From Pine View Farm

The Fascination with Firearms 0

At Psychology Today Blogs, Molly S. Castelloe strives to understand gunnuttery by reviewing some of the research and analyses thereof. A snippet:

We have a pathological preoccupation with guns, Peay writes, and our country seems at times like an adolescent still rebelling from a colonizing parent. Jungian psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja describes the allure of the gun as “a naïve expression of macho masculinity – a show of sexuality and arrogant power.” Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton explains it this way. While our nation is a military superpower, the most powerful and wealthiest in the world — and in history — it is also very young compared to most countries. Lifton speculates that our country’s preoccupation with guns replaces a sense of long national history and a grounded, coherent and stable national identity.

I would take exception to this statement, “it is also very young compared to most countries,” to this extent. The United States is very young compared to European and Asian countries. It’s valid to the extent that the U. S. considers itself their offspring, but it is not young compared to other countries in the Americas and much of southern Africa. Nevertheless, most of those countries, excepting those in political turmoil, do not have the level of one-on-one violence that the United States endures.

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