PARANOIA and GUN-CARRY
The primary reason why most private persons (who are not in the law enforcement profession) are so obsessed to carry a gun outdoors is INSECURITY and PARANOIA. They normally insist that they need to carry a gun because they can imagine that ANY MOMENT someone will attack them and they need to be prepared at all times. These paranoids normally distrust law enforcement. Paranoia is a mild psychosis.
CAUSES OF PARANOIA
There are many causes of Paranoia. Persons who are victims of crimes will usually be diagnosed with mental stress, hatefulness, vengeance, and paranoia. People tend to become paranoids after watching too much movies with so much war, gun-fight, brutality, criminal attacks, and especially police abuses.
SCELEROPHOBIA
Scelerophobia is also known as the fear of bad men and/or the fear of burglars. This kind of paranoia could show symptoms of anxiety attacks, panic attacks, default distrust to law enforcement. Most persons affected by scelerpphobia thinks that the only workable solution to ease their fear is a baby-sitter type of a personal bodyguard or law enforcement who will accompany them side-by-side on a 24/7 timeframe. When the personal bodyguard is not available, these paranoids will do everything to be able to carry a weapon all the time, most likely a gun. A good example of an article written by someone who has scelerophobia is the PROGUN Philippines Inc Position Paper of May 2010. There are sites and groups available in the internet that are dedicated to helping people with scelerophobia.
DETECTING MILD PSYCHOSIS
Sometimes, mild psychosis can be detected by overt obsesion for guns, overt gun hobbies, overt watching of gun-full movies. People with overt obsession for guns normally show-off guns in their primary Facebook profile (their profile name is gun-brand and their primary picture shows a gun). These people are most likely "gun-displayers" in the streets and in their neighborhood, the ordinary people call them "mayabang".
There is even one leader of a gun organization who calls himself Fallujah (war-torn province in Iraq) with a self-claimed note saying "utak pulbura na". Paranoia can be easily detected in the psych test/interview in relation to firearm licensing.
I have a friend who was asked by the psychiatrist to draw a real man. He draw a person who is carrying a gun. According to him, the gun makes the man a real man. With his drawing, the psychiatrist marked him as "prone to gun-aided violence", he was recommended not to attend a socially critical international youth gathering.
Another sign of psychosis is when the individual has a strong obsession to accummulate as much guns as he would want to build a personal arsenal. Our knee-jerk question is, "why would a person want to have so many guns for self-defense"? In the Philippines, psychotic politicians accumulate arsenals of firearms and issues them to their Private Armies -- the result is an astonishing blood bath of about 300-400 people killed in election related violence. The most popular case is the Maguindanao Massacre of November 23, 2009, allegedly perpetrated by then Mayor Andal Ampatuan who owned a collection of over 270 licensed firearms, and charged with one-day wholesale multiple murder of over 50 men, women, pregnant women, and journalists.
Desire to possess and carry excessive ammunition is also a sign that a person has paranoia. You can see many policemen under this category. They prepare in case they may get into a gun-fight with multiple criminals in long running gun-battle just like in the movies.
DISTINGUISHING THE PARANOIDS
The paranoids does not look different from any other person who claim to be a responsible gun owner. Paranoids are prone to committing a gun-aided crime and they are hard to detect by mere visuals -- they look decent like everybody else, thay talk the same way as everyone does, they drive a car too, they may also have a Facebook account. But one way to detect these paranoids is that they are OBSESSED and INSISTING in getting a permit to carry firearm despite gun ban, to the point that they would lobby in Congress to influence the government policies that affects gun-carry rules.
PARANOIA IS CONTAGIOUS
The paranoids can show you a lot reasons why they want to carry a gun, and yes they can prove that that they are responsible gun owners, but nobody knows WHEN is the MOMENT a paranoid will snap. These paranoids also want to make people afraid by always reminding people of gun-crimes and events and tellingthe people that they should arm themselves. Paranoids sow terror in the mind of people. Paranoids tell people that Police are useless.
CARRYING A GUN WILL AGGRAVATE PARANOIA
Now, if you have friends and loved ones who are so obsessed in wanting to carry a gun because of INSECURITY and PARANOIA, please help them. Give them a friendly counselling to the tune of trying your best to convince their mind-set that even if they are carrying a gun, it will not give them security. An amateur hold-upper may randomly pick a soft target victim but a seasoned robber would prefer targets who have guns because these targets are probably protecting huge amounts of monies. An assassin makes plans and will shoot the victim with an element of surprise. As long as an individual is obsessed to carry a gun despite restrictive rules, he will continue to be consciously WORRIED about his security EVERY MOMENT of his life -- PARANOIA.
If your friend will reason out, try telling him that even if he is heavily armed, your chances of surviving a well-planned ambush and assassination is almost zero. We can cite thousands of cases to prove it. However, if we have tight gun-carry policy and effective checkpoint system, the hitman would have a big problem moving with guns (getting in and out the gunless zones). Plus, if your friend attends the PNP's Personal Safety Seminar (for FREE), his overall chances of not getting assassinated is almost zero. This line of thinking will probably make him feel secured.
FAILURE OF GUN LICENSING SYSTEM
Persons with paranoia are supposed to be easily filtered because gun ownership license and gun-carry permit REQUIRE psych test. However, it has become customary that Gun Dealers act like fixers in bending the requirements by just paying "extra" (grease money). As a result of this skip-test anomaly, many paranoids are able get Permit to carry firearms. They are carrying guns inside their cars and on our streets -- THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME IN PLAIN CIVILIAN CLOTHES -- there is no way to distinguish the paranoids. In short, we are facing a population of people with permit to carry guns who could be psychotics.
POLICY DIRECTION
It is very dangerous if persons with insecurity and paranoia are given permit to carry gun. Persons with paranoia should be disqualified to carry a firearm. As a matter of policy, there should be a tight implementation of rules on the issuance of licenses, especially on the authorization of gun-carry permits. I believe that outside every gun owner's house is already a public place. In public places, only law enforcement in uniform and on duty should be authorized to carry firearm. And YES, law enforcers should also undergo a periodic psych screening test/interview. As long as gun firearm licensing policies are not tight, psychoses-driven gun-aided crimes will continue to infest our society. We have to protect the gunless population from these paranoids who carry guns. The tighter the gun-carry policies, the fewer guns in the streets, the safer our society is.
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Collection of blogs to eradicate Gun-Aided Crimes can be found at
http://petalcorinpolitics.blogspot.com/search/label/On%20Firearm%20Control
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