Empathising with hoplophobes.

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Oleg Volk

Some people, more often the left-leaning types, get bent out of shape by kids playing with toy guns or learning to shoot at a young age. Many schools ban anything that looks or can be used as a weapon. To understand their reaction, we only need to consider how the right-leaning folks would react to seeing kids playing with a corn-cob pipe, or a sex toy, or some other item that’s harmless in itself but morally repugnant to them. Many who admit guns as necessary, still prefer to exclude them from polite society. Other try to do the same for other everyday things…with about the same level of justification.

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11 Responses to Empathising with hoplophobes.

  1. guy says:
    June 26, 2014 at 4:27 pm

    “…right-leaning folks would react to seeing kids playing with a corn-cob pipe…”

    I guess I’m unfamiliar with that particular hang-up. But then I’ve known a lot of people who’ve smoked including my mother.

    Although seeing a kid running around with a vibrator would probably wierd me out.

    • HSR47 says:
      June 27, 2014 at 6:18 pm

      I have to agree: I don’t really have a moral objection to a child playing with either device.

      That being said, the idea of children playing with sex toys just seems weird to me. Not immoral, not evil, and certainly not something that it is the place of government to prohibit, it’s just not something that seems “normal” to me (as I’m sure my inclination to teach children how to safely handle firearms is similarly abnormal to a certain segment of the population).

      • Oleg Volk says:
        June 27, 2014 at 6:21 pm

        For grins and giggles, look up the pre-1850s Hawaiian attitudes on appropriate child-rearing. They were far more in line with the Bonobo chimps than with the moral Victorians. Not inferior or superior necessarily, but different enough that they would consider modern Americans and many of the European hopelessly repressed.

      • LarryArnold says:
        June 30, 2014 at 1:47 pm

        Of course back in the day (agricultural era) sex was all around children. Kids understood how the cock related to eggs for breakfast, and what it meant to take the cow down the lane to be freshened. Then there were dogs and cats.

        Before that famlies slept in one room, and many times in one bed. Even for the upper classes, the castle might have a separate room for the lord and lady, but they shared it with personal servants and most everybody else slept wherever.

        (One problem of castles is the length of wall that had to be defended in relation to living area enclosed.)

        Modesty is modern.

  2. Pete Sheppard says:
    June 26, 2014 at 7:15 pm

    If someone has only the anti-gun propaganda to go by, it’s understandable that they would be scared. Recognizing that and sharing (politely and courteously, NOT condescendingly) correct information can help open their minds.
    Unless we can show that we truly respect their concerns, we can’t expect them to listen.
    As far as the deliberate gun-grabbers, they know exactly what the truths are but they just want to disarm and subjugate.

  3. .45ACP+P says:
    June 27, 2014 at 9:40 am

    We see them as dangerously unhinged. They see us as dangerously unhinged. It is really hard to find a middle ground of understanding.

    • HSR47 says:
      June 27, 2014 at 6:22 pm

      I think the key is to show them that we’re normal people who don’t have any desire to harm others, and that we just want to be left alone…

      Whereas, the leading forces on the anti-gun side ARE violent (they’re advocating using government agents to KILL us just because we don’t agree with them*), and they want to control EVERY aspect of the lives of every person in the country.

      In other words, we need to show them that we’re normal people, and the ones they’re following are not.

      *sadly, this isn’t even hyperbole.

  4. Matt says:
    June 27, 2014 at 3:54 pm

    I think a child playing with smoking paraphenalia and sex toys (porn) is actually illegal in most states. Playing with real guns for most children is also illegal with exceptions for hunting and targeting, assuming accompied by competent adult etc. I do understand the issue. Toys are toys. Toys are something that let us learn about our world and also offer opportunities to grow and learn what we do and do not like.

  5. The Jack says:
    June 27, 2014 at 5:15 pm

    Here’s an ad that actually does the whole kids playing with sex toys.

    http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/27/gun-control-advocates-feature-kids-playing-with-sex-toys/

    For much the same reasons. Interestingly some of the puritanical tut-tutting is coming from the Daily Beast.

    “”
    This requires ignoring the vast differences between gun culture and dildo culture, because aside from their similarities as surrogate penises, there’s little common ground there. Dildo owners don’t bring their kids along for dildo-using trips, or dildo practice, and you’re not going to rent a dildo at a dildo range and have it jump in your kid’s hand and kill him. Most kids don’t know you have a dildo, and won’t spend every available minute alone looking for it.
    “”

    Think of the children!

    • Oleg Volk says:
      June 27, 2014 at 5:18 pm

      I find it strange that depictions of homicide are considered fine fare for teenagers, while depictions of consensual lovemaking aren’t. It’s a very peculiar affectation, considering the harm coming from warfare relative to the harm from the Bonobo method of settling conflicts.

  6. atp says:
    June 28, 2014 at 3:49 pm

    Oleg, I wouldn’t overplay the Bonobo analogy. A lot (not all, but a lot) of the Bonobo “hippy chimps that make love not war” characterization might actually be BS. Does Pan paniscus seem to be less violent and more sexual than Pan troglodytes? Yes, definitely, but they still murder each other in the forest. There’s been enough hype on the subject that you’d have to dig more than usual to figure out what the current state of scientific knowledge really is.

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