Leftists have different assumptions about reality than we do.
The DSM is in its 4th edition now; Still no mention of hoplophobia.
The simple fact is that it is the shrink community who refuse to report the people who are truly a risk.
They are NOT the folks who need to know who owns weapons!
While the article is a good one, the author misses a very important point in its title: the “psychopathology” of Ronald Pies.
Describing what a mentally ill person does or thinks may be descriptive of what their psychopathology is, but it does not specify the root causes, what their actual mental illness might be. And this would be illuminating especially in this case.
That is, Ronald Pies has a mental problem, but what kind of mental problem does he have? Here are some possibilities that should be considered for those who are rabid gun controllers:
Hoplophobia, the fear of firearms, is nonspecific, a “general” fear of a complex thing, like a “fear of machines”. Cars as well as inclined planes?
In truth the phobia is probably a subset of hoplophobia: fear of particular kinds of firearm, fear of unexpected acute noises, fear of firearms users, fear of loss of personal control in a situation, fear of a loss of authoritative (government) control, fear of a particular kind (race, gender usually) of person being armed, etc.
However, by his statements, some interesting guesses can be made.
His feelings of safety in Scotland, a much more per capita violent place, strongly reminded me of David Bowie’s (slightly NSFW) song, “I’m Afraid of Americans”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEypM_BRe5Y
Please notice the repeated use of handgun imagery in the video, people acting like they are shooting handguns with their fingers.
Likely this is not a psychopathology, a real mental illness, but a “sociopathology”. That is, people who are raised and trained to fear something. For example, Muslims who have never met a Jew, but have been raised and trained to hate and fear them. Or Europeans who are raised and trained to hate and fear firearms.
Importantly, sociopathology is dependent on its target being indeterminate and nebulous. If a sociopath is exposed to their target in a non-threatening and repeated manner, having to interact with it, they often lose much of their fear, and their hatred takes other, less direct forms. (Only young sociopaths have any chance to recover by losing their fear and hate, unfortunately.)
Moving back to psychopathology, however, it would be very interesting to measure Ronald Pies’ reactions to different kinds of people having guns.
While most people in the US would have a learned fear response to seeing particular people being armed: young males, minorities, dressed like street thugs, in a group, in an unfamiliar and run-down place; he would likely have a strong fear response to many more people being armed. Women, Tea Party people, polite people in business clothes in a familiar environment, etc.
People not inclined to aggressive or criminal gun violence would still elicit a strong negative response from him. And he could not help himself.
Another element in consideration are people who are psychologically entirely dependent on others, like the government, and are terrified by a lack of governmental control. They are very comfortable with a heavily armed government, but see any lack of submission as dangerous and menacing, or antisocial.
Another are people with strong inferiority complexes, who conceal this fear with arrogant, egotistical controlling behavior, wanting to have total control over everything in their environment, especially people. Some other person being armed likely brings out their concealed inferiority complex in spades.
Perhaps the oddest group are those who are deeply frightened of loud, unexpected noises. It is called “phonophobia”. They are not afraid of the gun, or the bullet, or the person, but as soon as they see the gun they are terrified, because it “might” go off, making an unexpected noise. One could get a similar response from then by inflating a balloon, and showing them a hatpin.