Guns, the phallus and bigotry

An excellent analysis of the gun control debate.

From the Political Carnival...

Your Daily Dose of BuzzFlash at Truthout, via my pal Mark Karlin:

    You won't find anyone willing to dare say it much in the media, but a good percentage of the white men who oppose gun control of any sort - and who back measures that would even allow alleged terrorists and straw purchases for drug dealers to buy guns - are just afraid that without their guns, their phallic power will be reduced to size.  [...]

    A gun, particularly assault weapons and lethal militarized handguns, are at least two things: a prosthetic dick and a sign that even unemployed white guys still rule the Western World and sit at the head of the kitchen table. [...]

    Let's face it, the more white guys feel besieged by a multi-cultural society in which women and minorities have chewed away at their perch until it is about to crash to the ground and leave them equals among other humans, the more fierce and maniacal the opposition to regulating guns as dangerous instruments of death subject to serious regulation becomes. [...]

    On March 29 in the Washington Post, Charlotte Childress and Harriet Childress discussed the culpability of white male gun worshipers in regards to mass shootings (and that is only the most visible edge of the some 10,000 gun homicides each year in the US, in addition to countless gun injuries):

    Imagine if African American men and boys were committing mass shootings month after month, year after year. Articles and interviews would flood the media, and we'd have political debates demanding that African Americans be "held accountable." Then, if an atrocity such as the Newtown, Conn., shootings took place and African American male leaders held a news conference to offer solutions, their credibility would be questionable. The public would tell these leaders that they need to focus on problems in their own culture and communities.

    But when the criminals and leaders are white men, race and gender become the elephant in the room.

    As just one of many logical fallacies in the public gun lobby stance in support of guns as religious objects that must be free of all constraints, the Childresses's point out:

    [...]

    But women and girls with mental health issues are not picking up semiautomatic weapons and shooting schoolchildren. Immigrants with mental health issues are not committing mass shootings in malls and movie theaters. Latinos with mental health issues are not continually killing groups of strangers.

    Of course, black and Latino youth are being shot down in urban areas like ducks on a pond, but the white guy gun lobby could care less about that. [...]

    This is not an issue about self-defense; this is about psychological need - born of sexual and cultural displacement - assuaged by the possession of a killing machine.