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sparkleflit 76F
10271 posts
3/11/2018 11:07 am

Or, treat everyone requesting to purchase a gun like woman is treated when requesting an abortion.......


dinty3 80M
3364 posts
3/11/2018 11:14 am

    Quoting sparkleflit:
    Or, treat everyone requesting to purchase a gun like woman is treated when requesting an abortion.......
?


lilium6 74F
4498 posts
3/12/2018 2:00 am

Pythia Peay's articles 'Analysing America's 'Gun Complex'' and ' Why Guns Have a Powerful Hold On the American Psyche: An Interview with Psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja' offer insight as to why guns/weapons are deeply embedded in the American psyche and why the subject of gun control can't be approached logically/meets with strong resistance. If I may quote the following in its entirety (it's rather lengthy; my apologies in advance) -

'The fact that America has been unable to reach a cultural "breakthrough" moment around guns—the way it did around gay rights with the recent passage of the Gay Marriage Rights Act, for instance—is psychologically telling. So is the question that few are asking, but that begs to be asked: why is this happening in America?

In wondering why America continues to suffer the unrelenting tragedy of repeated mass shootings and why the country has a higher rate of gun violence compared to other countries, I was reminded of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung's famed word association tests in the early 20th Century, from which he developed the theory of a "complex": a constellation of unconscious emotions, images, and memories that can suddenly erupt in an individual, interfering with everyday life.

Psychologists today understand that when individuals act against their own better interests, unconscious processes in the form of a complex are most likely at work. These same unconscious processes can also operate in a nation's psyche: that force field made up of symbols and historical memories accumulated by a people over time.

Certainly by that definition, America could be said to have a "gun complex." As each senseless shooting blurs into the next (Umpqua Community College was the 294th mass shooting event in 2015 (link is external)) and still the country cannot come together to find a way to prevent guns from falling into the hands of the mentally ill, enact stronger background checks and sensible legislation that will keep assault weapons off our streets—protective measures that a majority of Americans would like to see (link is external)—then the American body politic is in the grip of a stubborn cultural complex.

When logic and reason fail, psychology's standpoint can prove useful, as it works from the baseline of what is rather than what should be. When trying to gain some control over the hidden hand of a complex as it wields its influence over an individual's life, for example, psychologists will first acknowledge its power, and then seek to trace its roots in a person's history. For nations, this process falls under the domain of psychohistory.

One of psychohistory's principle founders is Robert Jay Lifton, M.D. Now 89, Lifton is notable for his research into war and genocide. It was in an interview with Lifton that I gained new insight into certain traits ingrained early in the nation's developing character that, in his observation, continues to influence contemporary American attitudes toward the gun.

In Lifton's view, for instance, America's relative youth when measured against older cultures has had much to do with its relationship with guns. The country's foundation on patterns of continuous immigration and a "constantly moving frontier," he told me, has contributed to the fact that "our identity has always been shaky." That uneasiness around who we are, he said, has made us emphasize what history we do have all the more strongly. Together with the nation's constitutional right to self-defense as set forth in the Second Amendment, the gun has filled that gap, he continued, functioning as a "major compensation" for the nation's lack of tradition.

America's gun complex could also be called our "John Wayne complex," as the gun, according to Lifton, "is also tied up with our American ideal of the heroic." From the start we saw ourselves, he said, "as conquering the wilderness and the native peoples. And the gun was key to that." Also frequently referred to as the "great equalizer," Lifton pointed out that the gun became as well an expression of "personal power that gave individuals some sense of control over life and death," also compensating the "terror and fear that many people must have felt in this country in its early decades" upon arriving on the shores of a raw wilderness.

Thus the gun in American culture, Lifton continued, became over time "a symbol on many levels of a kind of organizing principle; as an expression of individualism and individual power; and as a way of dealing with anxieties about death and vulnerability." For all these reasons, in Lifton's words, "the gun became more important to us than perhaps to any other culture." In terms of American violence, he regretfully and mournfully concluded, "much begins with... the near deification of the gun in terms of American violence."

Now, deification seems a strong word to use in connection with guns. And yet according to Italian psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja, Ph.D., who has written widely on violence and the psychotherapy of modern Western culture, a gun is not just any ordinary object, such as "a toaster or a camera," but has a universal dimension independent of a specific culture.

In general, this means, said Zoja, echoing Lifton, that there is something "almost religious" about guns. In his view, we cannot deal with the topic in a logical way, because people "feel as if you're taking something sacred away from them."

