U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- One of the sources I consult to find topics to help keep gun owners apprised of relevant information is Academia.edu, a website that hosts research papers. Included among those are many papers dealing with the gun issue, most (but in fairness, not all) attempting to justify citizen disarmament schemes. I came across one the other day, “Camouflaged Collectives: Managing Stigma and Identity at Gun Events,” that, while written in 2017, attempts to legitimize the smearing of “the gun culture,” something I’ve documented before that is being used to ostracize and ultimately “cancel” its members from full social enfranchisement.
“We conclude that when participants in gun events attempt to subvert core stigma through everyday stigma management practices, they effectively facilitate the unfettered exchange of potentially dangerous goods, promote the invisibility of oppressive structures, and normalize violence,” authors Sarah Jane Blithe and Jennifer L. Lanterman, self-described “social justice scholars,” conclude upfront in the article abstract.
As Gary Coleman famously asked, “What you talkin’ about, Willis?”
“Gun collectives, firearm events, and even dialogue about gun ownership are rife with stigma, the “researchers” pronounce, as if their view is the only truth. The parable of the blind men and the elephant comes to mind, especially since conclusions derived from that biased perspective, that gun ownership is shameful, is a circular logic fallacy summed up by the phrase “begging the question.”
The “stigma” is in the minds of the people predisposed to prejudice, as should be clear from their “scholarly” assertions:
“Participants at gun shows – vendors, attendees, and other related individuals, such as people who rent space to gun shows – experience moral taint because they engage in activities that are sometimes considered sinful or dubious, illegal, or require deception or confrontation. They also experience physical taint stigma, which arises from potentially dangerous conditions (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999). People manage stigma and taint as collectives and as individuals. The members of gun collectives engage in both group and individual attempts to subvert the stigmatized aspects of their individual and collective identities. The endeavor to manage stigma is placed on all gun owners to some extent, in or out of events, even those who do not engage in illegal practices, because the stigma attached to gun culture is so pervasive.”
In other words, peaceable gun owners are guilty of abuses committed by those who can’t be trusted with freedom. They are responsible for what those — whose opinions are formed by those vested in citizen disarmament — believe about them. They have to justify themselves. And rejecting false accusations and offering correct information is subversion.
So much for that “conversation on guns” the antis keep saying we need to have. But Blithe and Lanterman aren’t done:
“For core stigmatized organizations, routines, attributes, outputs, customers, or purpose carry enough stigma to make legitimacy impossible. For these organizations, complete social acceptance is an impossibility. Examples of core stigmatized organizations identified in the academic literature include men’s bathhouses, brothels, or white power organizations. The very nature of these organizations induces outside stigma.”
Such false equivalency has been tried before. Back in 2009, a University of Cincinnati Assistant Professor of Law, who I dubbed “The Smutty Professor,” advocated treating guns like “adult obscenity” and making them illegal outside the home. And while that push hasn’t gone anywhere – yet – treating guns like something “sinful” has been used to lump gunmakers in with pornographers and pyramid scammers to deny them financial services under the Obama DOJ’s “Operation Chokepoint.”
Even without (overt) government prodding, we have then seen how leading financial institutions have been banking on disarmament by denying their services to the gun industry – while enjoying the benefits of taxpayer-funded federal deposit insurance and contracts with government agencies.
More recently, we’ve seen examples of “financial deplatforming,” in many cases under government urging (read “pressure”), such as New York State putting the squeeze on “banks and insurance companies to deny services to the NRA.” We’ve also seen conservative candidates “banned from PayPal, GoFundMe, and Venmo in an effort to keep others from donating,” and “Visa and MasterCard [not] processing donations” to conservative groups and more.
And this just in, a joint press release:
“PayPal Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL), in partnership with ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), today announced a new partnership initiative to fight extremism and hate through the financial industry and across at-risk communities. This is the latest effort by PayPal in combating racism, hate and extremism across its platforms and the industry.”
