PA Bill Number: SB945
Title: Consolidating the act of August 9, 1955 (P.L.323, No.130), known as The County Code; and making repeals.
Description: Consolidating the act of August 9, 1955 (P.L.323, No.130), known as The County Code; and making repeals. ...
Last Action: Third consideration and final passage (199-0)
Last Action Date: Apr 17, 2024
Why are People Actually So Paranoid About Guns? :: 05/19/2018
It’s become pretty obvious in the fallout from the Parkland shooting and March for Our Lives movement that some people are scared at least as scared of guns in and of themselves as they are of murderers. Why might that be?
Phobias are, by definition, irrational. The insanity takes a tighter grip when the fear is prevalent in society. However irrational, there is usually an underlying explanation.
Take Stephen King’s It, for example. Clowns should not be scary, but a huge amount of the population can’t handle them. Now play on that fear with a book and its movie, sensationalized news coverage of outrageously twisted murders, and the use of grubby clown imagery to instill uneasiness in films, and you have a full-blown coulrophobia epidemic. The underlying reason has to do with cognitive dissonance.
So what makes guns so scary?
- The healthy layer: Guns are dangerous.
Like a sledgehammer, fire axe, crow bar, or chainsaw, guns are powerful tools that are made to do damage. A bit of firearm fear is proper insofar as it leads to respect and caution when using guns. Unlike sledgehammers, however, guns are sold as weapons meant to end lives. People who fear guns seem to get hung up on the marketing stage, and never examine the classification of firearms as tools.
Plus, guns are used to kill people. It’s true. Gun control advocates seem to feel that reducing gun prevalence would reduce gun deaths, and therefore find themselves taken aback when a gun owner thinks that isn’t true, and explains they keep their gun in case they need to kill somebody. Taking a life is never good, but sometimes it is necessary, a fact of life that can be difficult to grasp.
- Stigmatization Campaigns
Proponents of strict gun control have been on the losing side of the debate for decades. Especially after the expiration of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 2004 and a body of research showing little to no improvement, they decided they needed new tactics.
Instead of legislative efforts that would fail, gun control advocates work through unwritten social rules, with the goal of making gun ownership reason enough for pariah status, no matter the intent, experience, or mental health of gun owners. Even those who protect themselves with a simple handgun, that they chose for everyday carry, get clumped in with those who own ten different hunting rifles or those who just needed one to cause civil unrest a la teen dystopian novel.
And so it is that society can’t discuss gun ownership in a healthy, unhindered way. Just like in the taboos that surrounded the AIDS epidemic in its early days, the nation-wide gag order, caused by people who fear guns, makes guns more terrifying to the under-informed.
A recent example is an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, in which a child dies of a gunshot wound inflicted while he and a friend were playing with a loaded weapon. The characters all chastise the parent for owning a gun and letting it happen. At the end of the episode, main actress Ellen Pompeo reads a PSA (in her costume scrubs, an issue for later ethical debate) to tell parents to ask their children’s friends’ parents if they own guns before allowing them to play together, and cautioning parents not to own guns. While guns should always be locked up safely at home, the Hollywood left is enlisted to use fear mongering as a means to heighten things.
- The psychology of gun ownership is painful.
The clown parallels are stronger than you might initially think. Cognitive dissonance plays a key role in the paranoia around guns as much as it does with the fear of clowns.
Clowns: The big smile, bright colors, and funny mannerisms are all normally inviting signs. However, they are amplified such that they cause uncertainty. The brain freezes between knowing it’s supposed to enjoy the smile and recognizing that it is off by quite a bit compared to other instances (generally a non-inviting sign). These two conflicting beliefs cause the standstill, which the brain recognizes as fear. It’s a bit like a deer in the headlights but with higher levels of social complexity.
Guns: Nice people are not supposed to kill people, and they should avoid it at all costs. However, nice people should also be able to protect themselves if need be, which means gun ownership, which is in direct violation of avoiding killing people. Dissonance #1. Next, the removal of danger should increase safety, so reducing the amount of guns in circulation should reduce violent crime. Reduction in gun ownership would not be random but made up mostly by reduced ownership among “good guys,” and very little change among “bad guys.” Dissonance #2. Not only does the riddle cause gun-fearing brains to freeze, but it can also cause legislation to grind to a similarly glacial pace. Anti-gun evangelists have solidly-reasoned cases, made in their likeminded social groups, which aren’t reconcilable with the lived experiences of people who have had to use guns.
Finally, owning a gun is an implicit realization of the most terrifying aspects of reality. By owning a gun, one has to recognize that they may use it to harm people. When they recognize that, they are also folding in the fact that they might one day be in very serious trouble and out of the reach of any backup or help. They are accepting full responsibility for their own personal protection. When one’s brain is already frozen between the conflicting gun ownership talking points, ideas that they realize are valid but can’t overcome by thinking of guns as tools, the massive responsibility of protecting oneself is the breaking point, and gun paranoia blooms.
Jay Chambers is a pro free speech Constitutionalist based in Austin, Texas. When not writing over at Minute Man Review, Jay is making property improvements, spending time with his family, or spending time in the great outdoors.
