Hoplophobia:
The Four Types of Gun Phobia
By
William Barclay Masterson. September 10, 2021
Common phobic responses including hoplophobia (a term Marine Col. Jeff Cooper said he first coined in1966), the morbid, irrational fear of weapons, firearms, guns, knives, military, police, legally armed law-abiding citizens, etc., are usually viewed as learned behavioral responses. Bad learning. Not useful. In extreme cases, a phobic response can seriously get in the way of a person's life! In much milder forms, people can choose to just live with it. For example, a fear of flying could be seriously problematic, depending on one’s occupation or lifestyle. Fear of snakes and alligators, not so much, unless you live in Florida. But then again, you should have some fear of alligators. In other words, it all depends on who, what, where, your personal life, and the degree of the bad learning. Other causes exist too.
The bad news is: when irrational thoughts and seriously limiting beliefs get well-conditioned and reinforced regardless of causation, they will absolutely seem to get increasingly real and powerful to even otherwise moderately functional people. That's the trap. It's like quicksand. And some people may have much greater loss of functionality, depending on many factors. It can become enormously limiting by changing people’s thinking, their behaviors, their lives in many ways, always for the worse! It can even affect others. For example, a Second Amendment advocate would have a next to impossible time of it if married to a hoplophobe. Similarly, a person with hoplophobia should never be voted into a position where they can either set firearm policy laws or enforce them. That would be certain, absolute disaster!
The good news is: if and when a great flood of more useful, wiser dominant thoughts are backed up with more powerful motivations, emotions, new life-saving needs and skills, learnings and unconscious resources, with high desire and genuine willingness, old learnings can indeed get extinguished and replaced. Thus "change" can become much more irresistible than that older, bad learning. When that happens, the newer, stronger, more resourceful dominant thoughts will win the day. And a great day it will be! And when that happens with hoplophobia ... voilà ... we will have new, highly motivated gun owners! And smarter, more well-informed voters! At least, that's the formula. It is my hope that more and more people, including Jews, will undergo this very transformation. Let's face it, without a well-informed electorate, we will lose!
Now more bad news: While irrational bad learning like hoplophobia is not necessarily permanent, it easily can be, and sadly usually is. But where there is a sincere motivation, a powerful meaning and new learning, there is at least, hope.
Hoplophobia is most common with Leftists. With today's American Marxists (as "The Great One" Mark Levin so accurately calls them), it is absolutely a mandatory, foundational, knee-jerk response! The political pressures are way too strong! They irrationally both hate and blame the gun itself (an inanimate object), not the crazies and criminals who use them. They believe that by taking firearms away from law-abiding citizens, all our problems will magically go away. In other words, the gun itself did it! Guns have evil intent! They will never understand that our right to defend ourselves comes from G-d, not man. The Second Amendment is meant to STOP the government, wayward politicians and law-makers, from taking our rights away. They have it all hopelessly backwards. For us, this is profoundly dangerous!
Hoplophobes aren't necessarily bad people. They aren't automatically sick people, though some are decidedly bad, sick, and even evil, as are those who head their Democrat party. They are wholly uninformed about the Second Amendment and guns. They are rigid, stuck, ideological people. It's their false, bad learning about all things Second Amendment that gets deeply invested in them, in many ways. When this happens, beliefs get deeply rooted in cognitive concrete. And below that concrete is the bottomless quicksand of fiercely wanting to be right and demanding their way so they can have POWER and CONTROL over everyone else. It's all for the greater good of the collective. Individual rights not only don't matter, they must be stripped away don't cha know. Death to the individual. Long live the collective.
More than knowing next to nothing about that which they seek to dominate and rule, hardcore hoplophobes will never learn by listening to reason or indisputable facts. They don't know they don't know, what they don't know. And they profoundly don't care! All that matters is POWER and CONTROL. And they want it all. That criminals will be emboldened and innocent lives will be lost because of their ignorance and selfishness, laws and policies, is most unfortunate. It's called collateral damage. But that is not their prime directive. All that matters is POWER and CONTROL. And they want it all.
Hoplophobes very often become hysterical and present the worst symptoms as those with any hardcore phobic response. Trying to explain anything factual to a hardcore hoplophobe is all but guaranteed to be a hopeless battle, one that generates a recitation of false talking points escalating into yelling and screaming. In other words, it's a complete waste of time. One will find greater company when discussing quantum mechanics with a brick wall.
