It’s Embarrassing How Much Gun Enthusiasts Embrace the Dick Metaphor

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, or so the apocryphal Freud quip has it. But for America’s intractable, dead-end right wing, a gun is always a dick. Always.

Here, let me show you:

What the fuck is happening here? What does a fetish for guns have to do with your vile transphobia? Nothing. Unless, deep down, you’re worried that the shape of a pistol concealed in your pants might be mistaken for a dick, and you want to make sure everyone understands that, no, it’s a deadly firearm. Also, do Republican men have a double-bulge, or a single gun-dick bulge? Things get even more confusing when you remember that Republicans are trying harder to control porn than these weapons.

Plus, the phallic aspect of guns is the basis for a vast ecosystem of liberal-leaning pop psychology and hack comedy, from Bill Maher bits all the way back to post-Columbine editorials about how circumcision and sexual dysfunction play into mass shootings. Pointing out the Second Amendment cult’s desperate lust for manly projectile power is a 101 move for anyone looking to mock them as fragile losers — the kind who can only compensate for inadequate genitalia by decking themselves out as angels of death. Even so, it’s the gun-worshippers themselves working overtime to make the connection.

https://twitter.com/BigPyro413/status/966115848502042626

Tweets like the one above may scream “CASTRATION ANXIETY,” and the NRA’s (dishonest) insistence that women need guns to protect themselves jibes well with the conservative notion that they also need husbands, i.e., people with dicks, to keep them safe. Yet the actual studies and evidence linking sexual pathology to gun worship is pretty scant! That could be because America has a vested interest in not examining the underlying causes of any destructive epidemic — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are notoriously barred from conducting meaningful research on our penchant for gun violence — or because we all accept the correlation as a given.

To the extent that we have established some themes in this vein, we know that pulling a trigger releases the same endorphins that flood the brain during sex and that domestic violence, usually against women, is a predictor of shooting rampages. Then, let’s not forget, maleness is virtually the single unifying factor of these massacres. With gun-rights advocates constantly striving to shift our attention from the machinery of murder to the people wielding it, we have little choice but to pick apart the motives given for mass casualty events, from Elliot Rodger’s bitter resentment over his virginity to the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooter’s fixation on abortion and “the selling of baby parts.” Again, it doesn’t feel particularly advantageous for the AR-15s-are-a-constitutional-right crowd to pivot from policies regarding their pieces to the troubling psychology behind a desire to collect them — but that’s their play. They literally can’t stop outing themselves as broken freaks who are horny for carnage.

The language gun-lovers use reinforces these associations at every turn: What are you packing? Cock that pocket rocket. For fuck’s sake, the Pennsylvania church that blessed congregants’ rifles said the Bible prophesied them with the term “rod of iron.” It really could not be any clearer that they’re talking about erections, and that open-carry proponents basically want the right to expose themselves in public to provoke a reaction. It’s but one instance of this country’s diehard nihilists making the subtext into text, or “saying the quiet part loud,” but damn if it isn’t the most embarrassing of the lot. It’s hardly worth it to taunt them when they’re this committed to the self-own. Do you see bald midlife crisis guys attaching “SCHLONG” vanity plates to their new Maseratis? No!

Try subtlety sometime, my dudes, and you might be surprised at how willing the rest of us are to let you bandy about that surrogate wang. As it is, you’re using them to grasp at the sort of virility cred I sought as a 13-year-old when I logged into AOL chat rooms and announced, apropos of nothing, that it was impossible to find a pair of boxers that accommodated my significant package. I’d be way more impressed if you got a cam account and started jerking off for an audience or just admitted you’re insecure cucks who feel vulnerable to socioeconomic decline and “naked” without an instrument of pain and horror strapped to your body. Not going to hold my breath on that one, though.

---

Miles Klee

Miles Klee is MEL’s resident tank-top dirtbag, shitposter and meme expert. He’s also the author of the novel ‘Ivyland’ and a story collection, ‘True False.’