|
Anti-gunner. Gun grabber. Hoplophobe. None of these terms are exactly right to describe those who are bent on taking away our guns. What we need is a word that captures the malice of those who do not want you armed, not because they fear guns, but because they hate the idea that free men have the right to bear them. Hoplophobia
Col. Jeff Cooper coined the term “hoplophobia,” meaning “a mental aberration consisting of an unreasoning terror of [...] weapons” and that hoplophobes believe “that instruments possess a will of their own.” He admonished that this word should be used correctly. Phobia implies an irrational, unjustified fear; a hoplophobe is the reporter who trembles uncontrollably shouldering an AR-15 in the name of “journalism.” Someone who wants to eradicate guns like Al Gore crusades against global-whatever is not strictly terrified of guns. There is another mechanism at work. Hoplophobia fails to capture the malevolence of anti-gun activists, organizations, and legislation. The parties involved in the anti-gun movement understand guns and gun owners and their motives are not driven by a deficit of knowledge. These are not they who can learn and be reasoned with. Victims of tragedy have let their wounds fester and their cancer metastasize. If they are intelligent, they deflect and ignore contradictory information that might jeopardize their feelings. Fear or dislike of guns, especially after a trauma like the Route 91 shooting, is natural and understandable. As phobias are characterized by excessive and unreasonable fears, a reasonable reaction is a personal choice of avoiding firearms. An unreasonable reaction is a fear that is pathological, irrational, and hysterical; hoplophobia. A brief analogy would be the reasonable soldier who simply chooses never to touch a gun after coming home from the war, but supports his neighbor’s right to carry and hunt, versus a politician who, after being shot, goes on the war path to ban guns instead of improve mental health treatment. Most people don’t like mice, but most people don’t start screaming and climbing on chairs when they see one. One reaction is reasonable, the other is excessive. Yet many others who have suffered loss or injury by guns turn a personal preference to avoid guns in a mission to eradicate gun ownership. It is one who chooses to impose their anti-gun stance upon all that is inexcusable. True hoplophobes have a naive belief that guns are the source of the problem of violence, which is captured in Cooper’s statement that firearms act on their own. It doesn’t have to make sense. The phobic do not understand guns and, like many humans throughout time who don’t understand powerful forces, they have ascribed guns near magical qualities. A New Term But is “hoplophobia” the right term for anti-gunners; those who oppose gun ownership and go out of their way to make the Second Amendment go extinct? “Anti-gunner” itself is an inelegant term for the individuals, so I propose the new words “hoplopathy” and “hoplopath,” the first for the concept (anti-gun) and the second for the person, the gun grabber. Hoplopathy is the characteristic of hating firearms and gun owners. A hoplopath is a person who displays antipathy (an aversion or repugnance) towards firearms and gun owners. Hoplopath incorporates a new word, antipath, or one who holds an antipathy. “Gun antipath” would be another way of saying hoplopath. The roots are from the Ancient Greek, hoplo for weapon and antipátheia, or dislike. The suffix -pathy means “suffering,” “feeling”; or in modern medical terms, “morbid affection,” “disease.” Antipathy is synonymous with disdain, but carries the weight of contempt and hatred. Specifically, antipathy is:
Thus, a hoplopath:
Doesn’t the wild obsession with banning guns and demonizing gun owners and manufacturers and the NRA strike you as a disease? For them, controlling guns is an obsession, and only when the object of their hate is eradicated can that hate be satisfied. The gun is freedom or crime personified. Anti-gunners hate what bad men do with guns and fear what good men can do with them. Freedom, responsibility and likewise the potential for disorderly misuse of that freedom (violence) violates the hoplopaths innate desire for submission to control. Holopaths look upon and treat gun owners with contempt. They despise and scorn gun owners. Because hoplopaths see their ideology as superior, pro-gun arguments, studies, and objective evidence are unworthy of notice because it must be wrong. That “must” can mean that to accomplish their purposes the pro- evidence has to be wrong or that since their ideology is correct, any evidence to the contrary is inherently wrong on a moral basis. Control is what separates the -paths from the -phobes. -Paths feel that they can exert control to order the world around them for the public (or their own) good, while -phobes feel that they lack any control over a dangerous, unpredictable world. The emotional reactions are different as well. -Paths feel indignation and not being able to exercise control.