The "Inherent Pathology" of a Gun Culture

or "Why We Don't Trust Gun Controllers"

I've got a copy of Prof. Saul Cornell's book Whose Right to Arms Did the Second Amendment Protect? (used, via ABE) in the mail, but the next book I'm going to get is Abigail Kohn's Shooters: Myths and Realities of America's Gun Cultures. I've been considering getting a copy for a while, but Reason Magazine has a review of the book up in the current edition, and that's sealed the deal for me.

I found this excerpt of that review particularly telling, though:

From "public health" articles proposing gun control as a cure for the "epidemic" of gun violence to highly regarded sociologists who argue that gun research should be informed by "moral principles" rather than hard facts, she confesses her surprise at the ill-informed and often tendentious research conducted by academics. Kohn’s own research for Shooters, some of which appeared in this magazine ("Their Aim Is True," May 2001), elicited predictable responses. One colleague said she was performing a "social service by researching 'such disgusting people.'" Another said that unless Kohn acknowledged the "inherent pathology" of gun enthusiasm, she was disrespecting victims of gun violence.

A quote from the earlier Reason piece by Ms. Kohn:

There was a time when I would not have wanted to touch a gun of any kind, much less spend part of an afternoon riding the back of a rocking mechanical pony and blazing away at a series of targets with revolvers, rifles, and shotguns. But that improbable picture is the culmination of a journey that took me from the ivory towers of academia to the shooting ranges of Northern California. Bluntly, I was surprised by what I found there. As a practicing anthropologist, I had set out in search of gun crazies, but what I found were regular folks -- enthusiasts who relate to their guns in generally socially positive ways. These people are usually ignored by most media accounts of America’s "gun culture." What follows is the story of how I came to make that discovery, and some brief sketches of the sorts of people who make up America’s much-maligned and misunderstood gun culture. Or, perhaps more accurately, America’s gun cultures.

Nice to know what some of them really think of us while they claim they only want to implement some "common-sense" regulations. And another example of people fearing what they don't understand - and why, if we're going to save our "gun culture" we need to be taking non-shooters out shooting.

(I thought it was Freud who stated that fear of weapons was a sign of mental aberration?)

UPDATE: I'm reminded by Denise of The Ten Ring of an op-ed first pointed to by SayUncle. The University of Conneticut's Daily Campus printed a piece entitled Gun-nuts have no real excuse in their Feb. 1 edition. Money quote:

At first glance, the term "gun nut" would appear to be nothing more than an ad hominem against the more enthusiastic weapon owners of this country. However, as one reads the literature espoused by gun nut organizations, the reasoning behind this term becomes startlingly clear. Gun nuts are called as such because they are incontrovertibly insane.

The "gun enthusiasts are insane" meme is hardly a figment of Reason's imagination, and apparently the author, one Robert Schiering, hangs around a lot of people like OSU Associate Professor Saul Cornell.