First, as a psychologist, be wary of people who call themselves a "psychotherapist". That can mean a lot of different things - the writer of this letter is a licensed clinical social worker. Scientific thinking and objectivity are not part of that curriculum. It is more an indoctrination into a given philosophy - and that is apparent by reading this letter.
She says she wants to ask those who "...own military weapons that can mow down large groups of schoolchildren or moviegoers" some questions. Well, there is no better way to start than by showing your ignorance, close-mindedness, bigotry, and bias. No civilian owns "military weapons". What she meant to say was "You are all murderers and nothing you can say to me will change my mind."
But, what the hell:
1. "It may be a constitutional right to bear arms, but the Constitution said we have the right to bear arms in a militia, those arms being muskets at the time, guns that you could shoot once, taking much time to reload. Not AK-47 weapons."
Actually, no: it does not say "in a militia". It mentions a "well-regulated militia" and goes on to assert that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". It does not say when in a militia, it does not say the right of the militia, it says right of the people, because in times of necessity, they comprise the militia. The founders were not as stupid as you think they were or you seem to be. They said what they meant - "the people" are the militia and their right "shall not be infringed".
And what the hell is an "AK-47 weapon"? A fantasy created by people who do not know anything about the subject. Are you sure you didn't mean "ray gun"?
2. "Why these weapons? Are you waiting for a once-rare-but-now-more-frequent mass shooting or another shooting so you can save the day, planning to kill the “bad" guys? How many times might you have that opportunity in life? One can always hope, I suppose"
At this point it becomes clear that you're really just being a sarcastic asshole, aren't you? Question one could be lack of knowledge - this one cries out "asshole"! Back to the point above - you do not want to understand so why even pretend - you believe you already understand and you want to demonize.
But I digress: I want one because I am allowed to have one. I served 10 years in the Army defending people like you while you hated me. I was an expert marksman with one (well, not an "AK-47 weapon") and enjoyed it, so I decided to buy the civilian version. I know it will be hard for a liberal, "psychotherapist" indoctrinated into a world where people in the military are bad people to understand, but just as you probably enjoy your crocheting or body-piercing or muff diving, I enjoy shooting my firearms, maintaining them and my skill with them. They are tools I wish to remain proficient with and can use to defend myself and my loved ones if need be - or even ones I do not know and don't much care for, like you.
Second thing you think you understand, but don't: No law-abiding citizen wants to kill someone else. But they know evil exists and don't want to die or watch others die either so they will kill, if they have to, to defend themselves and others - even people like you. Lots of military out there defending people like you, people who hate them, with violence as needed - paying the price for it. For this? For someone who is supposed to be a psychotherapist to make such assumptions about people is, well, unprofessional.
No one hopes for that day - but some are prepared for it if it comes.
3. "Have you listened to police chiefs who say that they don’t want their staff entering an active shooting scene where “bad” shooters and “good” shooters are battling around innocent families and children, unable to discern who is bad or good? Do you think you can shoot your AK-47 and hit only the bad people instead of innocents as well?"
Have you listened to those police chiefs and sheriffs who say how much they appreciate armed citizens' support and help - especially after armed citizens saved LEO lives. Have you listened to the many sheriffs (elected by the people) telling their constituents that now is the time to be carrying a gun if you are legally capable of doing so. It is clear that you know better than they do, too!
Your answer then is for anyone in such situations to simply wait for police response? Have you considered how that worked out in Newtown, how it worked out in Paris, how it worked out in Nairobi at the Westgate Shopping Mall, among many other scenarios? LEO cannot be everywhere all the time. You are making a wager with others' lives, you want to decide for them. I hope you will take responsibility for them when the time comes.
And here's more knowledge for free: No one is carrying an AK-47 around. No one is carrying an AR around in schools - unless they are there to kill innocent people, which by definition means they are not law-abiding gun owners. Do you even know what an AK-47 or an AR is, other than another name for the boogey man who lives under all liberals' beds? Please try to read some literature other than that published by anti-gun groups. You know, read some research by the FBI or academic sources on the "good guys" you mock stopping active shooting situations - learn enough to ask intelligent questions. Law-abiding concealed carriers are more law-abiding as a group than the general public and even law enforcement personnel. Can you identify one instance where a good guy with a gun ended up shooting a bunch of innocents? If you could, do you think they would outnumber the incidents in which being armed saved lives?
