PSYCHOLOGY OF GUNS

US ARE OF TWO VERY DIFFERENT MINDS IN REGARDS TO FIREARM OWNERSHIP

By Rebecca Peterson, Assistant Editor

 

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Personally, | am vehemently opposed to the idea
of owning a gun. | don’t believe an average citizen
has any need for a firearm, and I do believe that
it is a matter of public safety whether or not my
neighbour has a growing stockpile of weapons in
their basement. I’m generally of the opinion that
people should be allowed to live however they like,
so long as the risk to others is minimal to none, but
I’m willing to allow some paternalism on the part of
the government if it means that guns are kept out
of the general populace.

However, I recognize that not everyone feels
this way, and that my upbringing as a child in the
suburbs on the outskirts of a largely liberal-minded
West. Coast city has likely influenced this point of
view.

Many of the gun owners that I’ve spoken to over
the years have expressed a very pragmatic view in
regards to gun ownership. Very few cited “protection
from others” as a reason for keeping a gun in the
house—many were farmers or hunters who owned
long guns for hunting, both for sport and necessity.
A single elk can keep a Canadian family fed for a
very long time, after all.

“Think of it this way,” my dad told me recently,
a man who also dislikes firearms but has many
friends who hunt. “For a lot of Canadian families,
telling them that owning a gun is dangerous and
wrong is like telling them that they need to get
rid of their fishing rod because it’s dangerous and
wrong.”

I think this is an apt description. Only one or
two gun license holders I’ve met have exhibited any
kind of passion for firearms in and of themselves.
One claimed that Switzerland is the safest
country in the world because there’s a gun in
every household, and another stated that everyone
should have a gun in case we need to overthrow
the government someday (which I doubt would be
a compelling reason for our current governm@at
to loosen firearm restrictions in the country).

An article in the Guardian broke the psychology
of gun owners in the US down to four main reasons
for wanting firearms in the first place: Protection,
recreation, personal insecurity, and social and
cultural pressures. The first two reasons are
fairly common and honestly, despite my personal
feelings, relatively valid reasons for wanting to
own a firearm in the US. If everyone around you
is carrying a weapon, you might want to start
carrying a weapon too—it’s almost as if the Cold
War is playing out between American citizens on
an individual level. Recreationally, | imagine many
Americans do see their guns as very similar to their
fishing rods.

However, the cultural and societal pressure is
the point of significant difference between our two
nations. Canadians, largely, do not experience a
significant societal or cultural pressure to own a
gun. We do not have an NRA equivalent; we do not
celebrate gun ownership in our constitution. There
must be an impact on the basic psychology of an
American citizen when guns are so normalized that
you can buy a rifle in a Walmart, but not a Kinder

Egg.

With firearms internalized in the national
consciousness the way it is in the US, it’s no
wonder that the subject of gun control is so
divisive. Though we might feel safe to judge from
our supposed haven of gun laws and shorter lists
of tragedies on Wikipedia, I think it’s important
that other countries show support and empathy
for American citizens. After all, there are far more
Americans warily eyeing the legal stockpiling of
weapons happening in their next-door neighbour’s
basement than there are gun-hungry Americans
stockpiling weapons in the first place.

And besides, just because our list
of mass shootings is shorter, doesn’t
mean that it’s non-existent.