I never understood why some people feel like they should fear concealed carry, and then I saw an article written by a psychiatrist named Sarah Thompson. Basically her article said some people fear that when another person has a gun they will start shooting people because they had a bad day.
She says the reason they feel that way is what mental health professionals call projection. In other words, those people feel that they might start shooting people if they had a gun so they automatically think that a concealed handgun license holder would do the same when they have a bad day. That just doesn't happen. According to her article, Projection is a defense mechanism. Defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological mechanisms that protect us from feelings that we cannot consciously accept. They operate without our awareness
so that we don't have to deal consciously with 'forbidden' feelings and impulses.
Kevin Kovach's worries that anybody can have a gun (Students up in arms about concealed carry law Oct. 13) just aren't true. The people he should be worried about are the criminals that are going out looking for trouble. Criminals have always carried guns and always will, even if guns are taken from the law-abiding people of this country. There are more guns out there now but at least there are now people who aren't criminals that have them.
Kelli Eads' fear is that when kids get angry, bad things will happen if they carry guns. This could relate to the article that I referred to earlier. Carrying a concealed firearm means that you need to be a responsible person. It isn't for kids, as she seems to suggest. Everyone, whether they realize it or not, is actually safer now that our state joined more that 40 others by giving law-abiding citizens the right to defend themselves.
Criminals -the predator -can no longer identify their prey, unless of course they are in a forbidden-carry zone. They don't know who has guns anymore, which makes them have to worry if they will be shot if they try to rob someone who is walking down the street. If you don't want to defend yourself, then don't, but please don't try to keep others from defending themselves. Nobody with a concealed handgun license wants to shoot another person; they simply want to level the playing field if they are attacked.
-Trevor Buck is a junior biology/
pre-dentistry major. Send him an
e-mail at trevor.buck@ohiou.edu.
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