PEJORATIVE CHARACTERIZATIONS OF GUN OWNERSHIP
1. The Penis Theory--{40}
Reviewing unsubstantiated, mostly "derogatory... speculative literature on the personality characteristics of gun owners", the NIJ Evaluation (p. 120) mentions "the psychoanalytic" view that "weapons are phallic symbols representing male dominance and masculine power." The idea of gun ownership as sexual aberration has been casually espoused by such anti-gun luminaries as Arthur Schlessinger, Jr., Harlan Ellison, Mike Royko and Joyce Brothers.{41} The only serious study endorsing this view is by psychiatrist Emmanuel Tanay who sees "the need for a gun" as serving "libidinal purposes ... to enhance or repair a damaged self-image...", and involving "narcissism..., [p]assivity and insecurity".{42}
There is no viable argument for the penis theory as against pragmatic explanations for gun ownership. Psychiatrist Bruce Danto rejects the penis theory because it fails to account for female gun ownership. In fact, 50% of those who own a gun for protection only are women (especially black women), even though women are much less likely than men to own guns for sport.{43} To say the very least, this pattern is more easily explicable by reference to women's felt need for protection than by feelings of penile inadequacy.
Dr. Danto also notes that the penis theory would predict that male gun owners would be inclined toward the largest barrel and bore weapons available. But the respective popularity of guns of different sizes uniformly appears to reflect purely pragmatic concerns.{44} The penis theory is equally incapable of explaining other demographic differentials in gun ownership. When all gun owners are counted (not just those who own for protection alone) survey evidence shows that
gun owners are disproportionately rural, Southern, male, Protestant, affluent and middle class... [and that] weapons ownership tends to increase with income, or occupational prestige, or both.{45} The explanations here are, once again, purely pragmatic; hunting is more an activity of rural people generally, and Southerners particularly, than of city dwellers; among urbanites, guns are most owned by the affluent because they are more likely to hunt -- and also to have the money to afford guns and property that they may feel the need to defend; most guns are owned for sport and males engage in gun sports more than females. As to Protestants, survey evidence shows them more likely to hunt than Catholics or Jews (Protestantism is most predominant in rural areas); and, beyond that, Protestants and gun owners both tend to be descended from older American stock, retaining cultural values redolent of the "individualistic orientation that emanated from the American frontier...."{46} In contrast, the penis theory has no explanatory value for these demographic trends. Are Protestants or the affluent or rural dwellers or Southerners more subject to feelings of penile inadequacy than Catholics or urbanites or the poor etc., etc.? In this connection it may be relevant to note that surveys show gun owners are no more hostile to feminism and the women's movement than are non-owners.{47}
Tanay's arguments for the penis theory validate only his own (self-admitted) fear and loathing of guns. He asserts that "The owner's overvaluation of his gun's worth is an indication of its libidinal value to him." Because Tanay never attempts to explain what "overvaluation" means, there is nothing to distinguish guns from the "overvaluation" involved in having other collectibles. People who do not share the passion marvel at the amounts of time and money that others who "over-value" them expend on such more or less intrinsically worthless items as old phonograph records, musical instruments, cars, political campaign buttons, stamps, coins and candelabra.{48} Much the same problem inheres in Tanay's evidence of "narcissistic investment":
Most of the dedicated gun owners handle the gun with obvious pleasure; they look after the gun, clean, polish and pamper it... speak of their love and respect for guns. So, of course, do most, if not all, collectors revere the objects they collect, cleaning and polishing them (if coins or antiques), encasing them (if coins or musical instruments) in velvet, suede or other attractive settings, etc. Are all collectors motivated by feelings of penile inadequacy? Or does Dr. Tanay's depiction of gun owners reflect only his own narrow-minded inability to evaluate the feelings of those who love and respect something he admittedly loathes? A final point of interest is Dr. Tanay's citation of Freud's view that weapons may symbolize the penis in dreams. This, Freud says, is true of dreams involving any long object (e.g. "sticks, umbrellas, poles, trees") but especially of objects that may be viewed as penetrating, and injuring ("knives, daggers, lances, sabers; firearms are similarly used...."). This passage refers to dreams in general without distinguishing gun owners from others. Dr. Tanay is perhaps unaware of -- in any event he does not cite -- other passages more relevant to his argument. In these other passages Freud associates retarded sexual/emotional development not with gun ownership, but with fear and loathing of weapons.{49} The probative importance that ought to attach to the views of Freud is, of course, a matter of opinion. The point here is only that those views provide no support for the penis theory of gun ownership.