This is even more complicated in America, observed Zoja, because in the absence of a state religion, democracy has become our religion—and "the gun is a symbol of democracy, and therefore sensitive in the American unconscious." Thus partly because of its history in our country's development, he said, "guns in America are imbued with a mythic, religious quality."

It is this non-rational, mythic current described by both Lifton and Zoja that continuously erupts and disrupts any attempt around common sense gun legislation, and that is conveniently exploited by the NRA to its own ends. Indeed these psychological perspectives shifted my own thinking away from the charged topic of increased gun regulations to the idea that there ought to be more gun consciousness—more psychologically oriented debates in the media, not just about the mental health of individual shooters, but about the psychology of America and the gun's place in our culture.

And in fact there's an argument to be made, I have come to believe, for taking seriously the notion of the gun as one of America's dominant symbols that no amount of moral exhortations or recitation of statistics around its tragic misuses can strip out of our cultural fabric.

If the gun became less polarized into a good or evil object, for instance, and became accepted instead as a part of our American history with deep cultural roots and imbued with patriotic symbolism, then maybe those gunmen who mow down innocents would be judged not only guilty of mass murder, but publicly shamed as treasonous cowards for desecrating a part of our heritage: the equivalent, say, of splattering paint on the Washington Monument, trampling on the flag, or spitting on veterans.

But if we are going to continue on our path of being a gun-loving, gun-toting country, as it seems we are, then maybe it's time that pro-and anti-gun legislation proponents came together and accepted guns, not only as weapons for self-protection, or as emblems of our cowboy bravado, but as a psychological fact about America, inseparably woven into our historical origins and our national identity.

Maybe then we could move beyond the stalled debates around legislation, and begin generating as much heightened cultural awareness, pragmatic solutions, and even creative imagination around guns as we have brought to other social issues that have bedeviled and divided our democracy.'


Katie_au_lait 78F
7026 posts
3/12/2018 2:32 am

Maisie is forever telling us that "legal" gun owners "follow the law".
She has no understanding that she is saying " no guns legally owned have ever been used to maim or kill." That only "criminals" maim and kill. And she has even less understanding of what makes a "criminal" She doesn't even realise she is blaming the victims for gun crime!

She doesn't understand that "criminality" begins with one single wrong decision.
The potential is within every single human mind to commit criminal acts... there is no straight line... people are not either ONE OR THE OTHER. And that's the complication maisie ignores. The human mind cannot be controlled... so it makes perfect sense to control access to the tools that may be used to kill other human beings.

This is why we have armies and police forces etc. to do the job for us.


sparkleflit 76F
10271 posts
3/12/2018 9:14 am

    Quoting  :

You obviously have no clue about restrictions and barriers placed on women seeking abortions in the US........


jiminycricket1 73M
13732 posts
3/12/2018 9:53 am

    Quoting  :

I disagree with a couple of things about this..

First I do not see the need to repeal the second amendment....what feeds your need to repeal it.. is not the amendment... but the Right's interpretation of the amendment..

We just can't allow the Right to destroy the correct meaning of the amendment by Interpreting the amendment different than it was intended.. this is what they are GOOD at.. taking apart something that destroys the whole thing.. As you buy into their interpretation, and repeal amendment because of it.. You give credence and justification for their misrepresentation.

Vehicles and guns... and interesting analogy... Not so much about laws, but about mindset...Although the true purpose of a vehicle and the true purpose of guns are different.. In the mind, they create the same kind of comfort, protectionism, value, and status.
The "idea" of a vehicle and the "idea" of a gun are similar..

It hard for me to imagine the need for someone to own a Ferrari.. they can't use it as it it's intended. But they want to own it, anyway, why?
Many who own one.. have no intention of using it as it is intended.. they can't.. it would be illegal. So why do they own one.?

It's hard for me to imagine......why people own guns that kill things.. Many of those who own guns aren't hunters....What's their motivation to own a gun?
Well like the Ferrari.. it provides them, only in sense of the mind...some comfort, value, protection and status.. For them.. it serves a purpose other than it's intended use.

I wish they didn't need it, but you see this is the problem.. We fail to see the needs of other in lieu of our own. We try too hard to dictate our needs to others....

For me... I'd just as soon take away the Ferrari and take away the guns.. but that's just me.. I don't own either one..and don't intend to.. I don't need it.

Maisie is a piece of work.....Her response is an amazing hypocrisy of never recognizing the same argument against Us... As the argument against herself.. It's all just a debate all fairs to her to try and win.... Again...... she out trumps Trump


jiminycricket1 73M
13732 posts
3/12/2018 10:29 am

We have some serious problems about insurance...