With headlines in major media outlets like “‘Dying of whiteness’: why racism is at the heart of America’s gun inaction,” “Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns?” and “For racially biased conservative Whites, owning a gun is just part of being a good citizen,” can there be any doubt who they are targeting in that mix?
What the evil, manipulative totalitarian minds behind the useful idiots don’t want them to know is it’s not about guns, it’s about freedom. We’re supposed to be ashamed of that, but take pride in things we had no say in, like race, or of things we do, like sexual proclivities?
According to the cultural Marxists attempting to tear down the Founders’ Republic and replace it with a totalitarian monopoly of violence, yes. Consider the millions of women being influenced daily by emotion-drenched propaganda like from the harridans on The View, planting seeds like:
“That is not freedom because I feel like a hostage right now. I feel like a hostage to the selfish people who insist on owning these type of weapons…You are not a patriot because you think you have the right to own these type of weapons. You are not a patriot. You should be taking care of your fellow Americans…”
Freedom is selfish? Actually, yes, but some of us consider that to be a virtue rather than a maxim out of Orwell.
If the truth will set us free, it’s up to each of us to spread it and to figure out workarounds when “canceled” for violating the “right-thinking” oligopoly’s “community standards.” Because the same people who want us disarmed and “stigmatized” (read “ostracized”) want to cut off our lines of communication, which should tell us everything we need to know about their ultimate motives.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
Know thyself.
If you do nothing shameful, you need feel no shame.
One of the few benefits of old age is that by that time, you know who and what kind of person you are. It’s no accident that young people at that age of “finding out who they are” are the ones most likely to be responsible for violence and death in society.
Normal people are sensitive to social stigma, and are affected by it. It’s the sociopaths who write these pseudo-scholarly papers who feel no shame. They lack the ability.
It goes back to the Marxist paradigm that whatever the party and thereafter the state needs to do to achieve its goals, is by definition a moral and an ethical act. This includes Mass murder, genocide, Mass incarcerations, exclusion of the rule of law, denial of all kinds of Rights, and in fact even the denial that those counter-revolutionaries against the party and the state even have any rights, including the right to exist. This is why individuals such as those two broads who wrote The Idiot paper think what they do, right what they do, and propagandize for their… Read more »
I fail to see how wanting to protect your family and defend your life with a gun when you are automatically branded a racist with a low I.Q. simply by being White is in any way shameful, a bad thing or illogical. This “shaming” and physical attacks are done by people of other colors and/or white liberals, most of whom actually do have low I.Q.s. These “people” lie, slander, abuse and practice violence and assault regularly on White people with no consequences for their actions whatsoever. Failing to own a firearm to protect your life and the lives of your… Read more »
the pedophiles dont want us protecting children,or teaching them to protect themselves , and do note the people most likely to condemn gun ownership come from the group most likely to be pedophiles and queers, no I wont say gay another word corrupted
You are making the mistake that the conclusions of the researchers are meant to be logical. That’s not how scholarship works now, and hasn’t for a long time. It’s about programming people who never learned how to reason to perceive things in a specific way. There are countless examples existent now, fraught with error, illogic, intentionally absent information (that would destroy the false assertions made), and outright falsification of data. For people who never learned critical thinking, but have only been taught ideology adherence, this drivel is actually convincing. The man who can somewhat think for himself sees right through… Read more »
Those who advocate for more, “gun control,” are BIGGER advocates for, “tyranny and anarchy.” Democrats have always been BIG on civil war, they started and lost the last civil war in this country, now it looks more and more like they want to try their luck again.
