Crazy talk

For a long time I never really understood battered person syndrome where someone would stay with, go back to, or find a new partner that also abused them. Why couldn’t they see what everyone else thought was obvious? How could they think that was normal?

I understand better now. Even though I’m not a psychologist I’ve dealt with a number of crazy people in my life and I’m getting pretty good at recognizing “crazy” when I see it and what to do about it. This book helped a bunch: Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder.

It turns out a close parallel can be drawn between those that tolerate and even seek abuse in their personal relationships and our current relationship with the anti-gun people and our governments.

Read this and look at the parallel:

Since the victim is not at fault and the violence is internally driven by the abuser’s need to control, this self-blame results in feelings of helplessness rather than empowerment. The feeling of being both responsible for and helpless to stop the violence leads in turn to depression and passivity. This learned depression and passivity makes it difficult for the abused partner to marshal the resources and support system needed to leave.

We are told that “gun violence” is our fault. We are abused for something we had nothing to do with. We are told we must change and tolerate yet another abusive act. But no matter how much we concede, no matter how much abuse we put up with they always come back and abuse us more.

It’s driven, as in the battered person syndrome, by the abuser’s need to control. It is not because of anything we have done wrong.

We are dealing with a form of insanity and we tolerate it.

You don’t think so? Let me give some examples (see also this blog post).

Goldilocks guns

The anti-gun people want to outlaw guns that are “small and easily hidden”. They want to outlaw “.50 caliber sniper rifles” that are large and powerful . They want to outlaw guns that are “deadly accurate”. They want to outlaw guns that can be used for “spray shooting from the hip”.

You would think that perhaps a gun that fires an intermediate cartridge and is of medium weight and is not easily hidden would be acceptable to them. Nope. Such a gun, when capable of full auto” was called an “assault rifle” by the Germans during WWII. The anti-gun people, utilizing their talent for twisting words and preying on the ability of the public to be easily confused, banned these type of guns as “assault weapons”.

These intermediate power, intermediate size, with intermediate rates of fire, semi, not fully, auto guns were called “assault weapons” and banned.

So some guns are too big. Some guns are too small. But no guns are “just right”. Some guns are too accurate. Some guns can be wildly “sprayed”. But there are no guns that are “just right”.

That’s crazy talk!

1000 round arsenals

To anti-gun people and the press even a hundred rounds of ammunition found in the trunk of a car or in someone’s home is cause for concern. If the police decide to search someone’s car or home the finding of a few hundred rounds of ammunition will nearly take the breath away from the talking heads in the media. If it was within a few blocks of a school they make sure the implication is that each one of those rounds could, and should, be translated into the intent of the gun owner was to kill at least that many children.

This fascination with the number of rounds of ammo reached the point that in 1994 the U.S. Congress was contemplating requiring an arsenal license for people that had more than 1000 rounds of ammunition. There was talk of something similar again after the Newtown Connecticut shooting.

If I am going to the range for practice it is about 400 rounds per handgun and 100 for a rifle. If I were to go to a regional match I would take at least 1000 per gun. If I were to attend a weekend class the minimum round count is typically about 1500.

1000 rounds and they want to require a special license? I can put 1000 rounds of .22 LR in my coat pockets. Do they want me to license my coat?

And even in the most horrific mass shootings only something on the order of 100 rounds are fired. How could a restriction on owning more that 1000 rounds possibly make any difference?

That’s crazy talk!

Registration of guns

Of what benefit is it for guns to be registered? I’ve blogged about this many, times before. It is exceedingly costly and contrary to what you see on T.V. and at the movies it has near zero impact on solving crimes. But still the anti-gun people insist on gun registration.

That’s crazy talk!

Safety

If there were a very clear correlation between highly restrictive gun laws and lower violent crime, suicide, and/or accidental injury or death by gunshot then we could have a meaningful discussion about the merits of firearm regulation. But despite over a 100 years of gun regulation in this country there still isn’t any conclusive data any of the gun laws have improved public safety in any of the instances where they have been implemented.

A decent case can even be made there is more violent crime where firearms are banned. Yet in response to a mass shooting in yet another “gun free zone” they demand still more “gun free zones”.

