Many Americans, including me, feel very strongly about guns. When people feel very strongly about something, there is always a psychological component. People on both the left and the right have psychological reasons for their positions on guns.
First the right. For the last few years, commentators on the right, and individuals such as my father-in-law, have been claiming that the left is condescending. The left portrays the right as a bunch of backward, aggressive fundamentalists who have been duped by the rich and powerful into voting against their economic interests. On guns, the left portrays the right as violent cowboys who poorly conceal their desire to feel powerful by shooting and killing things.
This view is inaccurate and intellectually lazy. Here is why. Underlying nearly all human behavior is an attempt to fulfill a basic human need such as safety, security, belonging and significance. Humans are biological creatures who are motivated to improve their life circumstances. So, no matter how irrational or unkind a person or group’s actions appear, the underlying motivation of the action is the positive intention to fulfill a fundamental need.
The left’s view of the right’s position on guns is indeed condescending, and also inaccurate, because it paints the right as both irrational and having negative intentions when the truth is that the vast majority of all behavior, including the right’s position on guns, is motivated by the rational and positive intention of fulfilling a fundamental need.
People on the right have two legitimate concerns about gun control. The first is that they agree with the original reason for the Second Amendment, that citizens need arms to check the power of their government and to protect themselves from their government. I know many liberals who mock this sentiment. They are wrong to do so. One needs only to watch the news for 15 minutes to hear about several governments that are currently abusing their citizens; they include Syria, North Korea and Sudan.
Is U.S. really an exception?
The United States is not the exception that many liberals think it is. The United States embraced slavery, allowed and continues to allow unjust treatment of minorities in the criminal justice system and interned Japanese Americans during World War II. Granted, the United States has never behaved as poorly as Syria or North Korea, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. I doubt the Germans thought that the government of their highly educated society was capable of turning against many of its citizens in the unfathomable way that it did during World War II.
The second legitimate concern about gun control among those on the right is that they feel that the ability to protect oneself and one’s loved ones from mortal danger is the most fundamental of rights and responsibilities. The eminent psychologist Abraham Maslow posited that humans’ needs are hierarchical. Obviously people must first fulfill their physiological needs for food, water and air. What comes next in the hierarchy is the need for personal safety. After that comes a need for a psychological sense of security. This includes feeling that one’s loved ones are safe.
All of our other needs, such as our need for social relationships and a sense of achievement, come after the more elemental needs for safety and security. There are strong arguments on both sides about whether or not guns make people safer. That is not my point. My point is that the right wants access to guns, not because they are crazy, aggressive cowboys, but because it helps to satisfy their need for a sense of psychological security.
The left’s motivations
Now the left. The left’s position is also driven by their need for safety and security. Many liberals believe that they would be safer and more secure if there were fewer guns in the country. However, the left is also motivated by the exigency to maintain their sense of identity. The idea of using force to protect oneself contradicts the humanistic principles that constitute liberalism.
Humanism has a high regard for all human beings, holds that human beings have an inherent capacity for good and growth, and views reason as the basis for decisionmaking. Christianity also espouses a general love of mankind but it is tempered by the concept of original sin, which is explicitly excluded from humanism.
Therefore, the left supports gun control because it has faith in individuals’ and society’s ability to tap into its fundamentally good nature and use reason to create a society that is safe and secure. While many people on the left have been deeply shaken by the recent mass shootings, using violence to create a safer society contradicts their beliefs about both human nature and themselves.
Policymakers need to relinquish the intellectually lazy stance that the other side is naïve at best and crazy at worst. Instead they must recognize the legitimate motivations that underlie each side’s position – safety and security, the ability to check the power of the government and protect oneself from the government and the desire to create a safe society by means other than force. Only when they do so will politicians arrive at policies that will both minimize gun violence and get through both Congress and the White House.
Mariah Levison is a mediator, facilitator and trainer, and is the program director at the Conflict Resolution Center.
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