Most importantly, hoplophobia is a totally FUNCTIONAL phobic response. It is highly PURPOSEFUL. From a political standpoint, the ever-present "gain" of it all, is POWER and CONTROL over those who are meant to sit down, shut up, and obey their rulers. Here's why ...
American Marxists not only hate the Second Amendment, they hate the Constitution, individual liberty, individual rights, our history, our traditions, capitalism, religion, the family unit ... they hate America herself! They want to tear it down in its entirety and reimagine it their way. And what's going to replace all our foundations? Why the American Marxist government, of course! That's the way of the American Marxist!
If these people ever get absolute total control (and they are well on their way), they can and will cram their beliefs, demands, rules, regulations, their entire power trip of total domination, right down the throats and back up the other end of all Americans. Our rights, beliefs, traditions and liberties will be gone, as will the constitutional and historical foundations of our very country! Our America will be gone. The Second Amendment, like the First, will be among the very first to go.
The Cloward and Piven "overload, collapse and destroy the system from within" theory works, and they know it. The Second Amendment that protects our right to defend ourselves (that comes from G-d, not government), is but one piece of a much greater whole. The truth is, we are already in more than serious trouble and at more than tremendous risk. We have been for some time and it's getting worse every single day. It's happening right here, right now, right before our eyes. If one is awake and not woke, you can't miss it. We are not looking into the abyss. We are tragically, already very much in the abyss!
I must quickly add, this transformational change I am rooting for is only for apolitical hoplophobes. American Marxists are automatically, by definition, foundational hoplophobes who detest from the innermost core of their secular beings, the very idea of G-d, much less a G-d given right, and the freedom and liberty of people to defend their very lives with a gun. This is all very much part of their default setting.
Foundational hoplophobes are all political hacks and beyond all hope. They can be exceptionally evil. They don't deserve contemptuous pity as some have suggested. What does a person, for example, with an adverse phobic response to public speaking or being enclosed in an MRI deserve? I say, understanding, without judgment. Snark isn't going to promote understanding and cool headed analysis of the situation. Snark may feel good in the moment, but it doesn’t do anything to help win the battle. And it is a battle! The only way to deal with American Marxists who hate the Second Amendment and want to take away our rights, is to defeat them at the ballot box. More conversations and debate will be useless. There is no middle ground nor reaching across the aisle. We are way too divided. We have nothing in common. And the Second Amendment is a very small part of our ever-escalating uncivil, Civil War.
REMEMBER: THE ONLY WAY TO DEAL WITH AMERICAN MARXISTS AND FOUNDATIONAL HOPLOPHOBES IS TO DEFEAT THEM AT THE BALLOT BOX!
So as I see it, there are FOUR TYPES OF HOPLOPHOBES.
Type One - A severe case of hoplophobia with genuine, full-blown, recognizable mind-body symptoms, well-known in the literature. They hate guns and will do everything in their power to take away the G-d given Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding citizens, like you. They could seek professional help, but it is much more likely that they would never ever even consider it. They are firmly set in the concrete. Deep in the quicksand. They do not believe what you believe. They do not want what you want. And they most probably never will.
REMEMBER: HOPLOPHOBES MUST BE DEFEATED AT THE BALLOT BOX!
Type Two - A mild case of hoplophobia, but still unlikely to seek help. Fear of guns and all the rest, but they aren't necessarily out to take away the rights of others. They might personally avoid certain situations, probably don't watch COPS, are OK with others maintaining their right of self-defense, but probably will still insist that 2A rights come from the government, and not from G-d. They more than likely believe that Karl Marx was right when he wrote that "religion is the opium of the people."
Type Three - This purely functional hoplophobe is a fake. They are like the song from the 1950's: The Great Pretender. With them, it is 100% philosophical and political. So when they act out a symptom, it's all a lie, a con. It's a show meant to defeat you! They want their American Marxist party to prevail in ruling and regulating the hell out of all Second Amendment proponents. They want taxation, regulation, and confiscation (the big three), but they are just acting the part because they want that confiscation end game they dream of. It's all virtue signaling, to the max!
Type Four - This is the mild case of hoplophobia where the person has come to a time and place in their life where they may and can truly decide, that they seriously want to make a significant change. They may seek initial help from their Primary Care Physician and get a quality referral. Or maybe, just maybe, strong, dynamic individuals can finally outgrow it all by themselves, by sensing and heeding a strong message from life, realize what it means, and then have the inner strength to finally outgrow the old Lefty lies and propaganda from the political hacks on PMSNBC and the like. Those talking heads don't know their asses from the barrel of a gun. But they sure know how to recite their hateful, toxic talking points of pure poisoned propaganda, lying, lying, and lying, night, after night, after night. Why do they do it, besides to draw a salary? In order to keep their small audience hopelessly misinformed, devilishly lied to, and all ginned up!
