Quote of the day—Julia Gorin

Sexual and psychological insecurities don’t account for ALL men against guns. Certainly there must be some whose motives are pure, who perhaps do care so much as to tirelessly look for policy solutions to teenage void and aggressiveness, and to parent and teacher negligence. But for a potentially large underlying contributor, psycho-sexual inadequacy has gone unexplored and unacknowledged. It’s one thing to not be comfortable with a firearm and therefore opt to not keep or bear one. But it’s another to impose the same handicap onto others.

People are suspicious of what they do not know-and not only does this man not know how to use a gun, he doesn’t know the men who do, or the number of people who have successfully used one to defend themselves from injury or death. But he is better left in the dark; his life is hard enough knowing there are men out there who don’t sit cross-legged. That they’re able to handle a firearm instead of being handled by it would be too much to bear.

Such a man is also best kept huddled in urban centers, where he feels safer than he might if thrown out on his own into a rural setting, in an isolated house on a quiet street where he would feel naked and helpless. Lacking the confidence that would permit him to be sequestered in sparseness, and lacking a gun, he finds comfort in the cloister of crowds.

Julia Gorin
March 8, 2002
The anti-gun male
[Via Don in a comment to Quote of the day—Glenn Harlan Reynolds.

It turns out I have quoted from this article before. Read the whole thing.—Joe]

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6 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Julia Gorin

  1. Well, that was a masterful gut-punch to the Markley Monday’s crowd. I would take objection to one point though.
    “Certainly there must be some whose motives are pure.” No such thing.
    One can’t have pure motives that are not based in logic and reason as to the outcome of one’s proposal. Otherwise you’re insane.
    And though that would seem to be the case in many instances these days. It generally turns out to be no more than evil, trying to be cunning.
    Excellent read none the less!

    • On the contrary. One’s motives are based on what a person finds individually moving, and thus are highly subjective. For example, if you had lost a friend or family member to a drunk driver, you might be highly motivated to anti-drunk-driving activism for entirely emotional reasons separate from the real, objective societal harms it causes. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

      One’s actions based on those motives, however, should be based in logic and reason, and actually work toward the solution you’re trying to get.

      Motives may be objective and logical, or they may be subjective and emotional. Actions, however, must be objective. That’s the fly in the ointment of a lot of modern activists; we can discern by their actions that their true motives and goals are different from those stated.

      Taking the drunk driving example again, one who says they want to curb drunk driving but does not support tougher penalties for DUIIs or promote proven-effective rehabilitative programs like AA, and instead supports exorbitant fuel taxes and laws mandating all drivers — not just those with DUII records — carry hefty “drunk driving insurance” and install Breathalyzers and remote shut-down modules in their cars … might not be totally honest about their “curb drunk driving” goals.

      (In this forum, I shouldn’t have to dig deep to find examples of how this concept applies to gun ownership, right?)

      So yes, I do believe there are some anti-gun people whose motives are pure; they truly want to eliminate gun violence and gun homicides, and are motivated by the gun-related injuries or deaths of themselves or loved ones. I don’t fault them for that. Where they lose me is when they toss in with the totalitarians, and their goals turn to penalizing all the rest of us who haven’t harmed anyone and only want to be left alone with the means to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Goals which have never demonstrably contributed to a reduction in “gun violence” but instead usually contribute to increased violence in general, often including “gun violence”.

      • All good, but I would posit that one can’t have pure motives against “gun violence”, as there is no such thing.
        There are assholes using guns for criminal acts. But “guns” aren’t doing anything.
        To keep with your analogy is to say one can have pure motives in getting rid of “drunk drivers” by banning cars.
        Cars aren’t the problem, are they?
        Call it whatever you like. The actual thought process is insane. Regardless of how pure one feels about doing it.
        ISIS felt pure about raping little Yadzi 12 year old girls to.
        But they ain’t getting the “pure” pass from me.

  2. The bit about feeling safer in an urban setting than in the country demonstrates nicely the utter disconnect between “feel safe” and “be safe”. By any objective metric, the country is far safer than the city. In the city you’re much more likely to need the tools for self defense — and also be far more likely to be denied their use by politicians.

    The article reminds me of this wonderful Gandhi quote:

    “He who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honor by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully.” — Mohandas K. Gandhi, “The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi”, cited at http://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm

  3. The disconnect between “feeling safe” in the city and “being safe” in the country is a classic trait of herd mentality.

    A sheep in a barn stall is safer than in a flock in a meadow surrounded by forests with wolves, but will feel safer outside in the flock.

    In one sense that disconnect is understandable: If the barn stall were targeted by predators, there’s only one sheep there, while if the flock were targeted, it’s less likely any particular sheep will be the one taken.

    However, the reality is the barn stall is a MUCH harder target — behind walls and doors and guarded by humans and (often) dogs — and it’s much less likely it WILL be targeted. The flock out in the open, on the other hand, WILL be targeted, and a sheep or two WILL be lost each time.

    So it is in the city vs. country. In the country, in single-family homes, if YOUR home is targeted you and your family are the only ones there, so you WILL be victimized. In the city, someone gets targeted every day, but with so many people odds are it’s someone else and not you. OTOH, crime rates are tiny in the country compared to the city — so much lower as to more than make up for the certainty of victimization if YOUR home is hit — so it’s highly unlikely your home will be targeted, while being easier to make it a harder target if it is.

    But the nod to herd mentality is the important concept here, and reinforces what we’ve observed before: these people are sheep.

  4. For most of human history pantywaist effeminate cowards generally didn’t last long enough to breed….and if they did they were generally spurned by women who genetically NEED real men to father their children. It’s only been since the Industrial Revolution and the widespread increase in wealth that it became possible for testosterone challenged mewling cowards to survive and breed in ever greater numbers while these cowards voted to send the REAL men off to the military to be killed off. We are now paying the price for such societal folly.

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