The Last Refuge for Hate: Gun Hate

[Dali Llama]

The Last Refuge for Hate: Gun Hate
January 24, 2005

Alan Korwin
 
Email has been flooded recently with links to the Dept. of Justice study, just released, that unambiguously finds the right to keep and bear arms belongs to individual people.
 The 214-year-old American right to keep and bear arms does not protect some sort of collective, or assembled militias, or armed forces, or a right of the states. Those newly minted arguments are now off the table, wiped out, dead. RKBA is a right you and I have as individuals. I’ve gotten the link a dozen times already, you may have too, and if not, here it is:
 http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm
(main conclusions excerpted at end of this report)
 However, since the bulk of resistance to the American right to arms has its roots in a medical condition, no amount of history, legal analysis, precedent, logic or argument will resolve the issue.
 People who are terrified of and hate guns -- hoplophobes -- don’t care about anything rational, and we waste our time on such arguments. They want guns to go away. They don’t trust guns. They don’t trust people who have guns, and especially people who like guns. The only exception is “official” people with guns, meaning, they’re from the government, a source of relief.
 I know, I know, that’s irrational. But that’s the nature of the disease, and it will not be fixed by DOJ reports.
 The more intelligent of the hoplophobes may give up their you-have-no-rights argument due to the DOJ report, but it won’t stop them one bit.
 They will seize on anything else, because hoplophobia is an irrational fear. Conveniently, the language of the report itself says that the limits of this individual right have not been clearly defined.
 To a hoplophobe, that means your right to arms can be legally limited to a single gun, with a single round, that does not operate, and is locked away, with government holding the key. And even that leaves them nervous.
 We don’t need more arguments or some DOJ paper that finds what we already know and have exercised for two centuries. Oh, I guess the intellectuals on our side will make some use of it, and it may have some positive effects in some courts.
 What we really need is research and medical-treatment programs for the poor, unfortunate people who are terrified of guns, won’t go near guns, who would not defend themselves or their families if they had to, and who, very plainly, hate guns.
 Hate is a terrible thing.
 It must be confronted vigorously, righteously, and in a forthright manner. Logic and law do not confront hate, or help lessen it. We must learn not to tolerate gun hate, anywhere we find it.
 Hoplophobic behavior in government, schools, and all facets of public life must be recognized for what it is, exposed, and rooted out or treated. Seemingly utopian pacifists are free to profess their love of a weapon-free world, but they must start by disarming the evil, criminal and tyrannical. Disarming the general public is a vent for their twisted fear and hatred, a grotesque affront to freedom, and unacceptable.
 Guns save lives. Guns stop crime. Guns are why America is still free. The history of freedom is inextricably tied to the development of weapons (an interesting study, by the way, if you have the time to examine it). Good people need guns. Efforts to end that are immoral and unjust, and when done by government, is a direct failure to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” That’s a violation of the oath of office, which should lead to removal from office and possibly even criminal charges.
 The people we elect or hire for public service should be screened for latent or overt gun hatred, and disqualified if such hatred is found, before it can do any more harm to our nation and its values.
 It is well past the time when the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), the catalog of recognized mental infirmities, includes “hoplophobia,” in all its forms, and serious medical research is conducted to identify and treat this pernicious condition that threatens us all. The doctors among you should begin raising this issue. If you’re not a doctor but have one or two, ask them about it.
 The opponents of gun rights come in four fundamental categories:
 Utopian Idealists - Dreamers willing to ignore human nature (anger, hostility, temper, greed, lust, hunger, poverty, want, megalomania, social pathologies, etc.) in the vain hope for a world where no one ever needs to defend themselves or others; Result: misguided efforts to disarm the public since no one should ever be capable of exerting lethal force for any reason. Fairly rare.
 Routine Bigots - Ignorant gun haters who, generally, have never actually seen a real gun much less fired one, and hate what they don’t know; strong corollaries with race haters; Result: Vigorous anti-rights profile if left alone, however they often resolve their blind hatred when education removes the ignorance -- frequent anecdotes of such folks “converting” after their first time at a range. Quite common.
 Hoplophobes -- Unfortunate souls afflicted with a phobic terror of firearms, deserving of pity, and in need of medical attention; Result: Though they should never be involved in setting policy on self defense, national security, or Second Amendment rights, they often insinuate themselves into such positions, their need for treatment goes unattended, and they cause grievous social harm. Easily mistaken for plain bigotry. Too common.
 Power Mongers - Like some at the U.N or many anti-gun-rights politicians, they know full well that an armed public interferes with their plans, and they insidiously use lies about the gun issue, and “disarmament (of you but not them) as a road to peace” as a power base and source of support; Result: truly evil, tyrants who ultimately suppress human rights, contribute to global genocides, live an elite lifestyle, care not for their fellow citizens. Rare but extremely dangerous.
 Bottom line:
It’s nice that the DOJ report came out.
The battle however lies elsewhere.
 
