Reply #55: I prefer a quote from James A. Swan...

[SteveM]

From In Defense of Hunting:

"Sigmund Freud helped us understand how people project sexual themes onto the world around them. A gun can be just a gun, but it can also be a phallic symbol, depending on who sees it or uses it. A gun is also a symbol of personal potency, and a good marksman would be a potent person, which would mean he had high self-esteem. On the other hand, someone with an inferiority complex could want to own and use a gun to feel more powerful. Like any other symbol, one can project many different images onto it, and these images can be reflections of unconscious issues as well as conscious ones. Someone who fears gun, for example, could have healthy reasons for wanting to avoid guns, or their fears could be a deeper phobic reaction to conflicts about sexuality and repressed anger."

In Defense of Hunting, Swan, James A., PhD., Harper Collins, SF, 1995.

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Given the quick-on-the-draw use of phallic symbolism by anti-2A types, the "deeper phobic reaction to conflicts about sexuality and repressed anger" seems to hold most true. Put another way, he/she who first smelt it dealt it.