I think another way of expressing Professor Althouse's idea is to point out that a firearm is something tangible, a physical object, something easy to focus the mind on, easy to form a mental symbol of, and thus much more satisfying psychologically as a cause to fight against.
This way of thinking, which I'll call animist-like, has always been widespread. Animism, a belief shared by probably all cultures during very early periods of development, assigns the causes of important events to tangible objects, e.g. certain animals or a magic tree or an enchanted spring. The psychological tendency towards this way of "understanding" exists in all of us, even if education has caused us to scorn many particular animist beliefs. As for specific examples of animist-like thinking, among a great many, one that springs to mind is the belief in witches among early European settlers to America. They found it easy to blame witches for crop failures and other mortal threats to their existence. A witch is something tangible - it is easy to envision killing a witch. Once this quick "explanation" is arrived at, it is easy to proceed to taking what feel like productive actions toward solving the problem. If one can fool oneself, however tenuously, into believing that the mortal threat is gone once the witch has been burned, one can also feel some hope. The gun, the magic tree, and the witch as "explanations" provide quick and easy relief from the anxiety of not understanding the real causes of distressing events, and provide the basis for actions which feel like productive involvement. These actions, based on self-delusion, are almost always at best a waste of time and are frequently counterproductive. Merrill Gibson From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Olson, Joseph E. Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 2:16 PM To: Firearms Reg, List Subject: She's got something here. >From UofWisc law professor Ann Althouse's award winning Blog. It occurred to me, after the Sandy Hook murders, that blaming guns is a secular substitute for blaming the devil. People find it too challenging to figure out why a human being would do this terrible thing and they latch on to the idea that the gun made it happen. Suicide presents a similar challenge, and one way to fathom it is to say: It's was the gun. Isn't it like saying the devil made him do it? The gun/the devil is a great go-to answer, freeing you from wracking your brain about the workings of the human mind. -- **************************************************************************** ************************************ Professor Joseph Olson, J.D., LL.M. o 651-523-2142 Hamline University School of Law (MS-D2037) f 651-523-2236 St. Paul, MN 55113-1235 c 612-865-7956
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
