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i've often wondered if there is some collective psychological linkage between the gun thing and other aspects of libertarian conservatism--like rejecting the notion of the social, of working through organizations, leaves one isolated and powerless. if you run this through the illusions of a lockean state of nature, the fact that there's no material scarcity minimizes the isolation and powerlessness, turns it into something that seems opposite---but if you factor in material scarcity, these features return. and unlike early 18th century fictions built into texts on political theory, the world is unpredictable, so in real life, things fluctuate. one can go from being ok to really reallynot being ok very quickly. and your ideology pushes you toward dealing with these fluctuations from a position of no power. so having a lot of guns around is reassuring. l
ike crompsin said above, they seem to solve life's problems.
except, of course, they don't.
i've said before, but anyway--my position on gun control is that it should be a local matter. i favor tight controls in a city like chicago. in a more rural area, maybe not--people do hunt for example----but hunting in chicago is most likely to be hunting people, and that doesn't make sense to me.
the nra's total opposition to any and all controls based on generally sloppy versions of the slippery-slope argument cannot have traction on its own merits, it seems to me. this explains the venture into collective psychological speculation. it's all more than passing strange.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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