Learn to Think like Someone who Chose to be Unarmed
People in the gun culture often express amazement about people who want them disarmed. They ascribe the desire to hostility and malice. It may be true for a minority of those who actively wish for a disarmed population. A significant number, likely a majority, have made a voluntary decision to be unarmed.
It is important to know your opponent and to understand their motives.
Three years ago, this correspondent wrote an essay on how to understand people who want a disarmed population. It was popular, but did not appear on AmmoLand.
I have updated the essay for current conditions.
There is an easy way to understand people who wish you to be unarmed.
It takes a little discipline. You may have a little mental discomfort. It is not particularly difficult. For the ability to understand the other, assume you have deliberately chosen to be unarmed.
Choosing to be armed is more difficult. It requires action. It requires training. It requires an investment in money and time. You think about unpleasant realities and plan for unpleasant possibilities. You devote time and money to be armed. A higher level of responsibility is required.
Once you internalize the decision to be unarmed, arguments on the other side become understandable. The voluntarily unarmed people we are attempting to understand are those who have moved from the decision to be unarmed, to the policy statement “guns are bad”.
Armed people have a power advantage over unarmed people. People do not want others to have a power advantage over them. It makes them uncomfortable. To prevent this, the voluntarily unarmed often want everyone else to be unarmed.
It is why many who are voluntarily unarmed dislike concealed carry, but violently abhor open carry. Open carry presents them with a reality they cannot easily ignore. It destroys their comfortable fantasy.