The fact you can own something you can't use.... It's hard to accept..

My analogy of that would be insurance.. what is insurance? Well there is some confusion about it. Maybe we've accept it about auto insurance , but not about health insurance.. and certain not about the insurance and sense of safety about owning a gun..

The Insurances you own, but you would seriously hope you don't have to use it....It's just incomprehensible to some...... why own something ...you don't want to use?.. why bother owning it?

The Second amendment and guns, are insurances and assurances....the intent to allow you to own them.. is so you NEVER have to use them..

For Countries.. even one's like North Korea.. the intent of owning a nuclear weapon....Is the insurance, of Never having to use them...

We may or may not have an understanding about it for ourselves... but as far as anyone else goes.. We believe they NEVER understand it.


Katie_au_lait 78F
7026 posts
3/12/2018 12:17 pm

The potential is within every single human mind to commit criminal act


What do you not understand in that maisie ?

I MEAN EXACTLY WHAT I SAID.... EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET WITH NO EXCEPTIONS .

PEOPLE MAKE CHOICES...SOMETIMES THEY ARE WRONG.


jiminycricket1 73M
13732 posts
3/12/2018 12:19 pm

    Quoting  :

In either case choices still are made.... You seem to forget the choice to NOT have an abortion.

If you own a gun and a robber comes into your house, and you shoot and kill him..
Do you have that right?

but you see whether or not you have that right.. the truer meaning occurs after you have done it.....
Taking a life?

I'm certain people would feel different... Some would feel empowered, some would be depressed.... Some would feel righteous and some would feel they did wrong.

I would hope most would be depressed and feel they did wrong... regardless of what others tell them was their right to do it..

I can't accept those that would feel empowered and righteous, as having any good qualities as being human

So where do we draw line?....Someone who's going to kill you, someone who's going to steal from you, someone who going to invade your space and your rights.
Does it really matter, what gives YOU the "right" to kill them?

So this makes no sense to you, of course..

So to further confuse you....Where do you draw the line on killing a unborn child?
If they could kill the mother, steal from the mother, or invade the mother space and rights?
So as long as they are not invading your house, your space and taking from you.. You can judge others, but not be judged.

I make it easy for myself.. If the taking the life of unborn child causes someone depression and knowing they did wrong... Irregardless of their right to do so.. I can accept it.. Taking a life... is taking a life....No matter the "right" of it

If they feel empowered and righteous... I can not.

Just like I can not accept your hypocrisy and your denial of a mother's rights, When you get to make the choice of their destination, but not have to carry the burden to it...


sparkleflit 76F
10271 posts
3/12/2018 5:38 pm

    Quoting  :

That;s an absurd analogy......I don't know how many miscarriages you've had, but 30-50% of pregnancies don't result in a baby. The US has the highest infant mortality and women in childbirth mortality rates in the developed world........child poverty not so great either......I wonder why the anti-abortion people never bring those things up.......It's always this ludicrous comparison as if the death of removing a zygote from the womb is worse than the death or and'or suffering of a breathing Human......And, even more ludicrous, is these anti-abortionists calling themselves "Pro Life", when what they clearly mean is that only Human lives matter, they support the taking of lives and suffering of other life-forms........You are Anthropocentric, which is based on the Goat Herder's Guide to the Universe.....which was written when the Human population on the whole planet was tiny.


sparkleflit 76F
10271 posts
3/12/2018 5:46 pm

    Quoting  :

That;s an absurd analogy......I don't know how many miscarriages you've had, but 30-50% of pregnancies don't result in a baby. The US has the highest infant mortality and women in childbirth mortality rates in the developed world........child poverty not so great either......I wonder why the anti-abortion people never bring those things up.......It's always this ludicrous comparison as if removing a zygote from the womb is equal to the death or and'or suffering of
breathing Humans......Anthropocentric absurdity.


sparkleflit 76F
10271 posts
3/13/2018 1:12 pm

    Quoting  :

No, you compared the killing of a breathing Human to the killing of a Zygote......calling them both a "kill".....The analogy was implied, but you lack the guts to acknowledge it......There are many medical procedures and non-medical procedures that cause the deaths of the same number of living cells as an "abortion" and millions of animals are slaughtered every day by Humans.......but you chose this particular comparison........


sparkleflit 76F
10271 posts
3/13/2018 1:27 pm

    Quoting  :

I want you to keep up with all the state laws and regulations that are designed to make abortion impossible or as difficult as possible.......Hundreds of laws restricting abortion have been enacted since RvW.