By Andrea Morisette Grazzini
Updated: June 12, 2016
Related: Leave No Child Dead
Dick Metcalf inadvertently turned in his gun-prostitute license when he penned a reasoned view on the gun debate. It left the weapons lords and their traffickers pissed. And left Metcalf out of a job.
So be it. The gun sellers will live. More important, so will Metcalf. That’s good news for all of us. He’s the kind of manly-man we need far more of to bring informed fire power to the gun control battle.
I know the type. My father was long time president of Ducks Unlimited in my state. A one-time Navy man, he admires soldiers and all who carry their guns with true knowledge and respect for what they can do. Like the Army officer I dated a few years ago, a munitions expert. And the undercover cop my Dad went to school with who turned in his badge after suffering a nervous breakdown due to the devastation he witnessed. And in a lighter moment once handcuffed my little brother to a chair to show him what it’d be like if he acted out when he grew up. This baby brother of mine is now a state leader with Safari International who has a shooting range in his home. My son hunts with he and his son.
I’ve known ‘gunners’ and hunters all my life. Loved and admired many.
Metcalf reminds me of some of them. The National Rifle Association, however, does not. Nor does Guns & Ammo. The magazine that fired Metcalf after publishing his common sense column.
They and the groupies who send sadistic diatribes to gun control advocates, talking rape for women leaders, threatening grieving parents, intimidating moms at coffee shops and, as Donald Trump did, using Sunday’s hate crime and largest mass shooting to support his unhinged-hate platform. They are not real deal men. They’re just well-armed thugs. Apparently with little to do with their time other than try to prove their dubious power through bully-boy bravado.
Sorry if I’m bursting any bubbles here, but even if you’re feeling angry with me hang in there and hear me out.
Consider this: A pimp illicitly sells something (women, sex) that others generally respect and value. Here’s the troubling, if forgotten, reality: pimps have no respect or value for what they sell. No matter how much others see and appreciate the freedoms and human connections represented by their ‘product.’ He’ll gladly threaten and destroy others–including his own–in pursuit of more money. His homeboys will have his back because they in their way are pimps or prostitutes, too.
Guns, women, boys, customers? Just commodities to a pimp and his ilk. Means to be used for an unsavory end. Nothing more.
Now to connect some dots —
Many men love women. Most love sex. Precisely because they do, good men (and women) would never undermine that love of sex and experience of women by pimping them out, or promoting them for the sake of gaining power or money while demeaning their value. They’d never tarnish their beloved with such blatant disrespect for their lives, their very essence, and their deeper reasons for being.
NRA, Guns & Ammo, Trump and their cronies would though. They don’t love guns and freedom anymore than pimps love women.
People who love freedom don’t threaten others’ freedoms in pursuit of their own. People who love people don’t use them for personal gain. But pimps do.
What pimps love is money and power. That’s it. Without getting into the aberrant psychology that percolates in the cold souls of sellers of human flesh (and, it seems increasingly clear: people who sell weapons of mass destruction to common-day people), what is bloody clear is the following:
As long as others don’t step out of line, the pimp will give them a little of what they seek, too. But the women or children under his control want little more than survival.
Not unlike a few small gun shops who want to stay afloat. Though it’s not easy amidst off the chart gun deaths, and the ever more tense debates surrounding them.
The johns? Those who still seek to buy troublingly co-opted commodities, including guns, despite such corrupted scenarios? They’re more complicated.
They’re looking for the thrill. The danger heightens their attraction. The manly rush of shooting their load. The vicarious, if sometimes less pathological pursuit of the temporary power their purchase implies. The freedom to buy something not quite safe, to satiate some base need for power. Or maybe control. To expend some testosterone, perhaps. Even if its only enough to kill a squirrel.
If a john or prostitute isn’t careful and the pimp becomes suspicious, they’ll be discarded without remorse — most likely brutally. If they’ve somehow risked his business goals — even if they weren’t trying to, even if he previously approved of whatever they did — the pimp will take swift action. Maybe he has to face an even scarier boss. Whatever the case, it’s not pretty.
