Reply #142: more on the coiner

[iverglas]

from one of my very own favourite websites.

http://homepage.usask.ca/~sta575/cdn-firearms/Misc/hoplophobia

with my emphasis:

THE ROOT OF THE EVIL
by Jeff Cooper

... I coined the term hoplophobia over twenty years ago, not out of pretension but in the sincere belief that we should recognize a very peculiar sociological attitude for what it is -- a more or less hysterical neurosis rather than a legitimate political position. It follows convention in the use of Greek roots in describing specific mental afflictions. "Hoplon" is the Greek word for "instrument," but refers synonymously to "weapon" since the earliest and principal instruments were weapons. Phobos is Greek for "terror" and medically denotes unreasoning panic rather than normal fear. Thus hoplophobia is a mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to weapons, as opposed to justified apprehension about those who may wield them. The word has not become common, though twenty years is perhaps too short a time in which to test it, but I am nevertheless convinced that it has merit. We read of "gun grabbers" and "anti-gun nuts" but these slang terms do not face up to the reasons why such people behave the way they do. They do not adequately suggest that reason, logic, and truth can have no effect upon one who if {is?} irrational on the point under discussion. You cannot say calmly "Come, let us reason together" to a hoplophobe because that is what he is -- a hoplophobe. He is not just one who holds an opposing view, he is an obsessive neurotic. You can speak, write, and illustrate the merits of the case until you drop dead, and no matter how good you are his mind will not be changed. A victim of hydrophobia will die, horribly, rather than accept the water his body desperately needs. A victim of hoplophobia will die, probably, before he will accept the fallacy of his emotional fixation for what it is.

...

From:
Jeff Cooper.
To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth.
Boulder, Colorado: Paladin Press, 1990.
pages 16-19

Shades of the Gulag indeed, hm?

And from a firearms instructor no less. Just the person I would seek out for a diagnosis, were I suffering from a mental disturbance.