Guns and Contamination

by Doctor Science

As I predicted, gun sales are up in the wake of the Newtown massacre, particularly the type of Bushmaster assault rifle the killer used. This is par for the US gun massacre course.

Gun buyers all say that such post-massacre surges in popularity are because they're afraid that weapons associated with tragedy are going to be banned, so they're getting them why they still can. No-one has talked about how very peculiar this attitude is.

Usually, when there's a horrible public tragedy, everything associated with it gets contaminated with that horror. For instance, I remember grape Kool-Aid being pulled from stores after the Jonestown massacre, because of rumors that it had been the vehicle for the mass poisoning. No-one actually thought that the Kool-Aid in stores was poison, but the association with Jonestown was repulsive on a gut level. It was better for stores if customers couldn't even see Kool-Aid on their shelves to be repulsed.

This kind of repulsion-by-association or contamination is so strong and common I'm willing to call it instinctive -- a term I do not use lightly or metaphorically. This makes it particularly striking and even weird that guns do not get contaminated this way for gun buyers. Why isn't the normal instinct being activated?

I'm not really asking why gun buyers don't make a logical or rational connection between a massacre and a particular type of weapon. I'm talking about an emotional or gut reaction, something like, "well, that's another thing ruined for me now".

This is even more peculiar because, at least in the US, gun enthusiasts tend to be politically conservative, and conservatives tend to feel issues of purity and contamination are more important than liberals do. So why do conservatives not feel an instinctive sense of contamination in this case, only? Why are your feelings about guns teflon-coated?

In both the United Kingdom and Australia[1] gun laws were significantly tightened after horrific massacres in the 1990s. They weren't particularly difficult political decisions: both countries were united by grief, shame, and (importantly IMHO) revulsion, the urge to reject things associated with the horrors.

For the first time that I can recall, lots of Americans are starting to feel that kind of revulsion toward guns. Even though Bushmaster sales are up, some stores are pulling the weapon from the shelves. More significantly, investors are starting to reject gun manufacturers.

But I don't know if significant numbers of gun fans[2] are starting to have that reaction, that rushing out to buy a weapon famous for slaughtering little children is -- or should be -- repulsive, not an automatic response. And I guess I'm asking those of you who *are* gun fans what it would take to break that response, to make the weapons of mass murder seem hideous, not attractive.

Part of Red Bowl, an art installation by Andy Cao & Xavier Perrot at the Saint-Lazare Leprosarium, Beauvais, France. The design

recalls the way lepers once bathed in animal blood in an effort to cure themselves and avoid being ostracized to the one-time leprosarium where the installation is located.

Contamination, madness, blood: (part of) what we're talking about.

[1] In case you have seen pro-gun posts going around, about how the Australian gun laws led to an increase in crime, I refer you to Snopes. In brief, no.

[2] I'm not saying "gun nuts", and I'd appreciate it if other commenters refrained, as well.

Comments

[russell]

amen

[Phil]

This should help: Today some formerly law-abiding gun owner shot at least four firefighters responding to a fire, killing two of them and causing the fire to destroy more property.

[Phil]

Probably the fault of Jay Z and Call of Duty, though.

[wj]

Phil, since the solution to school shootings is armed guards at all schools (the Columbine experience notwithstanding), obviously the solution to this kind of event is to have a SWAT team attached to every engine company to go to fires them. Obviously.

[hairshirthedonist]

I'm thinking more Sugar Hill Gang and Battlezone. It takes a while for these things to take effect.

[hairshirthedonist]

Incidentally, I lived in Webster, NY for about 8 months when I worked at Ginna Nuclear Generating Station in '98. Useless fact of the day.

[Turbulence]

Those firefighters were killed because of their culture of femininity and the absence of football-playing men in firehouses across the country. Also, because they didn't have any buckets. So says Charlotte Allen.

[Hartmut]

All this recording bias. Nobody talks about the more than 300 million American citizens that did not get shot yesterday (but clearly would have been without the protection of the 2nd A.).

[John M. Burt]

The "contamination effect" does not apply to guns because Moloch* is incapable of being a source of contamination, or even of being contaminated. Rather, Moloch is the source and wellspring of purity.

* http://jfxgillis.newsvine.com/_news/2012/12/15/15936256-our-moloch-by-garry-wills

[democommie]

"From what I hear another reason for the increased sales is good ol' fashioned capitalism. It's an investment. banned weapons and accessories like high capacity magazines can be sold for a huge profit once a ban goes into place."

So,this means you gunzloonz are perfectly fine with breaking the law? IOW, criminal behavior is not a problem if the law is one you don't approve of?

[democommie]

"Turned out the membership thought we could keep them, and didn't like having the organization run by sell-outs."

Citation needed.

"You're blaming me, because you fundamentally don't believe in individual guilt or innocence, you're a collectivist to the core. And I'm an individualist.

We're never going to agree with each other."

Typical Libertarian bullshit copout.

"You'd think people would have learned there lesson from Prohibition, but the War on Drugs proved they didn't, and now you're proposing a War on Guns."

I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but the law'n'order types most interested in pursuing the war on drugs are not LIBERALS; they are reactionary morons like you.

"Accurate terminology is essential to reasoned discussions. Generally if somebody rejects using accurate terminology, its because they're rejecting reason."

"Accurate Terminology" is essential to people whose only argument is that ""Accurate Terminology" is essential"

Most of us actually DO know the difference between semi and fully automatic weapons. We also know that the dead people don't give a fuck what killed them.

Brent Bellmore is so off the mark that "wrong" would be a considerable advance in his thinking.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Citation needed."

Geeze. One of those members, clown. Life member. That's my cite: I was one of them.

[liberal japonicus]

Ladies and Gents, we are sitting down to Christmas dinner here, so, after dropping into the superuser account, I'll take the opportunity to close the comments of this post. I encourage everyone to review the posting rules, which I think have gotten a bit of a beating here. Still a few more days before the end of the year, so we'll try and have a few more posts up. Merry Christmas to all.