Hemenway appeared at a forum hosted by the Robert Wood Johnson foundation and made the following statement in April 2013, "Instead of it being the mark of a real man that you can shoot somebody at 50 feet and kill them with a gun, the mark of a real man is that you would never do anything like that. . . . The gun is a great equalizer because it makes wimps as dangerous as people who really have skill and bravery and so I’d like to have this notion that anyone using a gun is a wuss. They aren’t anybody to be looked up to. They’re somebody to look down at because they couldn’t defend themselves or couldn’t protect others without using a gun."[12]
I guess he's talking about thugs and criminals no?
I mean I get it.. He thinks that he's got some new and innovative way to dismantle the "gun culture" by tackling the imagery or psychology of the firearms community at large. Perhaps he's operating under some misguided perceptions about the firearms community and industry, based on what I imagine can be attributed to hollywood sensationalism. For example, are there industry advertisements out there that communicate the message that "having a gun makes you somehow a man"? Has any gun mfg'er ever made that commercial? If anything this message is conveyed by the Hollywood leftists over and over again. I don't see the NRA or any industry group backing this kind of message in their advertisements. I definitely didn't see that kind of message in Eastwood's Gran Torino. In fact it was exactly the OPPOSITE message that was conveyed in that movie. So his methodologies are not unlike the approach that the anti-tobacco movement used in targeting tobacco use. Instead of Smoking advertisements that depicted the "marlboro man", or that of the famous cowboy image to make using cigarettes look "cool", their advertisements created the exact opposite effect.
There are two failures (if not many more) to his approach:
First, I've never seen such advertisements. I don't know a single person who decided to purchase a firearm for these kinds of reasons. IRL most people I know who've bought firearms bought them because they want to be able to defend themselves, not to commit crimes with them. Certainly not to bully anyone! Where are all these "wimps with guns" that he's describing, I haven't seen any. The only wimps with guns I've seen are the nutjobs who commit random (and yet rare) acts of mass murder.
Second, I'm not discounting the fact that there actually are some of these sorts of people out there, who buy firearms based on stereotypes. I think they are the minority in most cases, and most of the law abiding citizens who own firearms are nothing of the sort.
This "professor" is pigeonholing the entire "gun owner" community into some false caricaturization, either based on criminal gang related street violence, or what might be the perception that gun owners are all John Wayne wannabes? I think in his bubble world he fails to recognize just how widely varied the 2A constituency really is. The other problem with his approach to tackle gun ownership from this angle is that unlike 2A and the RKBA, smoking is not enshrined in the constitution.
Last but not least, we tried prohibition once and it didn't work. Even if you could eradicate every single gun from the law abiding, here in the states, criminals would still find a way to bring them in. Just look at how successful our drug war has been.