Posted on 08/20/2009 4:53:55 AM PDT by marktwain
In the 1920s, Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach developed the test now forever linked with his name. The idea behind the “Rorschach Test” is that a person’s interpretation of, or response to, a series of inkblots could help to reveal an underlying psychological disorder. As is the case for many areas of psychology, the efficacy of such testing may no doubt be debated, but the events of August 17 in Phoenix, Arizona offers observers of the American body politic the opportunity to study a similar phenomena.
According to ABC affiliate KVIA, “About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech Monday - the latest incident in which protesters have openly displayed firearms near the president. Gun-rights advocates say they're exercising their constitutional right to bear arms and protest, while those who argue for more gun control say it could be a disaster waiting to happen.” Other press accounts are filled with expressions of similar breathless wonderment. Palpable astonishment filled the headline of CNN’s report of the incident — “Man carries assault rifle to Obama protest – and it’s legal”— and went on to declare: “Gun-toting protesters have demonstrated around the president before. Last week, a man protesting outside Obama's town hall meeting in New Hampshire had a gun strapped to his thigh. That state also doesn't require a license for open carry.”
Paul Helmke of the “Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence” apparently went so far as to tell KVIA that, “people should not be allowed to bring guns to events where Obama is. ‘To me, this is craziness,’ he said. ‘When you bring a loaded gun, particularly a loaded assault rifle, to any political event, but particularly to one where the president is appearing, you're just making the situation dangerous for everyone.’" Of course, if Mr. Helmke were being honest, it’s not the presence of a privately-owned firearm in the same area code as the president that bothers him: it’s the presence of such privately-owned firearms within the territorial confines of the American Republic.
Perhaps we should call it Firearm Derangement Syndrome (FDS). The “Rorschach test” for FDS is quite simple: when presented with a picture of a man with a holstered weapon, what do you see? A potential terrorist? A dangerous extremist? A palpable and imminent threat to The Leader? Or do you see a citizen exercising his legal rights, behaving entirely within the spirit and letter of the law?
Undeniably, the visuals associated with this particular incident may have been initially perplexing to victims of FDS; the “gun-toting” individual whose presence at the protest has sparked the press’s histrionics is a young, African-American male — shouldn’t all “gun-toting” men be required to be middle-aged white men (preferably Iraq War veterans) whose neighbors describe them as “loners?” It’s a shame when the visuals confuse the narrative for the purveyors of American preprocessed political opinion.
It is pointless to ask victims of FDS to explain why they find the visual of American citizens exercising their constitutional rights so profoundly disturbing. The mental image of a gun in the possession of an American citizen is enough to cause them to break out in a sweat; to actually see a mere citizen with a holstered firearm is prima facie evidence of a dangerous enemy of the State. In the mindset of a victim of FDS, a gun in the holster of a citizen of the Republic is the real Weapon of Mass Destruction — if they believed in evil as a categorical moral concept, they might even call such a firearm a “tool of the devil.” No, only in the hands of the ubiquitous black-appareled ranks of our increasingly militarized police forces does such a firearm suddenly— even mystically— transform into an instrument of Hope and Change.
Victims of FDS suffer an attendant puritanical hang-up about such displays of civil liberties. One might readily hear an anti-second amendment flack proclaim: “It’s one thing to talk about what ‘gun-toting’ citizens do in the privacy of their own home or gun range — but should we really allow such displays in public? That’s sick. The display of a firearm, like the expression of free speech, should be left to those who have been properly authorized by the government to do so. As for the rest, please have the decency to confine yourselves to a gun range or presidentially-authorized ‘Free Speech Zone.’”
Undoubtedly the media will be filled with the refrain in the coming days for eliminating such pesky rights to open carry in the various states of the Union. That’s the bothersome thing about constitutionally-guaranteed rights: some troublesome citizens keep running around exercising them — and certainly the recent incident demonstrates that not every use of a right is an intelligent use of that right. Americans concerned for defending their liberties from the delusions of the FDS crowd also need to keep that fact in mind.
Rev. James Heiser earned his B.A. in Political Science from George Washington University. Beginning in 1987, he worked as a Research Associate of the National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington D.C. and as a Media Analyst for the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia. His publications include two books; The Office of the Ministry in N. Hunnius' Epitome Credendorum (1996) and A Shining City on a Higher Hill: Christianity and the Next New World (2006), as well as dozens of journal articles and book reviews.
This quote is the money quote.
And the answer is EDUCATION.
Cheers!
The punishemt should be 100 continuious hours of back-to-back episodes of Gunsmoke.
Depends on whether or not the armed person is a government apparatchick or not. If it is a private citizen, then I see some sanity returning to the world. A government bureaucrat, then just more of the same "one set of rules for them another set for us" stuff.
I would not call Helmke’s condition by a technical sounding term. In truth, he is a pantywaist.
And if anyone thinks those ‘gun toting’ protesters were NOT in the crosshairs of a sniperscope, they’re completely deluded.
The Second Amendment is very clear and unambiguous.
It’s time to take back the country.
My four year old can tell you how to view guns.
They are tools.
I have a recurring exchange with her when I’m working with any tool and she wants to hold it or use it.
Q: “What do we know about tools?”
A: “You must use them correctly or you will get hurt.”
Cheers!
My favorite is, "Guns don't kill people, husbands who come home early from work kill people."
Why did they carry guns to Phoenix? Well, did you see any ACORN/SEIU thugs beating anyone up, or even intimidating? No.
Exactly!
“The problem is that there aren’t enough people exercising their second amendment rights. “
Yep
when presented with a picture of a man with a holstered weapon, what do you see?
I see a butterfly but why drag sex into it?
As has been stated, someone willing to trade his life for that of the President will be difficult to deter, laws or no laws. Last time I checked threatening to harm or acting to harm the President is a crime punishable by up to life imprisonment without parole.
OK, what about this? Seems the thing was an AR-15, but not one that was capable of full-auto. If not, it does not qualify as an "assault rifle". Then, too, the particular weapon in question was empty, with no suitable ammo ready to hand at the time.
Seems to me the only thing "loaded" in this context is the above quote.
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