From: [c d t] at [sw.stratus.com] (C. D. Tavares)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism,talk.politics.theory,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.guns,talk.politics.medicine
Subject: Re: Guns as Phalluses
Date: 18 Sep 1995 17:36:57 GMT

[m v p 1] at [ix.netcom.com] (Marcio V. Pinheiro ) writes:
> [mar k m] at [ucsfresno.edu] (Mark Metzler) writes: 
> >    Does anyone else get the idea that the issue of gun ownership is not
> >really about security or or liberty, but is really a matter of symbolic
> >public display of sexual impotence?
> >    Gun lovers seem fixated on this powerful little tube that they love
> >to hold in their hands, and get great joy when it goes 'bang'.  They love
> >nothing more than to brag to each other about the size of their weopons. 
> >    Recently, we have had a rash of guys civil-disobediantly revealing
> >their concealed weopons to the news media.  Others, equally insecure
> >about their masculinity, must parade around in cowboy boots and hats,
> >in order to convince themselves, and others, that they are capable
> >normal masculine performance.
> >    One can only imagine the number of romances that would be spawned,
> >if these fellows would stop being narcissistically infatuated by the
> powerful
> >little 'thingy' in their hands, and try making love, not war.
>             Interesting thoughts! I really think that we should        
>         consider this dimention of the problem. Some people react to   
>         some form of gun control as "castration". Their manhood seem to
>         be concentrated in the cowboy image.
>             I believe that if they were less anxious about having or   
>         not having their guns they would be better lovers...

My wife, who shoots a .45, thinks you're both absolutely precious.

A report for the lurkers, as well as you two bigots masquerading as
armchair psychiatrists:

>From "Guns, Murders, and the Constitution -- A Realistic Assessment of Gun
Control" by Don B. Kates, Jr. page 13:

        In these other passages Freud associates retarded sexual and
        emotional development not with gun ownership, but with fear and
        loathing of weapons.

In the footnotes Kates writes:

        Compare the passage from the 10th Lecture (at 507 of The Major
        Writing of Sigmund Freud, Great Books ed., 1952) ...

The common claim that gun ownership is a reaction to male sexual
inadequcy is rejected in the only studies analyzing it, by Drs.
Nicole Varzos and Bruce Danto [respectively, "Aspects of the Priapic
Theory of Gun Ownership" in W. Tonso (ed.), THE GUN CULTURE AND ITS
ENEMIES (1989) and "Firearms and Violence", 5 INT'L. J.  OFFENDER
THER. 135 (1979)]. Both find gun ownership explicable by pragmatic
explanations while the penile inadequacy theory fails to explain
numerous aspects of gun ownership

Consider, for instance the fact that 50% of those who own a gun for
protection are FEMALE.  That is explicable by reference to women's
felt need for protection, and NOT by feelings of penile inadequacy.

Dr. Danto also notes that if the penile inadequacy theory were true,
male gun owners would want not little handguns but the largest barrel
and bore weapons available.

The penile inadequacy theory fails to explain other demographic
differentials in gun ownership. When all gun owners are counted (not
just those who own for protection alone), survey evidence shows that
"gun owners are disproportionately rural, Southern, male, Protestant,
affluent and middle class...  [and that] weapons ownership tends to
increase with income, or occupational prestige, or both."

The explanations here are, once again, purely pragmatic; hunting is
more an activity of rural people generally, and Southerners
particularly, than of city dwellers; among urbanites, guns are most
owned by the affluent because they are more likely to hunt -- and also
to have the money to afford guns and property that they may feel the
need to defend; most guns are owned for sport and males engage in gun
sports more than females.

As to Protestants, survey evidence shows them more likely to hunt than
Catholics or Jews (Protestantism is most predominant in rural areas);
and, beyond that, Protestants and gun owners both tend to be descended
from older American stock, retaining cultural values redolent of the
"individualistic orientation that emanated from the American
frontier...." [Young, "The Protestant Heritage and the Spirit of Gun
Ownership", 28 J.  SCI. STUDY OF RELIG. 300, 307 (1989).]

In contrast, the penile inadequacy theory fails to explain any of
these demographic trends.  Are Protestants or the affluent or better
educated people or rural dwellers or Southerners MORE subject to
feelings of penile inadequacy than Catholics or urbanites or the poor
etc., etc.?

Insofar as proponents of the penile inadequacy theory cite any
evidence for it, they cite Freud's view that weapons have penile
symbolism in dreams. This, Freud says, is true of dreams involving any
long object (e.g. "sticks, umbrellas, poles, trees") but especially of
objects that may be viewed as penetrating, and injuring ("knives,
daggers, lances, sabers; firearms are similarly used...."). This
passage refers to dreams in general without distinguishing gun owners
from others.

Opponents of gun ownership are apparently unaware that Freud's views
cut against them, not in their favor. Freud associates retarded sexual
and emotional development not with gun ownership, but with fear and
loathing of guns. (S. Freud & D. Oppenheim, DREAMS IN FOLKLORE (1958)
at 33.)
-- 

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