Raging Against Self Defense

Permission is granted to distribute this article in its entirety, so long as full copyright
information and full contact information is given for JPFO.

Copyright © 2000 Sarah Thompson, MD

Published by
Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc.
P.O. Box 270143
Hartford, WI 53027
Phone (262) 673-9745
www.jpfo.org

Raging Against Self Defense:
A Psychiatrist Examines The Anti-Gun Mentality
By Sarah Thompson, M.D.

"You don't need to have a gun; the police will protect you."

"If people carry guns, there will be murders over parking spaces and neighborhood
basketball games."

"I'm a pacifist. Enlightened, spiritually aware people shouldn't own guns."

"I'd rather be raped than have some redneck militia type try to rescue me."

How often have you heard these statements from misguided advocates of victim
disarmament, or even woefully uninformed relatives and neighbors? Why do people
cling so tightly to these beliefs, in the face of incontrovertible evidence that they are
wrong? Why do they get so furiously angry when gun owners point out that their
arguments are factually and logically incorrect?

How can you communicate with these people who seem to be out of touch with reality
and rational thought?

One approach to help you deal with anti-gun people is to understand their
psychological processes. Once you understand why these people behave so
irrationally, you can communicate more effectively with them.

Defense Mechanisms

Projection

About a year ago I received an e-mail from a member of a local Jewish organization.
The author, who chose to remain anonymous, insisted that people have no right to
carry firearms because he didn't want to be murdered if one of his neighbors had a
"bad day". (I don't know that this person is a "he", but I'm assuming so for the sake of
simplicity.) I responded by asking him why he thought his neighbors wanted to murder
him, and, of course, got no response. The truth is that he's statistically more likely to
be murdered by a neighbor who doesn't legally carry a firearm1 and more likely to be
shot accidentally by a law enforcement officer.1

How does my correspondent "know" that his neighbors would murder him if they had
guns? He doesn't. What he was really saying was that if he had a gun, he might
murder his neighbors if he had a bad day, or if they took his parking space, or played
their stereos too loud. This is an example of what mental health professionals call
projection – unconsciously projecting one's own unacceptable feelings onto other
people, so that one doesn't have to own them.3 In some cases, the intolerable
feelings are projected not onto a person, but onto an inanimate object, such as a
gun,4 so that the projector believes the gun itself will murder him.

Projection is a defense mechanism. Defense mechanisms are unconscious
psychological mechanisms that protect us from feelings that we cannot consciously
accept.5 They operate without our awareness, so that we don't have to deal
consciously with "forbidden" feelings and impulses. Thus, if you asked my e-mail
correspondent if he really wanted to murder his neighbors, he would vehemently deny
it, and insist that other people want to kill him.

Projection is a particularly insidious defense mechanism, because it not only prevents
a person from dealing with his own feelings, it also creates a world where he
perceives everyone else as directing his own hostile feelings back at him.6

All people have violent, and even homicidal, impulses. For example, it's common to
hear people say "I'd like to kill my boss", or "If you do that one more time I'm going to
kill you." They don't actually mean that they're going to, or even would, kill anyone;
they're simply acknowledging anger and frustration. All of us suffer from fear and
feelings of helplessness and vulnerability. Most people can acknowledge feelings of
rage, fear, frustration, jealousy, etc. without having to act on them in inappropriate
and destructive ways.

Some people, however, are unable consciously to admit that they have such
"unacceptable" emotions. They may have higher than average levels of rage,
frustration, or fear. Perhaps they fear that if they acknowledge the hostile feelings,
they will lose control and really will hurt someone. They may believe that "good
people" never have such feelings, when in fact all people have them.

This is especially true now that education "experts" commonly prohibit children from
expressing negative emotions or aggression. Instead of learning that such emotions
are normal, but that destructive behavior needs to be controlled, children now learn
that feelings of anger are evil, dangerous and subject to severe punishment.7To
protect themselves from "being bad", they are forced to use defense mechanisms to
avoid owning their own normal emotions. Unfortunately, using such defense
mechanisms inappropriately can endanger their mental health; children need to learn
how to deal appropriately with reality, not how to avoid it.8

(This discussion of psychological mechanisms applies to the average person who is
uninformed, or misinformed, about firearms and self-defense. It does not apply to the
anti- gun ideologue. Fanatics like Charles Schumer know the facts about firearms,
and advocate victim disarmament consciously and willfully in order to gain political
power. This psychological analysis does not apply to them.)

Denial

Another defense mechanism commonly utilized by supporters of gun control is denial.
Denial is simply refusing to accept the reality of a given situation.9 For example,
consider a woman whose husband starts coming home late, has strange perfume on
his clothes, and starts charging flowers and jewelry on his credit card. She may get
extremely angry at a well-meaning friend who suggests that her husband is having an
affair. The reality is obvious, but the wronged wife is so threatened by her husband's
infidelity that she is unable to accept it, and so denies its existence.