Alan.
DOJ CONCLUSIONS: (from 125-page report)
 For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to keep and to bear arms...
 ....our examination of the original meaning of the Amendment provides extensive reasons to conclude that the Second Amendment secures an individual right, and no persuasive basis for either the collective-right or quasi-collective-right views.
 The text of the Amendment's operative clause, setting out a "right of the people to keep and bear Arms," is clear and is reinforced by the Constitution's structure.
 The Amendment's prefatory clause, properly understood, is fully consistent with this interpretation.
 The broader history of the Anglo-American right of individuals to have and use arms, from England's Revolution of 1688-1689 to the ratification of the Second Amendment a hundred years later, leads to the same conclusion.
 Finally, the first hundred years of interpretations of the Amendment, and especially the commentaries and case law in the pre-Civil War period closest to the Amendment's ratification, confirm what the text and history of the Second Amendment require.
 "My own view on gun control is simple: I hate guns and I cannot imagine why anybody would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns would be banned."
--Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Harvard School of Public Health

[Shorty]

My Greek is rusty.  Actually, encrusted.  Anyway, what is the literal meaning of "hoplophobe"?  I know phobia is fear, but "hoplo"?

[Dali Llama]

My Greek is rusty.  Actually, encrusted.  Anyway, what is the literal meaning of "hoplophobe"?  I know phobia is fear, but "hoplo"?

Dali Llama say he humbly provide following information for Shorty:

hoplophobia - n. - an irrational and morbid fear of guns, a term coined
by Jeff Cooper, from Greek "hoplites," weapon. Symptoms may include
discomfort, disorientation, rapid pulse, sweating, faintness and more,
at the mere sight or even thought of guns. Hoplophobes are common and
should never be involved in setting gun policies, though many are hard
at work in the rights-denial movement, and are arguably the greatest
threat in the debate. Point out hoplophobic behavior when you see it, it
is dangerous, and sufferers deserve pity. A hoplophobe (HOP-li-fobe) can
often be cured by training, or by a day at the range.


HOPLITES
Hoplites were the heavy infantry of the Greek city-states who fought in the columnar formation of the phalanx. Fighting in mass was hardly original —Mycenean and Near Eastern armies had done that for centuries. But from the eighth century b.c., the Greeks of the polis (city-state) refined the earlier loosely organized mob into neater lines and files, each propertied citizen now claiming an equal slot in the phalanx, a seat in the council chamber, and a plot in the countryside.

More radically, hoplites crafted sophisticated weaponry and armor to meet the new realities of formalized shock warfare. The helmet, breastplate, and greaves were constructed entirely of bronze, reaching a thickness of about a half inch, providing immunity from the attacks of most swords, missiles, and spears. An enormous three-foot shield—the hoplon, from which the infantryman derived his name—covered half the infantryman's own body. Each hoplite depended on the man next to him to shield his own unprotected right side. A unique double grip allowed the oppressive weight to be held by the entire left arm, and the shield's concave shape permitted the rear ranks to rest it on their shoulders. Offensively, the hoplite depended on his nine-foot spear; should the shaft break, he might turn around what was left of its length to employ the reverse end, which was outfitted with a bronze spike. A reserve iron sword was carried in case the spear was lost altogether.

Hoplites until the fifth century b.c. fought almost entirely over land, usually border strips of marginal ground more important to a community's pride than to its economic survival. Careful protocol between the one thousand or so city-states governed the time, location, and conduct of such one-day wars. But the contrived nature of hoplite fighting should not suggest an absence of mayhem and savagery.

Columns eyed each other formally across flat plains, bronze glittering in the summer sun. The initial collision was horrific, as each side stumbled blindly ahead into the enemy mass, attempting to create some momentum that might shatter the opposing formation into fragments. Hearing was nonexistent. Dust, the crowded conditions of the battlefield, and crested helmets made sight nearly impossible. Descriptions of gaping wounds to the unprotected neck and groin, involuntary defecation and urination, mistaken identity and panic all abound in descriptions in Greek literature. After not much more than an hour, the pushing ceased as one side collapsed and exited the field, allowing the exhausted victors to return the stripped dead, to erect an ostentatious trophy as testament to their prowess, and to annex or retain the disputed territory.

For nearly two and a half centuries, no army in the Mediterranean could withstand the charge of a hoplite phalanx. But after the Peloponnesian War (431-404 b.c.) its limitations became unmistakable. On rough terrain, in mountain passes, and on long marches, cavalry, light-armed troops, and archers were needed to provide cover, pursuit, and reconnaissance. But to incorporate the aristocratic horsemen, impoverished skirmishers, or hired mercenaries who made up those forces into the city-state's front ranks was antithetical to the whole idea of an agrarian community defended by its middling hoplite citizenry. Gradually military service of all types became divorced from social status, and the original idea of the hoplites' city-state was lost. Yet although the old hoplite phalanx was superseded by more sophisticated and integrated phalangite columns under Philip and Alexander of Macedon, the ideals of hoplite warfare—the dominance of heavy infantry, the ideal of a citizen militia, the preference for direct confrontation, and a reliance on superior technology—remained strong in the West.