The whole premise of your question has no basis in existing fact, it is all supposition. Why? Because you already know all you want to know - and you think we are all stupid. You don't want to discuss, you want to lecture.
4."The police might mistake you for a “bad” shooter. They might shoot and kill you. The investigators will also need to determine if your bullets killed the innocent. Are you asking to be imprisoned?"
I am a certified instructor, a military veteran, and I train more at protecting myself than most LEOs - and apparently more seriously than you trained in psychotherapy, establishing rapport and showing empathy. I can hit what I am aiming at.
You create a false choice: I can watch others get slaughtered, capable of doing nothing but running, hiding, praying, dying. Or I can do what I have trained to do and likely save lives, even at risk of my own. I am not surprised that you are a sheep and want others to be sheep with you. I am not and do not. You would prefer I do nothing - I will not abide that. You find it shocking that some will risk their lives to protect others. I find it noble. When I am unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, I want as many armed law-abiding Americans there with me as possible.
5. "Maybe you just don’t feel very good about yourself or your life, and you need to boost your confidence and self-esteem by openly carrying a giant weapon, hiding your disappointing body parts and/or your psychological distress. Maybe you really are fearful, thinking that Muslims are taking over this country, and if not Muslims, that perhaps black and brown men and boys are wreaking havoc. Maybe you have been severely traumatized and need help."
And maybe, as a psychotherapist, you have such a superiority complex that it both blinds you and is embarrassing. This is the kind of psychobabble that gets trained in social work programs and makes people distrust and even ridicule mental health professionals. It is a mix of liberalism, feminism, and Freudian theory passed of as delivered wisdom. Are you saying you think my gun is really a penis? Why do you care about my penis anyway?
Maybe you need to boost your self-esteem by being a smart-ass and talking down to others about things you know nothing about. Perhaps you are suffering from "penis envy" and fear our "big guns" because you don't have one and feel that makes you inferior? Perhaps you simply suffer from hoplophobia. But perhaps you should read the data (like this from what is probably your favorite paper - the New York Times) that show that the fastest growing segment of new gun owners is females - so what are they compensating for?
I train psychologists for a living. The ethics of my profession mandate that I specifically train and supervise them on self-awareness and self-knowledge, knowing and controlling their own biases, accepting diversity, individuality, and cultural differences, avoiding prejudgments, and affording dignity to all. You apparently are more selective in who you value and were not so well-trained in your School of Social Work. Do you have to do continuing education?
6. "Who makes you God? Even if you were in a challenging shooting situation, are you the judge or jury? Can you sort out facts in the heat of the moment instead of using our justice system to work through an agreed-upon process for determining innocence, guilt and sentencing?"
No one made any one God and no one wants to be God. Well, that's not true - you appear to be pushing hard for the job; creating your own commandments, already thinking you are omniscient, wanting to exert absolute control over what others think, feel and do. You want everyone in lockstep with you, you judge and condemn. Sounds like you have your own God complex.
No one - besides you - wants to be judge and jury. What is your letter but a long ignorant, uninformed judgmental tirade? People do want to defend themselves should the need arise. If someone threatens lethal harm to me or someone I love and am with, then they have made the choice, not me.
Now you might think that, when someone assaults you, you can empanel a jury then and there - ask all the other victims what they think. Or whip out your talents of persuasion on them (not in evidence here), use your prodigious empathy (which is non-existent in this letter but I suspect you use it selectively), convince them they should be nice to you and that you love them and will nurture them unconditionally (again, not evident here) and that they should put down their illegally-gotten weapon. I am sure you remind them that their evil is not their fault - the gun made them do it (even though it did not make the 100 million legal owners do so). In short, you infantilize them and dazzle them with your charm. Some "psychotherapists" fulfill their own need for power in that way. Frankly and I suppose sadly - I suspect you are more likely to end up shot.