This is how Metcalf, with the full approval of Guns & Ammo, threatened the publication’s business goals. To be clear: Guns & Ammo edited and published the piece that put a ‘pariah target’ on Metcalf. They knew what he wrote. This was not a case of Metcalf being careless. Guns & Ammo is likely answering to a hard-to-account for, but sociopathic boss: international gun manufacturers.
And yes, among them are illicit racketeers and traffickers of not only guns but drugs and people, too: women, girls, boys. And, yes, among them are shady characters holding guns to business and leaders pocketbooks, if not heads; and shady politicians gleefully capitalizing on lives lost to the deadly mix of guns and hate.
Metcalf knew all this, but chose to be a manly man. Unlike those who are afraid of, in bed with, or beholden to the gun lords. Metcalf — and for a moment there even Guns & Ammo — had enough cajones not to be intimidated. Now, though, Metcalf stands alone. Guns & Ammo scurried away like Ad-revenue sluts and gun sellers’ cuckolds.
Which left him with a gig more important than that one pivotal column. Not just as another voice adding to the cacophony, but as an uncommonly well-positioned spokesman for gun sanity. Exactly the kind of courageous insider with enough credentials and chutzpah to lead a Calvary into the kind of inclusive gun control movement my father, brother and I — though we’ve had different approaches to gun control until now — can all get behind. For that I am grateful to Metcalf and all good gunners like him.
This is the right fight he’s gotten himself in. One all good people need to join. Those of us who agree pimps and thugs (and bigoted politicians) are not who we want representing what we care about. People like us who don’t believe hate needs any more ways to take the lives of our loved ones. We need to get behind real and effective gun control and invite good gunners, too, as well. As long as they don’t lose sight of what we all care about. Which is people — all people — not guns.
The last thing we care to do is continue lining the pockets of vicious international traffickers. Especially knowing they’re pimping for our enemies — and yes, that includes the likes of ISIS, too.
Andrea Morisette Grazzini is founder of DynamicShift. She is also founder and CEO of WetheP, Inc.
Copyright 2014
7 Comments
I apologize in advance if the following comments land on sensitive, fragile, neurotic, hoplophobic ego’s. I am a LOVER not a HATER. Enjoy….
The Fragility of the Neurotic Liberal Psyche:
The deep seated mental illness that lurks beneath the surface of 2nd Amendment (liberal) foes.
Walleyerich
Recently I have read a number of papers regarding the psychological health of individuals who are vehement anti-gun/Second Amendment advocates. The following is what I have found to be a very competent and cogent review of the potential psychological medical neurosis behind hoplophobia.
Sigmund Freud; General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. (1920) as paraphrased by Don B. Kates, Jr.: “A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.” One of the statements by Freud which Kate’s summarized from in Dreams in Folklore (1958), p. 33, reads: “The representation of the penis as a weapon, cutting knife, dagger etc., is familiar to us from the anxiety dreams of abstinent women in particular and also lies at the root of numerous phobias in neurotic people.””
Could it be that sexually immature individuals (single adults, divorces et. al.) with exaggerated levels of anxiety and frustration are most likely to be hoplophobia sufferers? And does this hidden phobia hide within all liberals justifying their hatred for those they perceive as “different” from them? Why is it usually reclusive liberals that evolve into our countries worst killers and assassins? Why do these same people reject God, individual liberty, hide behind shallow phrases like fairness, equality and social justice? According to Dr. Sarah Thompson I should not address these medical conditions directly with the afflicted as it can be dangerous and potentially collapse their self-worth while bringing forth their inner fears hidden in the subconscious fragile psyche.
Raging Against Self Defense:
A psychiatrist Examines The Anti-Gun Mentality to see article, link here: http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/ragingagainstselfdefense.htm
Mr. Bray —
The (non-licensed) MD who authored the piece you’ve sent apparently no longer supports it: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/03/fear-of-hoplophobia-overblown/
I’m a lover, too. As noted in the essay, above. I love my father, my brother, my son and many others who love hunting and/or guns. Regards guns, I neither hate them or love them. Largely because my feelings are reserved for people, not objects.