-Phobes, being in their eyes at the mercy of the world, experience fear created from uncertainty. Hoplophobes are almost pathetic, fearing guns the way ancient men feared the darkness and told stories of vampires and warewolves. When they express their opinions, they spew misinformation and hyperbolic fears like a Puritan crying “witch!” The only valid response for a gun rights supporter is to bite their tongue and shake their head. As Col. Cooper said, trying to talk sense to them only makes more of an enemy. Hoplopaths do not jump at shadows. They understand that people are the problem, not guns, but for their own reasons, they support gun control. Whereas the phobic are seldom spurred to do more than whine, the hoplopathic take action. There are overlaps between the two, but calling someone afraid of guns is incorrect when they are not, but what they are is vehemently unsupportive of gun rights. The phobic fear the gun; the hoplopath hates and fears the gun owner. Since the hoplopath’s position is not one based on facts or logic, but emotion (or malice), anything that does not support the anti-gun position might as well not exist. To them, firearms would be as distasteful and disgusting as images of gore are to most people. None wish to learn about guns, the culture, or the facts that betray the knee-jerk reaction to the evening news reports of violence. Any curiosity is limited to a morbid examination of the strange “pathology” of gun culture. Their opposition is not one that can ever be reversed. It is purely a blind antipathy, unmoved by the most convincing evidence or compelling stories. We can split hoplopaths into three groups: the emotional, the ignorant, and the malicious. Overlap occurs frequently and are generally indistinguishable when it comes to results. The malicious are the Shannon Watts and Michael Bloombergs of the world; part of this malice is the control of nanny-statism. Mother and Father know best and must work to control the unruly hoi pilloi for our collective benefit. This category can overlap significantly with the emotional group, such as Jim and Sarah Brady or Gabby and Mark Giffords, victims of infamous assassination attempts. This group is special because it pursues disarmament, whether putatively “noble” in purpose or for more nefarious goals. These antagonistic hoplopaths are smart enough to know gun control does not work, but for deep ideological reasons side with disarmament. The emotional are not irrational, but more controlled by emotion than logic, their hoplopathy originating from a feeling (often they are hoplophobic too). Subjective, internal feelings are more instructive to their decision making and beliefs than anything else, often powerfully so. In many other areas of their life, they can rationalize and even be quite intelligent people. Here, trauma or their concern for the general well-being of humanity points them in the wrong direction. For most who do not inhabit the halls of power, support for gun control seems to be a way to resolve internal conflicts over the negative uses of guns. Thus, crime victims get involved as a way to cope with their emotions and rectify the damage of the harm done to them. Yet the overwhelming majority of anti-gun activists treat guns as the problem, rather than their misuse. The human factors that form the roots of violence go unsolved as the object becomes fetishized, creating more victims (of criminals or of the government) as the symptoms, but not the disease, is treated. There is no good explanation for exactly why hoplopaths hate guns. It can only be a spiritual blindness; a delusion so strong that what objectively is true is invisible to them and offensive as well. Leftist causes that seek to cure the ills of mankind with a panacea defy easy understanding. We can only examine the psychology behind these people and understand part of their motivations. Rationalizing the causes and reasoning behind why hoplopaths do what they do is impossible, but we can try to discern the internal processes at work. To be continued... (Part 2) Anti-gunner. Gun grabber. Hoplophobe. None of these terms are exactly right to describe those who are bent on taking away our guns. What we need is a word that captures the malice of those who do not want you armed, not because they fear guns, but because they hate the idea that free men have the right to bear them. Hoplophobia Col. Jeff Cooper coined the term “hoplophobia,” meaning “a mental aberration consisting of an unreasoning terror of [...] weapons” and that hoplophobes believe “that instruments possess a will of their own.” He admonished that this word should be used correctly. Phobia implies an irrational, unjustified fear; a hoplophobe is the reporter who trembles uncontrollably shouldering an AR-15 in the name of “journalism.” Someone who wants to eradicate guns like Al Gore crusades against global-whatever is not strictly terrified of guns. There is another mechanism at work. Hoplophobia fails to capture the malevolence of anti-gun activists, organizations, and legislation. The parties involved in the anti-gun movement understand guns and gun owners and their motives are not driven by a deficit of knowledge. These are not they who can learn