If you talk to them in the tone you wrote this letter, I would not hold out much hope of your surviving any conflict. You seriously lack interpersonal skills. You are shrill and condemning. You also confuse a desire to be prepared to defend one's self and loved ones with being a vigilante. Can you really be this ignorant and is it a motivated stupidity? We do not go looking for trouble and a good instructor teaches people how to avoid it - that personal defense starts with awareness and avoidance. For the law-abiding gun owner, a critical adage is "If you wouldn't go there without a gun, don't go there with one". But if trouble comes to us, we will not roll over to it, as you would. It would seem you lack awareness, both of your own biases and of the world around you.
7. "I, for one, am extremely frightened of you because you hold my and my family’s lives in your hands when you carry your weapons of mass destruction around our schools, parks and churches. Tiny children find your weapons, thinking they are toys, forever ruining or ending their own or others’ lives. Who gave you the right to endanger so many people?"
Well, there's your hoplophobia. The criminals walking the streets are the ones who hold your life in their hands and you seem convinced that it should stay that way, that no one should stand against them. People like you apparently revel in victimhood, seeing evil in anyone who is not like you (strangely the very same false accusations you make against gun owners). Others will not abide by that.
And everyone you spend your day around holds your life in their hands in myriad ways.
You SCARE me - the not-so-subtle mix of stupidity, ignorance, prejudice, hubris, and snobbery makes for something almost demonic. I am glad you are not armed and it is good that weapons scare you because you do not have the temperament for it. It is understandable why you find gun ownership scary: Like most liberals, who are childish and ruled by emotion, your level of anger, delusion, misinformation and apparent lack of self-awareness and control, makes it clear that you would kill someone if you carried a gun - and then blame the gun. Hence, since you like to think in Freudian terms - it is clear that you are projecting your own concerns onto others as a way of defending yourself against becoming fully aware of them.
8. "Please help us all understand your thinking, feelings or logic. And then, maybe we can have a safe and honest conversation about your fear, your anger and your obsession with power, control and violence."
Pot, kettle, black! Those sound like your obsessions. You don't want to understand, you want to condemn, prejudge/judge, attack, belittle, chastise, and all those other things that you would abhor were others to do them to certain races, religions or genders. I don't mind if you hate guns and wouldn't want yo to carry one. Your lack of self-awareness is particularly startling. It is fine for you to be biased when it serves your preconceived notions, which you are firmly convinced are righteous. You believe that you already know everything that you need to know.
What really sucks is that I really wanted this to be a rational response to you - that is, I decided to write this and started doing so thinking this could be a rational description of what those on this side of the issue think, a rational response to reasonable questions. A way to start the dialog you pretend that you want. I really started out wanting to help you understand the other side - not change your mind, just inform you.
But as I went "question by question" it immediately became apparent that there was no way to make a logical reply because you were not interested in enlightenment. This was a political diatribe in the guise of a question - each, in truth, bergan with "You are...". . As a psychotherapist you should know why we don't ask "why" questions - because they are "accusatory" in nature and engender defensiveness, not explanation. And that was your point - to accuse.
You should also be able to recognize how pointless and accusatory a question like "Have you stopped beating your wife yet" is. It presumes guilt. That is not seeking knowledge. Yet this is what you have done. In this case, you start the conversation asking "Why do you want to kill people?" You clearly see all legal and law-abiding gun owners as criminals and murderers who merely have not yet committed the crime. Ask yourself - if you can step outside of your own world view for a minute - How is it that, when people make such disparaging statements about other groups, such as Muslims - suggesting at their core, all are terrorists - it is considered bigotry and people become incensed. Yet using that same smear tactic against ALL gun owners is considered righteous indignation. Your behavior suggests that bigotry and prejudice themselves are not the problem - apparently it is simply a matter of who one is bigoted against.
I am really both surprised that and embarrassed for The Tennessean - or any "newspaper" - that they would choose to publish this ill-informed diatribe.
Dark times indeed.
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