But to address what you might be trying to imply, perhaps it would help for me to say: ‘guns don’t shoot people.’ Which I also noted in my March 2011 essay that looked at brutish behaviors in Eden Prairie, a Minnesota suburb
“From Bipartisan Blame to Civilized Change”
(http://dynamicshift.org/archives/from-bipartisan-blame-to-civilized-change) as follows:
“Citizens must see how we both internalize and externalize our high-octane emotions to collapse collective reason. Bouncing orange balls don’t cause bullying anymore than inert metal guns cause death. Without human engagement, they are simply inanimate equipment. Intended or not, the reality is they are serving as catalysts to brutal ends. By buying and cheering their worst uses, so do we.”
As regards to your term “Anti-2nd Amendment,” to be clear: neither Mr. Dick Metcalf nor I are against the 2nd Amendment. Like Ronald Reagan and many other conservatives, non-liberals, etc. we are simply for meaningful, effective gun-control.
Beyond that, and insofar as the now-abandoned analysis pertaining to possible psychologic dynamics of ‘gun-haters‘ and question regards, as you put it: “sexually immature individuals (single adults, divorces et. al.)” that you’ve posed and sent, it is unclear what point(s) you wish to convey.
In any case, your communication illustrates an interesting expression of psychologic defenses.
Thank you,
Andrea Morisette Grazzini
Mr. Bray,
Related, here are additional pieces addressing psychologic dynamics of gun ownership and gun control:
The Tradeoffs of Gun Ownership—
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-psyched/201208/the-tradeoffs-gun-ownership-0
(Psychology Today)
Psychology and Gun Control —
http://sites.psu.edu/michellebingertrclblog/2013/03/14/psychology-and-gun-control/
Guns Don’t Kill People, Gun Culture Does—
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-13/guns-dont-kill-people-gun-culture-does
(Business Week)
Unintended Consequences: Pro-handgun Activists Prove that Handguns are a Dangerous Choice for Self-Defense —
http://www.vpc.org/studies/uninexec.htm
(Violence Policy Center)
Racism Linked with Gun Ownership and Opposition to Gun Control in White Americans —
http://phys.org/news/2013-10-racism-linked-gun-ownership-opposition.html
(The University of Manchester and Monash University)
Social Psychology in the Gun Control Debate —
http://www.academia.edu/4430868/Theories_of_Social_Psychology_in_the_Gun_Control_Debate
(Academia.edu)
Andrea
Andrea, your every word is contextual. Only those who do not wish to see reality cannot know truth. Such as the clear words of the Second Amendment. Text of the 2nd Amendment
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
All that is being asked of society is background checks for criminals and mentally incompetent. You clearly point out how the skilled, trained, and truly competent handle guns.
The NRA is not a well regulated militia. The mass murderers are not members of well regulated militia. The gun dealers are not well regulated militia. No well regulated militia would ever dispense weapons to a great many of people gun sellers happily take payment from. No well regulated militia allows without control, without training, without establishing mental competence, into their ranks. No well regulated militia would allow it’s members to repeatedly and often commit mass murder. The people screaming gun rights do not meet the specific requirement of the Second Amendment, specifically that is “A well regulated militia”.
Will,
Many thanks for your comment. It crystallizes the points exquisitely.
Powerfully stated. I could not agree more.
Andrea
Andrea, all that is left for me to say is KUDOS for an EXCEPTIONALLY coherent and we’ll reasoned analysis about the predatory nature of gun manufacturers and their strong-arm enforcers (NRA).
As for Mr. Bray, he might want to check out what Dr. Carl Jung had to say about a few of Dr. Freud’s theories around women and sex. ijs.
Thank you Shakira.
And, I agree that it appears that Mr. Bray’s psychologic projection is showing.