and be reasoned with. Victims of tragedy have let their wounds fester and their cancer metastasize. If they are intelligent, they deflect and ignore contradictory information that might jeopardize their feelings. Fear or dislike of guns, especially after a trauma like the Route 91 shooting, is natural and understandable. As phobias are characterized by excessive and unreasonable fears, a reasonable reaction is a personal choice of avoiding firearms. An unreasonable reaction is a fear that is pathological, irrational, and hysterical; hoplophobia. A brief analogy would be the reasonable soldier who simply chooses never to touch a gun after coming home from the war, but supports his neighbor’s right to carry and hunt, versus a politician who, after being shot, goes on the war path to ban guns instead of improve mental health treatment. Most people don’t like mice, but most people don’t start screaming and climbing on chairs when they see one. One reaction is reasonable, the other is excessive. Yet many others who have suffered loss or injury by guns turn a personal preference to avoid guns in a mission to eradicate gun ownership. It is one who chooses to impose their anti-gun stance upon all that is inexcusable. True hoplophobes have a naive belief that guns are the source of the problem of violence, which is captured in Cooper’s statement that firearms act on their own. It doesn’t have to make sense. The phobic do not understand guns and, like many humans throughout time who don’t understand powerful forces, they have ascribed guns near magical qualities. A New Term But is “hoplophobia” the right term for anti-gunners; those who oppose gun ownership and go out of their way to make the Second Amendment go extinct? “Anti-gunner” itself is an inelegant term for the individuals, so I propose the new words “hoplopathy” and “hoplopath,” the first for the concept (anti-gun) and the second for the person, the gun grabber. Hoplopathy is the characteristic of hating firearms and gun owners. A hoplopath is a person who displays antipathy (an aversion or repugnance) towards firearms and gun owners. Hoplopath incorporates a new word, antipath, or one who holds an antipathy. “Gun antipath” would be another way of saying hoplopath. The roots are from the Ancient Greek, hoplo for weapon and antipátheia, or dislike. The suffix -pathy means “suffering,” “feeling”; or in modern medical terms, “morbid affection,” “disease.” Antipathy is synonymous with disdain, but carries the weight of contempt and hatred. Specifically, antipathy is:
Thus, a hoplopath:
Holopaths look upon and treat gun owners with contempt. They despise and scorn gun owners. Because hoplopaths see their ideology as superior, pro-gun arguments, studies, and objective evidence are unworthy of notice because it must be wrong. That “must” can mean that to accomplish their purposes the pro- evidence has to be wrong or that since their ideology is correct, any evidence to the contrary is inherently wrong on a moral basis. Control is what separates the -paths from the -phobes. -Paths feel that they can exert control to order the world around them for the public (or their own) good, while -phobes feel that they lack any control over a dangerous, unpredictable world. The emotional reactions are different as well. -Paths feel indignation and not being able to exercise control.-Phobes, being in their eyes at the mercy of the world, experience fear created from uncertainty. Hoplophobes are almost pathetic, fearing guns the way ancient men feared the darkness and told stories of vampires and warewolves. When they express their opinions, they spew misinformation and hyperbolic fears like a Puritan crying “witch!” The only valid response for a gun rights supporter is to bite their tongue and shake their head. As Col. Cooper said, trying to talk sense to them only makes more of an enemy. Hoplopaths do not jump at shadows. They understand that people are the problem, not guns, but for their own reasons, they support gun control. Whereas the phobic are seldom spurred to do more than whine, the hoplopathic take action. There are overlaps between the two, but calling someone afraid of guns is incorrect when they are not, but what they are is vehemently unsupportive of gun rights. The phobic fear the gun; the hoplopath hates and fears the gun owner. Since the hoplopath’s position is not one based on facts or logic, but emotion (or malice), anything that does not support the anti-gun position might as well not exist. To them, firearms would be as distasteful and disgusting as images of gore are to most people. None wish to learn about guns, the culture, or the facts that betray the knee-jerk reaction to the evening news reports of violence. Any curiosity is limited to a morbid examination of the strange “pathology” of gun culture. Their opposition is not one that can ever be reversed. It is purely a blind antipathy, unmoved by the most convincing evidence or compelling stories. We can split hoplopaths into three groups: the emotional, the ignorant, and the malicious. Overlap occurs frequently and are generally indistinguishable when it comes to results. The