Defense mechanisms distort reality

Because defense mechanisms distort reality in order to avoid unpleasant emotions,
the person who uses them has an impaired ability to recognize and accept reality.
This explains why my e-mail correspondent and many other anti-gun people persist in
believing that their neighbors and co- workers will become mass murderers if allowed
to own firearms.

People who legally carry concealed firearms are actually less violent and less prone
to criminal activity of all kinds than is the general population.20 A person who has a
clean record, has passed an FBI background check, undergone firearms training, and
spent several hundred dollars to get a permit and a firearm, is highly unlikely to
choose to murder a neighbor. Doing so would result in his facing a police manhunt, a
trial, prison, possibly capital punishment, and the destruction of his family, job, and
reputation. Obviously it would make no sense for such a person to shoot a neighbor -
except in self-defense. Equally obviously, the anti-gun person who believes that
malicious shootings by ordinary gun owners are likely to occur is not in touch with
reality.21

The Common Thread: Rage

In my experience, the common thread in anti-gun people is rage. Either anti-gun
people harbor more rage than others, or they're less able to cope with it appropriately.
Because they can't handle their own feelings of rage, they are forced to use defense
mechanisms in an unhealthy manner. Because they wrongly perceive others as
seeking to harm them, they advocate the disarmament of ordinary people who have
no desire to harm anyone. So why do anti-gun people have so much rage and why
are they unable to deal with it in appropriate ways? Consider for a moment that the
largest and most hysterical anti-gun groups include disproportionately large numbers
of women, African- Americans and Jews. And virtually all of the organizations that
claim to speak for these "oppressed people" are stridently anti-gun. Not coincidentally,
among Jews, Blacks and women there are many "professional victims" who have little
sense of identity outside of their victimhood.

Identity as Victim

If I were to summarize this article in three sentences, they would be:

(1) People who identify themselves as "victims" harbor excessive
amounts of rage at other people, whom they perceive as "not victims."

(2) In order psychologically to deal with this rage, these "victims" utilize
defense mechanisms that enable them to harm others in socially
acceptable ways, without accepting responsibility or suffering guilt, and
without having to give up their status as "victims."

(3) Gun owners are frequently the targets of professional victims because
gun owners are willing and able to prevent their own victimization.

Thus the concept of "identity as victim" is essential. How and why do members of
some groups choose to identify themselves as victims and teach their children to do
the same? While it's true that women, Jews, and African- Americans have historically
been victimized, they now participate in American society on an equal basis. And
other groups, most notably Asian-Americans, have been equally victimized, and yet
have transcended the "eternal victim" mentality.

Why, for example, would a 6'10" NBA player who makes $10 million a year see
himself as a "victim"? Why would a successful, respected, wealthy, Jewish physician
regard himself as a "victim"? Conversely, why might a wheelchair bound woman who
lives on government disability NOT regard herself as a victim?

I would argue it's because the basketball player and the physician believe that their
identities are dependent on being victims – not because they have actually been
victimized, but because they're members of groups that claim victim status.
Conversely, the disabled woman was probably raised to believe that she is
responsible for her own success or failure.

In fact, many people who have been victims of actual violent crime, or who have
survived war or civil strife, support the right of self-defense. The old saying is often
correct: "a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged."

Special Treatment and Misleading Leaders

Two reasons for these groups to insist on "victim" status seem likely. First, by
claiming victim status, members of these groups can demand (and get) special
treatment through quotas, affirmative action, reparations, and other preferential
treatment programs.

Second, these people have been indoctrinated to believe that there is no alternative
to remaining a victim forever. Their leaders remind them constantly that they are
mistreated in every imaginable way (most of them imaginary!), attribute every one of
life's misfortunes to "racism" or "sexism" or "hate crimes", and dream up ever more
complex schemes for special treatment and favors.22 These leaders are the ones
who preach that the entire Black experience is slavery and racism, or that Jewish
history before and after the Holocaust is irrelevant,23 or that happily married women
are really victims of sexual slavery.24

Likewise, the NAACP is suing firearms manufacturers to put them out of business,25
and is especially opposed to the inexpensive pistols that enable the poor to defend
themselves in gang-ridden inner cities. The Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) proposed evicting anyone who dares to keep a tool of
self-defense in any of its crime-infested housing projects. Jewish leaders, especially
those in the politically correct "Reform" branch, preach that gun control is "a solemn
religious obligation",26 contrary to the teachings of their sacred scriptures and their
own history.27 Law enforcement agencies falsely teach women that they are safest if
they don't resist rapists and robbers,28 while women's organizations advocate gun
control, thus rendering women and their children defenseless.

Victimhood is good business for organizations that foster victim status.

As victims,the members depend upon the organization to protect them, and the organization in
turn relies on members for funding and political power. In the interest of
self-preservation, these organizations work hard at preserving hatred and bigotry and
at keeping their members defenseless – and therefore dependent.
Anti-gun groups love victims!

From my observations, pro-victimhood is a feature of all of the anti-gun special
interest groups, not just the ones mentioned here. Every organization that supports
gun control apparently wants its members to be helpless, terrified and totally
dependent on someone else to control every aspect of their lives. It doesn't matter
whether it's a religious, racial, ethnic, political, social, or charitable group. From
Handgun Control, Inc. to the Anti- Defamation League to the Million Mom March, they
all want you to live in fear. In this scheme, soccer moms are "victims" just as much as
are inner-city minorities.

If these organizations truly cared about the people for whom they claim to speak, they
would encourage safe and responsible firearms ownership. They would help people
to learn how to defend themselves and their families so that they wouldn't have to live
in fear. They would tell everyone that one of the wonderful things about being an
American is that you have the right to keep and bear arms, the right to defend
yourself, and how these rights preserve the right to be free.

The psychological price of being a victim

In our current society, victimhood has many perceived benefits, but there are some
serious drawbacks. Victims tend to see the world as a scary and threatening place.
They believe that others treat them differently, unfairly, and even maliciously – and
that they are helpless to do anything about it. This belief, that they are being
mistreated and are helpless to resist, generates tremendous rage, and often, serious
depression.

But for victims to show rage openly can be dangerous, if not outright suicidal. For
example, a battered woman who screams at or hits her attacker may provoke worse
beatings or even her own murder. And a person who successfully defends himself
loses his status as "victim." For someone whose entire identity is dependent on being
a victim, the loss of victim status is just as threatening as loss of life.

So, unable psychologically to cope with such rage, people who view themselves as
victims: (1) use defense mechanisms to displace it into irrational beliefs about
neighbors killing each other, and the infallibility of police protection, and (2) attempt to
regain control by controlling gun owners, whom they wrongly perceive as "the enemy".

Say NO to being a victim!

But no one needs to be a victim! Quite simply, it's not very easy to victimize a person
who owns and knows how to use a firearm. If most women owned and carried
firearms, rapes and beating would decrease.29 Thugs who target the elderly and
disabled would find honest work once they realized they were likely to be looking
down the barrel of a pistol or shotgun. It's nearly impossible to enslave, or herd into
concentration camps, large numbers of armed people.