So there you have it ...
Types One, Two, and Four are genuinely conditioned, FULLY AUTOMATIC, ASSAULT BEHAVIOR. The assault behavior is against you, your 2A rights, and your personal liberty! The phobic response is automatic.
Type Three is the fake. It is a SEMI-AUTOMATIC, ASSAULT BEHAVIOR. The assault behavior is against you, your 2A rights, and your personal liberty! This fake phobic response is not automatic but consciously chosen, just as one would consciously choose to pull a revolver's hammer back to cock it for single action.
Interestingly, we 2A people well understand the difference between automatic and semi-automatic. In this paper, I and we certainly do. If the theory fits ... use it! Sadly, American Marxists never understand the difference of most anything, and somehow, a 5 shot, 38 Special magically becomes an "assault pistol," and a basic hunting rifle, an "assault weapon" as used in the theater of war. Ignorance on parade!
Lastly, if a hoplophobe is robbed or worse, his own assault behavior could literally become a self-affliction! That's exactly right. His own assault behavior could be self-afflicted and render him impotent against the criminals and crazies of the world! Tragically, without any self-defense options, the outcome could be deadly!
Type Five - After decades of research, I recently discovered that there actually is a fifth type of hoplophobia involving those who got fixated by watching too many TV reruns from the '30's, '40's, and '50's of the famous cowboy Hopalong Cassidy and his horse, Topper. It seems that these always functional hoplophobes got too close to Topper ... and his droppings! They stepped right in it, slipped, fell, and rolled around good and long, before getting up. And for this reason, to this very day, if you look at the bottom of all functional hoplophobes' shoes and their clothes, you will always see the clearest evidence of exactly what I mean. It is unmistakable! But as with the leaders of their Democrat party, there really is no need to visually inspect the bottom of their shoes or their clothes. There is instead one very simple test. One single, deep inhalation will more than confirm the matter. Now since I can not positively, 100% confirm that Hoplophobes all got their name by standing too close to Hopalong Cassidy's horse, evidently rolling around with great zest and adventure while good old Topper was relieving himself, as a sincere researcher, I can not officially count it as a certified fifth type of hoplophobia. But nonetheless, it is true. There is absolutely no doubt about it. Don't doubt me!
To seriously misquote John Keats and his good old, Ode on a Grecian Urn ...
"Crap is crap, crap crap. Don't step in it. Learn to walk around it.
That is all you know on earth cowboy, and all you need to know."
REMEMBER: REGARDLESS OF TYPE, THE ONLY WAY TO DEAL WITH BOTH FOUNDATIONAL HOPLOPHOBES AND AMERICAN MARXISTS IS TO DEFEAT THEM AT THE BALLOT BOX!
American Marxism is very much like a metastasizing cancer.
It is a terminal disease.
No country has ever survived any form of it.
Following my article proper, I will share a post by J. KB which will show that highly motivated Type Four hoplophobes indeed can change. Seeking a good therapist can often get seriously motivated people the good help they need if and when they seriously want to outgrow their bad learning. Psychotherapy, clinical hypnosis, medication, and other options are available. The point is, there is hope ... even though I fully admit it is only for a small minority of people with this particular learned phobic response. Hoplophobia is just too well-rooted and supported by the American Marxist party (formerly the Democrat party), the media (a branch of the American Marxist party), most cable news stations (branches of the American Marxist party), network news stations (branches of the American Marxist party), Big Tech (a branch of the American Marxist party), the teachers union (a branch of the American Marxist party), etc. Yes, they are seriously in our educational system (to brainwash and ruin the kids when they're young), our health care, our military, and most everywhere else.
We must take Mark Levin's advice and be like modern-day
Thomas Paine pamphleteers to get the word out!
All our rights and liberties hang in the balance!
Things happen in life because of causes and conditions. We know this. The truth is and always is, when certain satisfactory causes and conditions are present and become ripe for change, great learning and transformation is always possible from within our shared human condition. And that's a good thing. It's a very good thing. It's the best part of the very best to be found in man's nature. Indeed, in life itself.
Is any of this possible transformation a certainty? ... POSITIVELY NOT!