malicious are the Shannon Watts and Michael Bloombergs of the world; part of this malice is the control of nanny-statism. Mother and Father know best and must work to control the unruly hoi pilloi for our collective benefit. This category can overlap significantly with the emotional group, such as Jim and Sarah Brady or Gabby and Mark Giffords, victims of infamous assassination attempts. This group is special because it pursues disarmament, whether putatively “noble” in purpose or for more nefarious goals. These antagonistic hoplopaths are smart enough to know gun control does not work, but for deep ideological reasons side with disarmament. The emotional are not irrational, but more controlled by emotion than logic, their hoplopathy originating from a feeling (often they are hoplophobic too). Subjective, internal feelings are more instructive to their decision making and beliefs than anything else, often powerfully so. In many other areas of their life, they can rationalize and even be quite intelligent people. Here, trauma or their concern for the general well-being of humanity points them in the wrong direction. For most who do not inhabit the halls of power, support for gun control seems to be a way to resolve internal conflicts over the negative uses of guns. Thus, crime victims get involved as a way to cope with their emotions and rectify the damage of the harm done to them. Yet the overwhelming majority of anti-gun activists treat guns as the problem, rather than their misuse. The human factors that form the roots of violence go unsolved as the object becomes fetishized, creating more victims (of criminals or of the government) as the symptoms, but not the disease, is treated. There is no good explanation for exactly why hoplopaths hate guns. It can only be a spiritual blindness; a delusion so strong that what objectively is true is invisible to them and offensive as well. Leftist causes that seek to cure the ills of mankind with a panacea defy easy understanding. We can only examine the psychology behind these people and understand part of their motivations. Rationalizing the causes and reasoning behind why hoplopaths do what they do is impossible, but we can try to discern the internal processes at work. To be continued...   On my computer there sits a half-finished article wondering why we haven’t quite seen criminals and terrorists who rise to the level of Hollywood’s nastiest villains. I wondered why 9/11, the North Hollywood Bank shootout, the DC snipers, etc. were not commonplace. I mean, if a sane writer can think up this stuff for a plot, what about the crazy and depraved criminals out there? Why don’t they craft evil that our most terrifying fictional nightmares would envy? Before Sunday night, the idea of a crazed sniper mowing down concert-goers from a makeshift machine gun nest would only be plausible in the pages of a comic book. Somehow, a caped crusader would save the day and all would be well. Not so. While many marvel at the numbers or rage over gun control, I am shaken by the utter fiendishness of this attack. Murder requires an abandoned and malignant heart. I’m not sure what evil is required to do so in the manner and amount we saw on the Strip, but it is heretofore unimaginably bad. To put this in perspective, here in America such well thought out gun attacks have been the province of fiction, not reality. Even 9/11’s planes-into-buildings seemed like a dramatic ending when Tom Clancy forecasted something similar in one of his novels before it happened. At sundown on Sunday, hundreds of casualties shot from the sky didn’t seem plausible except in books or on the silver screen. Author and former Navy SEAL Matt Bracken wrote in his novel Enemies Foreign and Domestic of a similar attack at a sports stadium with a sniper “lobbing” rounds into the crowd creating just as many awful casualties. In his book, at the time, it was unthinkable that any one individual would do something like this, so he had to blame it on a conspiracy by an out-of-control government, thus spurring on the plot. Everyone looks for an explanation because it is hard to imagine that without sufficient cause, men just do things like this. Conspiracy theories are popular to explain events of this consequence because it is utterly terrifying to believe that it can happen anywhere, anytime, for essentially no reason. That is a fact of life that is too uncomfortable for many to face, thus the government or the Illuminati must have done it. Evil doesn’t need a conspiracy, it merely takes advantage of what is already at its disposal. Reality is often stranger than fiction, but we are still surprised when horror leaps off the page. Author Morgan Robertson predicted both the Japanese lead Pacific war, lasers, and in his 1898 novella, The Wreck of the Titan, a superliner just like the Titanic sinking under similar circumstances. Just like 9/11 was an event that was beyond imagination, an attack like this could only be conceivable in fiction. At least until it happened. Take The Dark Knight for example. The Joker dresses up hostages with masks and guns taped to their hands to be shot by