dangerous place. And if you dont have a gun, then you can sleep peacefully at night."
Yewman: Suspiciousness and fear of people is new to me, and I dont like it....I thought the gun would make me feel more powerful, more confident, and less fearful. I was wrong. All I felt was fear. Physically taking the gun out of the safe and putting it in a holster on my hip literally reminded me that I was going out into a big bad scary unsafe world. There were days when I put the gun back in the safe and stayed home because it simply took too much energy to be scared."
In other words, if an anti-gun person refuses to deal with the idea of the world being a dangerous place, if they simply decide to ignore reality, they can feel safe. Those of us who own, carry, and use guns for any purpose infringe upon those fantasies of safety just as Yewman herself infringed on her own fantasy when she took her gun out of the safe. The fantasy that the world is benign that is so carefully nurtured by anti-gunners is also very fragile. Anything that threatens that fantasy frightens and enrages them. It's why they so emotionally argue that no one should be armed, that armed guards in schools are a bad idea, and it's why any other seemingly reasonable idea that involves the presence of guns triggers such over the top reactions.
A Response to "Stupid, Immoral, Dangerous, Coward: My Month with a Gun"
"Yewman wants her readers to believe that if you have a gun, you have to consider that the world is a dangerous place. And if you dont have a gun, then you can sleep peacefully at night."
Yewman: Suspiciousness and fear of people is new to me, and I dont like it....I thought the gun would make me feel more powerful, more confident, and less fearful. I was wrong. All I felt was fear. Physically taking the gun out of the safe and putting it in a holster on my hip literally reminded me that I was going out into a big bad scary unsafe world. There were days when I put the gun back in the safe and stayed home because it simply took too much energy to be scared."
In other words, if an anti-gun person refuses to deal with the idea of the world being a dangerous place, if they simply decide to ignore reality, they can feel safe. Those of us who own, carry, and use guns for any purpose infringe upon those fantasies of safety just as Yewman herself infringed on her own fantasy when she took her gun out of the safe. The fantasy that the world is benign that is so carefully nurtured by anti-gunners is also very fragile. Anything that threatens that fantasy frightens and enrages them. It's why they so emotionally argue that no one should be armed, that armed guards in schools are a bad idea, and it's why any other seemingly reasonable idea that involves the presence of guns triggers such over the top reactions.