Self Love?
Self Loathing?
Who cares?
Put on some clothing.
One of the hallmarks of the gun nutz is their fetish relationship to their firearms, attributing to it unrealistic powers to make them more capable and powerful people than they really are or are ever likely to be due to their own flaws, failings, and idiot-syncracies (to borrow an Archie Bunkerism).
The picture below displays how a firearms, particularly one like this, affects their subjective image of themselves.There are, sadly, too many people like the fool below on the internet, usually with not just large firearms but whole arsenals of them. But this does clearly illustrate the problem with the aspect of the gun culture towards firearms not as utilitarian objects but as a means to being taken seriously, to command respect or attention, to empower to coerce or intimidate. When a firearm fails to make them smarter, stronger, faster, more sophisticated or more attractive, there is an inherent frustration.
NO. No one is impressed, not with any of your boy toys; so put them away - ALL of them, PLEASE!
When Bob Costas in his Jon Stewart interview on the Daily Show on 1/28/'13 talks about the gun culture, about someone at 2 minutes into the interview who is texting about their girlfriend cheating on them, and having not just one gun, but eight guns ready, it gives insight into the problem attitudes in our gun culture, in a way that is not as funny as the silly oaf in the picture above. Watch the whole interview, please, but pay attention especially to the segment about 2 minutes into the interview, because I would argue THAT attitude described by Costas is common EQUALLY to many urban and rural gun owners. Because not only the use and abuse of firearms is a problem, but more deeply the underlying attitude towards what they are and what they are not is badly flawed, and at the core of the problem. It is why preventing crazy people, minors, felons, drug users, domestic abusers and other prohibited people from having firearms is not enough, it is why toning down the violence in movies and music lyrics and video games is not enough. We have to look at changing the fundamental attitudes towards guns, towards violence, and towards a vigilantism conviction that each person with a gun also has the right to act with a gun to defend not only their physical bodies, or those of their family members, but also their sense of self, their pride, their feelings when they are offended, their 'face' or self-image against disrespect.
When guns are tied to that sense of identity, there is an inherent problem, an act of violence waiting to happen when a threshold of frustration or disappointment or anger is crossed.
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Bob Costas | ||||
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