Jennifer Willis exhibited all the symptoms of hoplophobia in explaining her return to sanity in her article in Salon magazine, “I Was Anti-gun, Until I Got Stalked.”

I’m afraid of guns…I abhor them. I used to date a guy who owned a handgun … I made him move [his] small gun safe…to another room….

The idea of owning a gun made me sick to my stomach … I dreamed that people were pointing double-barreled shotguns at me.

These are all classic symptoms of hoplophobia, defined by author and firearms instructor Colonel Jeff Cooper as “an unreasoning, obsessive neurotic fear of weapons as such, usually accompanied by an irrational feeling that weapons possess a will or consciousness for evil, apart from the will of their user.”

Alan Korwin of GunLaws.com further defined the condition as that which “may cause sweating, faintness, discomfort, rapid pulse, nausea, sleeplessness, nondescript fears [and] more at the mere thought of guns. Presence of working firearms may cause a panic attack.”

Boston’s Gun Bible Kenneth W. Royce Best Price: $18.51 Buy New $174.95 (as of 09:10 UTC - Details)

This phobia was exhibited by another writer at Salon magazine a few years ago, Sallie Tisdale, who expressed her anti-gun point of view in a vitriolic diatribe, holding that the Second Amendment needed to be abolished, and all weapons of any kind whatsoever be eliminated entirely.

Imagine your worst nightmare, your scariest neighbor, your angriest employee or the most frightening student at your child’s high school loading up on ammo this weekend at a convention center near you. It’s perfectly legal. It happens all the time, and we act as though there is nothing we can do about it….

I am unmoved by claims of freedom, lifestyle or privacy in this realm….

I am afraid of guns. I am afraid of people who like guns, own guns … I am a little scared all the time….

I no longer want gun control. I want an absolute ban on the manufacture, sale, possession and use of handguns … I realize there must be exceptions. The police needs guns…

Read the rest of the article

October 26, 2010

The Best of Bob Adelmann

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