Will it be easy? ... ABSOLUTELY NEVER!
The enemy is insidious.
It gets stronger and more harmful every day.
Freud was spot on about resistance and defense mechanisms. But if and when (and never one without the other) causes and conditions permit it, human change is most often at least a possibility, a hope, and if you like and dare to silently think it so the Thought Police don't arrest you, jail you, fire you, cancel you, or otherwise try to ruin your life ... it's worth a prayer!
As the kids say, "now that's the change I'm talking about!" Keep reading and we'll see some evidence of great change in action!
The following article alluded to earlier, recently posted by J. KB on a blog called Gun Free Zone, speaks exactly to my point. The examples given should be an inspirational call to action for many. As I always say ... one can hope.
Stay safe. Stay free.
Stay awake. Not woke.
And always at the ready!
© 2021 Copyright William Barclay Masterson
Asian Community Responds to Violence by Buying Guns
by J. KB
Six months ago, Svetlana Kim was so scared of guns, she couldn’t even look at an image of one without feeling anxious.
If she was home watching a movie that suddenly depicted gun violence, the 47-year-old accountant would scramble to hit the fast-forward button on the remote. If she couldn’t skip the scene, she would shut her eyes, and her husband would gently put his hand over hers until the scene was over. Kim knew it was just a movie, but in those moments, she couldn’t help but feel like she was in the victim’s shoes, staring the shooter in the eye.
“My brain was always signaling danger. I just felt like, it’s here, it’s present,” says Kim, who blames empathy and imagination for her visceral reaction, since she has never personally experienced gun violence. “It was bad like that, and I couldn’t control it.”
That all changed when something scarier came along. Months into the pandemic, people who looked like Kim were being shoved and kicked to the ground, punched, stabbed and slashed, while doing everyday activities like walking around the neighborhood, shopping and riding buses and trains. One after another, unprovoked, racist attacks against Asian Americans being unfairly blamed for the COVID-19 virus started to increase in major U.S. cities. Kim wondered if she could be the next victim.
“It was a turning point when I saw that people just randomly got attacked based on their race,” says Kim, a Korean American, who lives in Downey, Calif.
On March 3, Kim went from being a “really anti-gun person” to the new owner of a Springfield Armory handgun.
After months of rising anti-Asian hatred, many others like Kim are having a change of heart about firearms. Tired of relying on bystanders for aid that sometimes never comes, more Asian Americans are bucking entrenched cultural perceptions of guns and overcoming language barriers to help fuel a spike in U.S. gun ownership. While there is no official data on firearm purchases by Asian Americans, a survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) indicated that Asian Americans bought 42% more firearms and ammunition in the first six months of 2020 than they did in the same timeframe the year before. At Jimmy’s Sportshop in Mineola, N.Y., where guns and pepper spray have been flying off the shelves since the pandemic, gun purchases by Asian buyers have surged 100% due to recent fears of attacks, according to Jimmy Gong and Jay Zeng, the shop’s Chinese-American owners.
Asians have been historically underrepresented among gun owners, so much so that major national demographic surveys conducted on gun ownership trends in the past have left out Asians as a category entirely. A 2013 NSSF report on diversity found some reasons why. About 35% said gun ownership negatively impacts their ethnic community, while 38% said owning a firearm is not desirable in their culture, according to the report, which was based on a national survey of 6,000 white, Black, Hispanic and Asian adults. That was true for Reduta, who waited a year to tell his family that he had bought a gun. Kim still has not shared the news with her two sisters.
“Asians never like guns,” says David Liu, another gun shop owner who has seen a spike in his Arcadia, Calif. business. “They only buy guns after they’ve become a victim.”
I suspect that the Asian community was never that into guns because in most Asian countries, legal civilian gun ownership is either extremely restricted or non-existent.
Asian immigrants, therefore, have very little in the way of native gun culture.
The last line “They only buy guns after they’ve become a victim” is a significant point. Even though the Asian community might not have a gun culture when they are threatened they adapt and arm themselves.
Good.
No community targeted for violence should be at the mercy of their attackers.
Meet force with force and defend yourself.
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know where I am going to go next with this.
The Jewish community in America needs to take note of this. Like the Asian community, the Jewish community has little to no native gun culture, having been systematically disarmed in Europe and then concentrated in non-gun-friendly locations like New York City. And like the Asian community, we are also being targeted for hate crimes. It's time the Jewish community arm itself as well, to be prepared to face violence with violence and end the attacks that threaten us.