Shortly after midnight, more than 20 years ago at an upscale cocktail party in California, and as a lark, I said I belonged to the NRA, "National Rifle Association." Almost immediately I found myself being escorted to the street. However, during this process, I told my evictors my tenure with the NRA had been years before, "back when the NRA was respectable," and that I now belonged to its sane alternative, "handgun control." What's more, I had a membership card to prove it.
Except for their warped and irrational views relative to common sense gun controls, most NRA members are valued citizens in their respective communities. However, when it comes to rational, moral and mature reasoning relative to guns, such attributes evaporate quickly. These transformations, from rational to irrational, sane to insane, can be readily observed even as they happen. Merely say you believe in some common sense gun controls to an NRA member and watch what happens. His immediate reply will be, "So you want to take away all our guns."
And that isn't what you've said at all. It's a paranoid thought he has constructed in his own mind to protect his guns, or perhaps something much more personal.
With few exceptions, NRA members can't tolerate limitations on how they buy, sell, trade or use guns. Of course such gun behaviors are all hallmarks of immature personalities; however, personality types can't help but show their symptoms, whatever they may be. For confirmation of this dynamic, review a year's publication of "The American Rifleman," or consult a book on abnormal psychology.
While on the subject of personality types, what would you call a person who makes a kind of gun available to average citizens that can kill a classroom full of students without reloading? Can you find two words more appropriate than immoral and insane? Yet these are the precise actions the NRA, in conjunction with our corrupt Congress, has been repeating since January 17, 1989, the date Patrick Purdy killed five children and wounded 29 others in a Stockton, Calif., schoolyard.
Is our society too sick to become outraged by such actions? Evidently it is or else we would change. We are also too ill to prevent 30,000 of our citizens from dying yearly by gunshot wounds.
Before I get labeled as a gun banner or gun hater, assuming it hasn't already happened, you may be surprised to learn I have a 75-year history with guns. What's more, as an Ozarks farm boy, I killed my first rabbit while hunting alone at age 10. At age 19, with my first paycheck from teaching, I bought a .22-caliber repeating rifle from Montgomery Ward in Springfield for $11.55.
From Ward's store on St. Louis Street, I carried my rifle to the Square, shopped in two stores, and then walked to Water Street to board a bus back to Conway where I taught high school band and chorus.
So I have a long and satisfying history with guns, and I'm not opposed to hunting; however, I do view trophy hunting as the expression of a neurotic personality. Nonetheless, depending on the personality of the owner, gun use can be either positive or negative. And presently, since we live in a severely dysfunctional society, I sleep better at night knowing I have some protection available. What's more, and depending on how the law is administered, I support concealed carry.
Most personality theorists have a list of personality types that support their beliefs. Accordingly, Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939, had a theory that explains a male's strong attachment to his guns. To Freud, all guns represent an important male body part in the male unconscious mind, a belief he never wavered from even in the face of ... opposition. However, there is no research proving the validity of Freud's convictions.
Nonetheless, there are behaviors which attest to the veracity of Freud's theory. For example: Does the gun owner have more guns that he needs for hunting and to protect himself? In relation to other tools or equipment he may own, does he have anything other than guns on display? By comparison, if the gun owner was a doctor, would he have a collection of stethoscopes mounted on his wall? Further, would he have some heroic stories to tell about how he used them?
Do his guns have any special artwork on them? What is the quality of his gun library? In his gun display room, or in his wallet, does he have pictures of his children holding dead animals? Does he support irrational gun-freedom laws passed by Congress?
Without his special attraction to guns, would he still need psychiatric treatment? Does the gun owner dare have any opinions disallowed by the NRA? In other words, is he a prisoner of the NRA or Freud's thinking?
As a final thought, what are the gun owners' real reasons for wanting to carry guns in Springfield city parks? Is it to make our parks safer, or to enhance the egos of some other aging males? In regard to the latter, now that I'm in my 90s, I can more fully appropriate all the opportunities the NRA offers to help maintain my masculinity.
Thomas Withers, 90, is a retired psychologist and freelance writer. He lives in Springfield.