That’s crazy talk!

Background checks

I’ve blogged about this too. But the more succinct version can be expressed in two sentences.

Background checks to prevent some people from gaining access to firearms is like checking ID to prevent underage drinking and smoking. How long does it take your average high school dropout to find a way to light up while drinking a beer?

Yet even most gun rights activists and gun rights “leaders” don’t object to something that is expensive, time consuming, and open to abuse.

The anti-gun people want to expand a system that clearly doesn’t and can’t possibly work any better than ID checks for underage drinking and smoking.

That’s crazy talk!

One gun a month

Who needs to buy more than one Bible a month? Why do Bible owners get all upset about the minor inconvenience of restricting people to just one Bible a month? It would cut down on trafficking of Bibles from states with lax Bible laws to those with strict Bible laws.

Is that crazy talk? Yup. It’s also crazy talk when you substitute “gun” for “Bible” in that paragraph.

[If you want to claim Bibles aren’t “responsible” for killing people like guns are then substitute “Koran” or “Communist Manifesto” and reevaluate before you engage me in that debate.]

Waiting periods

The anti-gun people want waiting periods before someone can take home a newly purchased gun. When asked why, even in the age of nearly instant background checks, they said they wanted a “cooling off period” so people wouldn’t buy a gun when angry or depressed and used it to harm someone else or themselves without having a few days to think about it.

It that were true then why did they insist on waiting periods even for people that already owned dozens of guns?

That’s crazy talk!

Conclusion

It’s not going to get any better if we continue to tolerate this misbehavior. It’s not in the psychology of the individual that batters their partner and it’s not in the history of governments.

We are better than this.

We must do something about this bad relationship. We need to recognize we are enabling it and we need to place the blame where it really belongs. Only then can we have a normal, healthy relationship. But most of all we have to recognize we have made only feeble attempts at “couples counseling” (the courts) when we probably should be trying to “get out of the relationship”.

Share

7 thoughts on “Crazy talk

  1. A good start toward ending the serial compromise of rights has been the expansion of shall-issue concealed handgun licenses across the US.

    Every state went through the cries of “Wild West shootouts with blood in the streets” and then it did not happen, over and over and over again. Some people started noticing, too.

    How about we crush the magazine limit bans in court and in legislatures and in the public’s opinion next? And simultaneously work on the “assault weapon” myths?

    And then go for actually prosecuting felons who try to buy a gun and fail the background check, even though Joe Biden says nobody has time for that?

  2. Living in gerrymandered one-party Feinsteintopia it seems that the abusive Gov.-vs.-Individual relationship is recognized and acted-upon by the those in power to directly increase the feeling of passive-aggressive helplessness among the general population, while working to delineate Pacifism and non-resistance as the only acceptable or available option response. As with the often repeated statement, “Violence is not the answer,” – as a linear equation being solved – and tied to the utopian idea of a “Right to be protected from Violence” – as if all violence was equally the same thing on a singular continuum.

  3. 2nd para. in “Goldilocks Guns” and 1st para in “1000 Round Arsenals” need another look.

    Editing quibbles aside, it’s a SUPERB essay!

    • Thank you. I made some changes. If you see things that need to be fixed let me know. You have my email address too you know.

      Thanks again.

  4. The follow-up to “violence is not the answer” is “Vote for us and nothing violent will happen to you” which sounds a lot like a Chicago insurance salesman.

    Breaking off the relationship starts with not getting into it in the first place. When the lefties come around with the gun ban solution to a violent act, the answer is to refuse to talk to them until they can produce a solution that addresses suicidal madmen, and doesn’t involve a transparent effort to beat up on people who didn’t vote for them.

  5. [If you want to claim Bibles aren’t “responsible” for killing people like guns are then substitute “Koran” or “Communist Manifesto” and reevaluate before you engage me in that debate.]

    This right here? It’s quotes like this that keep me coming back to this blog.

    • Really! Interesting. That is somehow a particularly unique insight or something? It seems pretty obvious to me.

      Regardless, thanks.

Comments are closed.