2. Gun ownership as a cause of aggression --
Obviously some gun owners are highly aggressive, indeed violent, else the U.S. would not suffer hundreds of thousands of gun crimes each year. The question is: are gun criminals properly considered representative of all gun owners, or are they a tiny aberrant minority best understood in the context of the larger aberrant minority of criminals who, with and without guns, commit millions of violent crimes in the U.S. each year? Based on the recent NIJ felon survey it appears that criminals who used guns in their crimes either sporadically or regularly are among the "hardest" of offenders. Per capita they had committed not only a larger number of violent crimes (often while armed with knives or weapons other than guns) than other offenders, but more crimes of all kinds.{50}
Nevertheless the anti-gun "sagecraft" literature portrayed gun crime as more or less a necessary effect of gun ownership. In a series of articles Prof. Leonard Berkowitz asserted that guns arouse hostile and aggressive impulses in their owners. To prove this he conducted laboratory tests supposedly showing subjects' hostility levels rose particularly when others who annoyed them were associated with guns in various ways.{51} Evidence of this "weapons effect" is limited and erratic. Other psychologists have been unable to replicate Berkowitz's results; indeed, some found subjects less willing to express hostility against persons whom they associated with weapons.{52}
More important is that, no matter what the results, the design of these experiments precluded Berkowitz's conclusion that a weapon increases its owners' hostility and aggressiveness. For none of his experiments involved a weapon being possessed by the subject, i.e., the person whose hostility was being tested. In Berkowitz's tests the weapon was associated only with the person against whom hostility would run. Thus Berkowitz was testing not gun owner hostility but hostility against persons his college student subjects associated with guns.{53} Buss, Brooker & Buss did test the hostility level of both owners and non-owners after actually firing guns, but could find "no evidence that the presence, firing or long-term use of guns enhances subsequent aggression."{54}
3. Violent personality or attitude characteristics of gun owners
Another attempt to demonstrate the iniquity of gun owners concluded that they are "violence prone" -- based on survey data in which what the subjects actually approved was not illegal violence but the use of force necessary to stop crime or aid its victims.{55} A more recent study offers a more neutral assessment based on three national surveys: gun owners differ from non-owners only in being more likely to approve "defensive" force, i.e. force directed against violent attackers. In contrast, those exhibiting "violent attitudes" (as defined by approval of violence against social deviants or dissenters) are no more likely to be gun owners than non-owners. Interestingly, the holders of violent attitudes were less likely than the average gun owner to approve of defensive force (perhaps perceiving it would be directed against violent people like themselves).{56}
In addition to such directly relevant studies, there exists a substantial quantity of macrocosmic evidence against both the Berkowitz hypothesis that guns promote violent impulses and the alternative anti-gun hypothesis that gun ownership signifies a violent personality. If either hypothesis were true, it should follow that increased gun ownership would be highly correlative with violent crime, i.e. the more guns the more violence. Yet the consistent result of studies attempting to link gun ownership to violence rates is either no relationship or a negative one, i.e. that urban and other areas with higher gun ownership have less violence than demographically comparable areas with lower gun ownership.{57}
4. Paranoia, sexism and racism --
Anti-gun crusaders have traditionally derided gun ownership as a product of exaggerated, unrealistic public fears of crime.{58} Extreme, unrealistic fear of crimes may amount to mental illness and anti-gun crusaders do epithetically dismiss gun owners as paranoid and gun ownership as a "national paranoia".{59} Moreover, precautionary handgun ownership is commonly held to signify and promote irrational fears, intolerance and belligerence: "The mere possession of a gun is, in itself, an urge to kill, not only by design, but by accident, by madness, by fright, by bravado."{60}
Yet gun owners do not seem to be more fearful of crime than other members of the general public. Rather, polls and attitude studies suggest that gun owners may actually be less afraid than non-owners.{61} This lesser fear may be explained by findings of a study of "Good Samaritans" who had arrested criminals or rescued their victims. In contrast to the less than 33% of Americans who then owned any kind of gun, almost two-and-one-half as many of the Samaritans (81%) "own guns and some carry them in their cars. They are familiar with violence, feel competent to handle it, and don't believe they will be hurt if they get involved."{62}
So the charge of paranoia against gun owners seems not to be substantiated. What about the charges of intolerance, bigotry and belligerence? As to sexism, I have already noted that analysis of two national surveys shows gun owners no more hostile to feminism and the women's movement than are non-owners.{63} As to racism, the result of one local attitude study can be deemed to suggest that gun owners are likely to hold racist views.{64} But the asserted correlation between gun ownership and racism is not borne out by the several state and national studies of gun owner attitudes that have included questions designed to elicit racist views.{65} Analysis of another national poll reveals that, while liberals were less likely to own guns than the general populace, those liberals who own a gun were no less willing than other gun owners to use it if necessary to repel a burglar.{66}
The NIJ Evaluation pithily summarizes the contrast between partisan sagecraft and actual social science: ... even in much of the scholarly literature[,] the "typical" private weapons owner is often depicted as a virtual psychopath -- unstable, violent, dangerous. The empirical research [we have] reviewed leads to a sharply different portrait... There is no evidence suggesting [gun owners] to be an especially unstable or violent or maladapted lot; their "personality profiles" are largely indistinct from those of the rest of the population. [p. 122]
Re: NRA is to radcial
Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
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