Andrew Yong wrote in message <8bojgv$ir
...@news.ox.ac.uk>...
>Richard G Cheek <rglench...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
>news:8bo28c$i9j$1@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net...
>> Your too stupid to even imagine why people might own guns,
>> BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
>Because they have small penises?
>andrew
Wow! Another chap all worried about penis size! Are you really concerned
that gunowner's penises may not be large enough? And large enough for what?
Do you have some personal use for fellows who are particularly well endowed?
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity"
Sigmund Freud
General Introduction
to Psychoanalysis
(1952)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
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) ...
-------------------------------------------------------------------
In point of fact, Freud stated that a fear of weapons was a sign of
retarded sexual and emotional maturity.
See the 10th Lecture of Freud's "General Introduction to Psychoanalysis"
(1952) and Freud and Oppenheim's "Dreams in Folklore" (1958).
Carl Jung, on the other hand, said that an interest in weapons is
indicative of a desire for psychological wholeness and growth
("individuation").
-------------------------------------------------------------
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.
So perhaps your fear of firearms and your odd preoccupation with penis
size may have their basis in immaturity and feelings of personal inadequacy.