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.
