My local newspaper, The Kalamazoo Gazette, ran a story about gun ownership this week where they essentially added some local quotes to a larger story written by The Newhouse News Service (the Gazette is a Newhouse paper) about why people own guns.
If you believe the story, people own guns for only two reasons:
1. They like to hunt.
2. They gain psychological pleasure from owning a gun in and of itself.
Yes, those are really the only two reasons that are offered to explain why people own guns. The possibility that people might buy a gun for self-defense is apparently so absurd as to not merit even a passing mention.
Wading through the story did yield an astonishing quote by Stephen P. Teret, a John Hopkins University professor who has been at the center of trying to treat guns as a public health problem. Teret apparently has an irrational fear of guns based on an incident that happened when he fired a gun as part of a school rifle club when he was in the ninth grade. According to Teret,
I was scared, actually. I thought it was loud. I remember thinking, ‘I ought not be able to create that much energy.’ I knew something was wrong. Here I am, just a little dorky, kid, but I’m pulling the trigger and releasing deadly force. Sure, I was just shooting this piece of paper. But somehow it seemed odd and improper.
I wonder if Teret also quakes in fear that the enormous amount of energy under he is capable of releasing while driving down a freeway or if the thought of a 3 gigahertz P4 inspires fears of “things man was not meant to know”?
Source:
Owners say guns are fun. Mercedes Varasteh and Bruce Taylor Seemna, Kalamazoo Gazette, November 18, 2002.