the SWAT team. This is the kind of evil thinking we are facing; maximum casualties with minimum interference. Even the comparatively bad shooting in Aurora at the screening of The Dark Knight, relying on darkness and mistaking the shooter for a costumed movie-goer, wasn’t this demonic. Meticulous, but thank God the killer there chose a fairly limited venue that was easy for police to get to. What happened last night was a worst-case scenario of tremendous proportion. Think of all the really evil bad guys in film, like in Swordfish where the “bad guys” or whatever put explosive belts on the hostages. Stuff like that is rare. It is highly unusual to see this level of intricate planning and dedication to pull it off. Without minimizing the humanity of the losses, events like Orlando were so deadly because of luck, not planning on the part of the shooter. We have been blessed. Comparing the events of fiction to this event are the only to really contrast just how nefarious the killer was. We see movie villains like Lex Luther, the Joker, or Bane and think “no one could be that evil.” Yes, they can. It is new experience to see, on our streets, an American who stops and plots out a massacre that would make a screenwriter ill to conceive of. Imagine if every high profile killer took the time to do what this monster did? Imagine if this was a normal occurrence? It would be our collective dread, hurt, and fear magnified many, many times. The concert plot was so diabolical, it exceeds the comparatively slap-dash and amateur events in Orlando and San Bernardino. The killer thought big; something that gives terrorism experts nightmares. This was deliberately intended to be very bad and horrific on a magnitude we have rarely seen. The circumvention of possible “failure points” was what took this far beyond what we have seen before. It was all coldly planned by an intelligent mind to maximize destruction and eliminate interference. Let’s look at what he did to make this so awful:
Just as the attack showed the worst that humans are capable of, the online and political response are showing that many politicians, “journalists”, and celebrities, plus your average Internet user, are insensitive. The trolls are pouring out of the woodwork, blaming Nevada Carry and anything and everything related to our sacred right for Sunday night’s tragedy. Many from the UK have sent emails laying personal blame at our feet or suggestions that show a tragic lack of knowledge about guns, violence, and evil. One ghoul insisted that our liberal gun laws (intended to maximize where you can protect yourself) were at fault. “Hey, look at Nevada. You can open carry in a bar!” Totally not germane to this incident, tasteless, and frankly, it could have helped in Orlando. When you have no argument, but you have an agenda, you take cheap shots. Open carry is not at issue here. No reasonable measure, legal or otherwise, could have prevented this. All the gun control, mag cap bans, and assault weapon regulations didn’t help in California. Many people are unable to process how such evil can exist and to console themselves, lash out angrily at any available scapegoat. How do you understand the complex? How can you fathom bottomless evil? These emotional eggshells need to vent the sadness they cannot fathom because they have no other internal mechanism to deal with what they are feeling. Guns and gun rights advocates take the brunt of this pain because we support the right to own dual-use items. Items that can be used by evil men, true, but have also safeguarded individual lives and national freedom. I understand. Things like heated political rhetoric in the media, the violent ideology of Islam, mental illness, acid, trucks, or immigration are harder topics to personalize and relate to the cause of terrorism and violence. Unable to understand the nuances, these emotionally fragile individuals go after those who “everyone” says it is okay to blame; gun owners. It’s okay, we can take it. We just feel sorry for them. We all hurt in different ways. The media should know better, however. Every request for an interview I have gotten was about Nevada gun laws; specifically machine guns and magazine capacity. Wrong track entirely; this was about the evil in a human heart, not machinery. In Europe, since guns are banned, we see truck/van attacks, acid assaults, and knife sprees. But even there, the Paris terrorists who massacred the crowds inside the Bataclan theater obtained illegal weaponry. Where there is a will, there is a way. Talking about limiting the amount of acid that can be purchased to stem acid attacks is dumb. But it’s not about gun laws or “understanding” them. Many Europeans have written me to tell me that guns are the problem (in not so nearly polite or succinct terms). No, like Muslim terror in Europe which is seeking murder by any method, the problem is human. One outlet asked me to “debate” Nevada gun laws; no thank you. Screaming at each other is not how a Briton understands American gun laws and that nothing could have prevented this. We’re happy to inform, but not to argue or provide scapegoats. The media has not