Actually, we’ve never had a bona fide real civil war in this country! The war between the states was just that: a war between the northern states and the Southern States. Constitutionally the southern states had it correctly: the Union was a contract and the northern states broke that contract. The South decided to activate their state’s rights and seceded. The tyrant Lincoln decided to do whatever he needed to do, including all kinds of extra legal Contra constitutional Acts in order to maintain the Union. The South founded its own Nation and so there was no war from the… Read more »
this is one of the best short analises of the War of northern Aggression I’ve seen. Well done. Yes, the Union under Lincoln the tyrant DID in fact invade a sovereign foreign nation that had not raised their hand agasint the North. The blockades imposed by Lincoln’s Navy hit the south pretty hard, but they carried on. Your assessment of the actual viability of slavery in the Confederacy is also spot on. One major tactical failing in the Confederacy was that their railroad “system” was not a system, really. government backed northern railroads had standardised on one gauge for their… Read more »
All easy for you to say when you’re not a slave and don’t give a crap about those who are.
Lincoln didn’t Invade the South, Blockade Southern Ports or Call for Volunteers until after South Carolina beligerently attacked Fort Sumter. South Carolina seceded from the Union in December of 1860, before Lincoln took office. Battle of Fort Sumter – April 12 – 13, 1861. Lincoln calls for Volunteers – April 15, 1861. Lincoln orders Southern Ports blockaded – April 19, 1861 Union Troops enter the South for the first time on June 3, 1861. One and a half months after the unprovoked Confeferate attack on Fort Sumter. First contact between Union and Confederate Troups take place at Phillipi Virginia. The… Read more »
Thank you for providing an accurate timeline of events oh, I truly do appreciate it: facts trump opinion and emotion, or should. However, there is one caveat that must be added to your timeline: nothing in geopolitics, or domestic politics is done in a vacuum. We must consider the events leading up to the idiotic attack on Fort Sumter: the fact is that the South had been backed into a corner politically speaking pertaining to the intransigence of the northern states concerning not just slavery, but the in-your-face legal moves pertaining to boxing the southerners in economically. The level of… Read more »
“Slavery was already dying out” so who cares? Easy for you to say when you’re not a slave. The case that slavery was uneconomic & would’ve ended “soon”, “in 20 years” or whatever is pure speculation. Could’ve continued another 100 years for all you know, followed by 100 years of racism, 2nd-class non-citizenship, oppression, no voting rights, no gun rights, etc. If slavery was so uneconomic & Southerners so righteous, the South shouldn’t have minded ending slavery to avoid the Civil War. You wouldn’t agree to live one minute as a slave, but you’re fine with condemning millions to slavery… Read more »
My, my, my, the level of your historical ignorance is truly amazing, and utterly appalling at the same time! Your hypocrisy runs pretty well too! You start out by saying what does it matter this slavery was dying out, then you flip the ignorant switch and try to make a wholly unknown historical, ignorant, statement concerning how long slavery could last without knowing a single thing about the economic facts, the cultural facts, in the political facts of the south at that time. There’s a news flash: only 3% of Southerners owned slaves because it was so expensive, many did… Read more »
Nice try. You’re the dude willing to let “Americans” continue to enslave, torture & murder people, based on a theory that their victims would “only” have to be slaves for another “10-15 years max”. Again, your soulless rationalizations are all easy for you to say since you’re not a slave, not the one who has to live in chains for “only” another 15 years “max”. If it’s longer, then you can say, “my bad…but now it really, really will be just a few more years, I’m sure!” “Slavery: Bad for me, ok for thee.” You sound like the kind of… Read more »
“Forget the psych eval pissant. They’ll come for you with a net.”
Another butthurt thug-fail by meat puppet TEX! aka Will
Thank you for continuing to prove my points! You don’t know diddly much less squat about my educational background, quite frankly I don’t care! News flash show hero of the enslaved: there is slavery going on right now in West africa, in the Saharan region from the Atlantic all the way to the Red Sea, right this very instant as I write these words! The slavery is being perpetrated by people with black skin. They are enslaving other people with black skin: and nary a Caucasian in sight amidst it all! The poor downtrodden black Africans are enslaving even more… Read more »
The alleged education you allude to then claim to not care about didn’t prevent your deflection & soulless excuses. As if I don’t know about slavery in Africa. That’s Africa. This was your own backyard, Americans enslaving Americans. You call the heroic men “tyrants” who suffered & died to free fellow Americans, since after all it would’ve “only” been “10-15” yrs “max” — numbers you pulled out of your sphincter, no biggie for you — it’s not like you would’ve traded places with them if your number was wrong. Now bend over & spray more diarrhea.