Anti-gun people do the same thing. It's obvious that we live in a dangerous society,
where criminals attack innocent people. Just about everyone has been, or knows
someone who has been, victimized. It's equally obvious that law enforcement can't
protect everyone everywhere 24 hours a day. Extensive scholarly research
demonstrates that the police have no legal duty to protect you10 and that firearm
ownership is the most effective way to protect yourself and your family.11 There is
irrefutable evidence that victim disarmament nearly always precedes genocide.12
Nonetheless, the anti-gun folks insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that "the
police will protect you", "this is a safe neighborhood" and "it can't happen here",
where "it" is everything from mugging to mass murder.

Anti-gun people who refuse to accept the reality of the proven and very serious
dangers of civilian disarmament are using denial to protect themselves from the
anxiety of feeling helpless and vulnerable. Likewise, gun owners who insist that "the
government will never confiscate my guns" are also using denial to protect
themselves from the anxiety of contemplating being forcibly disarmed and rendered
helpless and vulnerable.

Reaction Formation

Reaction formation is yet another defense mechanism common among the anti-gun
folks. Reaction formation occurs when a person's mind turns an unacceptable feeling
or desire into its complete opposite.13 For example, a child who is jealous of a sibling
may exhibit excessive love and devotion for the hated brother or sister.

Likewise, a person who harbors murderous rage toward his fellow humans may claim
to be a devoted pacifist and refuse to eat meat or even kill a cockroach.14 Often such
people take refuge in various spiritual disciplines and believe that they are "superior"
to "less civilized" folks who engage in "violent behavior" such as hunting, or even
target shooting. They may devote themselves to "animal welfare" organizations that
proclaim that the rights of animals take precedence over the rights of people.15 This
not only allows the angry person to avoid dealing with his rage, it allows him actually
to harm the people he hates without having to know he hates them.

This is not meant to disparage the many wonderful people who are pacifists,
spiritually inclined, vegetarian, or who support animal welfare. The key issue is not the
belief itself, but rather the way in which the person experiences and lives his beliefs.
Sincere practitioners seek to improve themselves, or to be helpful in a gentle,
respectful fashion. They work to persuade others peacefully by setting an example of
what they believe to be correct behavior. Sincere pacifists generally exhibit good will
towards others, even towards persons with whom they might disagree on various
issues.

Contrast the sincere pacifist or animal lover with the strident, angry person who wants
to ban meat and who believes murdering hunters is justified in order to "save the
animals" – or the person who wants to outlaw self- defense and believes innocent
people have the obligation to be raped and murdered for the good of society. For
example, noted feminist Betty Friedan said "that lethal violence even in self defense
only engenders more violence."16 The truly spiritual, pacifist person refrains from
forcing others to do what he believes, and is generally driven by positive emotions,
while the angry person finds "socially acceptable" ways to harm, abuse, or even kill,
his fellow man.

In the case of anti-gun people, reaction formation keeps any knowledge of their
hatred for their fellow humans out of consciousness, while allowing them to feel
superior to "violent gun owners". At the same time, it also allows them to cause
serious harm, and even loss of life, to others by denying them the tools necessary to
defend themselves. This makes reaction formation very attractive from a
psychological point of view, and therefore very difficult to counteract.

Defense mechanisms are normal. All of us use them to some extent, and their use
does not imply mental illness. Advocates of victim disarmament may be misguided or
uninformed, they may be stupid, or they may be consciously intent on evil, but that
doesn't necessarily mean they are "mentally ill".

Some defense mechanisms, however, are healthier than others. A safe general rule
is that a defense is healthy if it helps you to function better in your personal and
professional life, and unhealthy if it interferes with your life, your relationships, or the
well-being of others. Young children utilize projection and denial much more
commonly than do healthy adults. On the other hand, "if projection is used as a
defense mechanism to a very great extent in adult life, the user's perception of
external reality will be seriously distorted."17

Defense mechanisms are also frequently combined, so that an anti-gun person may
use several defense mechanisms simultaneously. For example, my unfortunate
correspondent uses projection to create a world in which all his neighbors want to
murder him. As a result, he becomes more angry and fearful, and needs to employ
even more defense mechanisms to cope. So he uses projection to attribute his own
rage to others, he uses denial that there is any danger to protect himself from a world
where he believes he is helpless and everyone wants to murder him, and he uses
reaction formation to try to control everyone else's life because his own is so horribly
out of control.

Also, it's important to remember that not all anti-gun beliefs are the result of defense
mechanisms. Some people suffer from gun phobia18, an excessive and completely
irrational fear of firearms, usually caused by the anti-gun conditioning they've been
subjected to by the media, politicians, so-called "educators," and others. In some
cases, gun phobia is caused by an authentic bad experience associated with a
firearm. But with all due respect to Col. Jeff Cooper, who coined the term
"hoplophobia" to describe anti-gun people, most anti-gun people do not have true
phobias. Interestingly, a person with a true phobia of guns realizes his fear is
excessive or unreasonable,19 something most anti-gun folks will never admit.