been responsible when it comes to fairly representing gun owners. Countless examples of the media being insensitive are all over Facebook and Twitter. Politicians immediately jumped on the gun control bandwagon. It’s too early to know for sure, but no amount of gun control could have prevented this. Literally nothing reasonable could have stopped this from happening until the SWAT team forced the killer to end his life. Using this to politicize and market gun control is despicable. Politicians have no shame and few actually care about your safety. We don’t need to talk about this, we know the truth already. For those who still wonder, particularly inquiring international minds that truly want to know, we’ll answer a few questions/statements. What if he used a suppressor/silencer, as Hillary Clinton tweeted shamefully? Did anyone ask Hillary how our laws against murder prevented this? People would still have noticed the massive amount of gun fire pouring down on them and heard the bullets’ impact. Also, suppressors only moderate the sound by about 30db, meaning the shots would still be 100db plus. Where can you run when there is nowhere to run? Machine guns are legal in the United States and anyone eligible to own a firearm can obtain one, if they have the money. True military assault rifles cost tens of thousands of dollars. All legal machine guns are registered and require a background check (with photo and fingerprints) that currently takes six months to a year to pass before one obtains the gun. A $200 tax is required as well. Any competent machinist can modify a weapon, or build one outright, to be fully automatic. Even pulling a trigger rapidly can result in a 300-400 rounds per minute rate of fire. “No concealed carrier could have prevented this.” In many other events, had an armed citizen been present, the shooting may have been stopped early. This was certainly the case at the Kentucky church last weekend where an usher ran to his car, grabbed his gun, and held the killer at gunpoint. Consistently, we see armed citizens stopping these events or the killer committing suicide when police arrive. Even Sunday’s monster killed himself when SWAT arrived. Not in this event, but in some, citizen carriers can and havesaved lives. “The gun helped.” Yeah, no s---. We accept the trade-off in America. At least 100,000 Americans every year use guns to stop or prevent a crime. I bet lots of people would be alive in Marseille if France had outlawed and confiscated anything larger than a Mini Cooper. How many people would howl if commercial trucks were banned for safety’s sake? Unless we want to ban every harmful substance (including alcohol) and bubble-wrap the world, everything is dangerous. More metal detectors and security theater aren’t the answer. Casinos actively banning or throwing out concealed carriers just makes it more dangerous for people on the Strip, where tourists, workers, and residents are regularly targeted by criminals for more pedestrian crimes. Keeping self-defense pistols out of the hands of ordinary, law-abiding citizens to seem like one is “doing something” will help nothing. This wasn’t a guy with a pistol, this was a man who turned a hotel room into a killing center. Open carry and average folks with guns aren’t the problem. Evil happens and we are often powerless to prevent it. What does 10 rounds or 30 rounds matter if the death penalty or execution aren’t a deterrent? Machine gun killers are as rare as the guy with armored bulldozer who went on an unstoppable rampage. Men smart enough to plan this kind of atrocity can find ways around restrictions. More gun control won’t do a thing. In Australia, the Port Arthur massacre spurred gun control laws, but the Monash University still happened. In the UK, the Dunblane massacre brought more laws, but in 2010, Cumbria faced a similar situation. Again, what did California’s laws do to mitigate the losses in San Bernardino? The only sensible precautions are to avoid large events like this and to get medical training. First-aid skills and equipment specifically to treat traumatic injuries like gunshots is vitally important in events like this. We will no doubt hear stories of off-duty EMTs, nurses, doctors, etc. treating victims with whatever was at hand like belt tourniquets. Carrying an Individual First Aid Kit (IFAK) everywhere on your body isn’t paranoia after this. Las Vegas has faced mass horror like this before. When the original MGM burned, we survived as a city, an industry, and a people. There is not much that can be done about a psychotic sniper, but perhaps, as humans and as a nation, we can learn something about evil and how to respond and react during a tragedy like this. What can you do? Give blood and continue to give blood. I donate regularly, do you? Get first-aid and advanced medical/EMT training. Don’t just learn to shoot. Love your family, friends, neighbors, and countrymen. We’ve got a heart problem and hate and divisiveness will only make things worse.  |
Archives
June 2024
CategoriesBlog roll
Clayton E. Cramer Gun Watch Gun Free Zone The War on Guns Commander Zero The View From Out West |
RSS Feed