Raging Against Self Defense: A Psychiatrist Examines The Anti-Gun Mentality

Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc. ^ | 12-28-2002 | Sarah Thompson, M.D.

[martian_22]

BTTT!

[ricpic]

Do we really need this long, and in places tortured, psychological explanation of the anti-gun phenomenon?
Nobody wants to die. I think there is general agreement on that. For a significant part of the population the thought, the awareness, of their own mortality is excruciating. The gun, by it's mere existence, brings that awareness into high relief. From their standpoint the less they think about guns, the less they are made aware of them, the better. They just want the whole issue to go away. They are made VERY anxious by it.
For that reason there can be no rational way to convince them that widespread gun ownership would actually make them safer. They just don't want to hear about it, period.

[Reeses]

For a significant part of the population the thought, the awareness, of their own mortality is excruciating

Projection! YOU find your own mortality excruciating. Read the article, it talks about you. I would guess then that you believe in an infinite afterlife so what's the problem? I myself am not afraid to die, look at it as my first day of peace and rest. I've never understood that hyper sense of survival. To me, dying in a car wreck unexpectedly is preferable to a long ugly battle with the Grim Reaper.

[ricpic]

Reeses - you're right. I am afraid of death. But not to the point of denying it. That was my point. The anti-gun crowd can't stand THE THOUGHT of guns because they can't face their own deaths.
For them, gun = death. And they can't hack it.
P.S. I don't believe in an afterlife.

[serinde]

>>I have been searching for some time on statistical information concerning legally owned firearms and their use in crime. <<

I'm pretty sure the actual statistics don't exist, at least not where the average person can get to them. However, a lot of info can be found at http://www.keepandbeararms.com/ . This site is dedicated to collecting the largest collection of self-protection and pro-gun news articles possible. Just a casual review of their collection proves that legally owned firearms have a BIG impact on crime.

[EBUCK]

Nice analysis but I think your wrong about there being no point. A lot of the anti-gun folks are very open to psychiatric advice hell, I'm betting that a great many are already patients of some form or another. Information like this presented in the proper context could prove usefull in winning a few minds.

EBUCK

[EBUCK]

I'm a paying member there (check my bio..) and I've thru their data time and time again but havn't found anything that would be usefull, just conjecture and personal accounts.

I think by its very omision from databases the information must be very incriminating to the anti-gun loby.

EBUCK