I have been a gun owner, and a gunner since 16 at which time I had to have to money for my first gun which was a used 22lr rifle, and of course my Dad had to sign the papers for me. My dad was not a gunner, but his dad was a WW1 vet, and Dad and his 2 brothers were WW2 vets, yet none of them were gunners, but they were not anti-gun either. But then most folks in SD back in 1968 did not really know they should care about guns pro or con. Now since buying… Read more »
Are you sure you didn’t misquote that guy? I believe he said years don’t mean much – that is, age by itself only means the passage of time, acquiring of aches & pains, reduced mobility, and a reduction in other functionality.
Years do provide an increased opportunity to acquire more experience relevant to a topic, an opportunity to acquire education, an opportunity to reserch things, an opportunity to reflect on the behavior patterns of individuals and groups, and so on.
Some people take advantage of that opportunity and some don’t.
Age by itself does not equal knowledge or wisdom.
Yup. I know a twelve year old who is far more mature, well balanced, intlligent, communicaitve, than most I’ve known in their thirties. Used to know a woman who, at 31 was nowhere near mature, stable, capable enough to marry.. and took out her frustrations on her six younger sisters, picking them apart at every opportunity. And somesuggested I should marry HER? So glad I did not. Her treatment of her sisters was a perfect picture of how she’d treat me. Thirty one and cute just didn’t impress me.
I am a little older than some of you, back when I was a kid the laws were different. At twelve I had saved my money, went to Sears and bought the shot gun I had been eyeing for some time, a Ted Williams 12 gauge pump with a ribbed barrel and a poly choke. Didn’t have to have anyone to OK it, I had the money and they sold it to me. I did start hunting with my Dad and Mom when I was 5 or 6. You were taught how and when to use a gun and when… Read more »
“Age by itself does not equal knowledge or wisdom.”
Not quite. There’s a very high correlation of age to wisdom from 0-18. No 1-month-olds have knowledge or wisdom. All 18-year-olds have some; obviously some have much more than others.
Commie-Dems would love to have 12-yr-olds vote. They love pukey ads with kindergartners lecturing adults about global warming, and airhead teens with valley girl vocal fry AOL voices. “Listen to the children. Let them show the way.” Barf.
Good piece of writing.
It’s absurd in the extreme what passes for scholarly work nowadays. Truly Orwellian. That’s why I dropped out of grad school work a few decades ago. I saw that my work (in a social science) was all about subversion, propaganization, and mind control.
There are so many manipulations of language and twisted logic in “research” that it is obvious there is no scholarship involved. It’s all about warping minds who were never taught the Trivium.
Sounds to me like Blithe and Lanterman need to graduate from AAA Batteries to Big Girl Batteries. Their current ” mini tool” isn’t working for them.
The standard tactic since like forever of those in power has been to ‘marginalize and/or demonize’ anyone that posed a threat to their power and control. The rules for radicals dude is just the latest incarnation of a long list of tyrants who used that tactic to maintain their power and control. The current version of the ‘party of people’ are trying to master the ‘art’. Unfortunately with the complicity of the lame stream media it is very hard for us to get our message out but we need to keep trying.
this pair are in very dire needof some serious bathing.. they do NOT pass the smell test. Seems to me they are a pair of immoral hussies projecting their own psychological imbalances onto everyone else. It is the old model.. tear down everyone else, and you will be left standing just a scoshie bit taller than the rest. I will lay high stakes at long odds neither of them grew up in an intact family home setting with functional FATHERS involved in their lives. They were left to fend for themselves emotioinally and thus have become dominatrice. (the pliral feminine… Read more »