Google defines ‘fetish’ as, “an inanimate object worshiped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit.” That’s a pretty good start for this conversation. When I talk about gun fetishists, I’m talking about those who seem to think that owning a gun changes who they are. They might be the ones with a ‘Glock’ sticker on the back window of their truck. They might have a Facebook profile that’s a selfie with their AR-15. When I talk about gun fetishism, I’m not talking about most gun owners who quietly own their guns like any other tools in the household. I’m not talking about collectors who keep guns for their historical insight and for a deep appreciation of the technology and art of weaponry. I’m also not talking about the professionals who use guns in their work. I characterize a gun fetishist as someone who worships her gun ‘for its supposed magical powers’ and thinks that gun ownership alone makes her stronger and more capable.

“Anti-gun fetish” is not a term I’ve heard before, so I’m going to define it. An anti-gun fetishist fears a gun ‘for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit”. I once heard of a guy destroying a shotgun, that had been in his house when he bought it, with a sledgehammer. Why not just sell it to a gun shop, where it could end up being owned by someone who could use it? Because he thought of it as an evil object. There’s no other good explanation. There are people who think that gun ownership itself makes a person violent, irresponsible, dangerous, or malevolent. Those people think that the mere presence of a gun in a home creates a threat.

I don’t downplay the danger of guns at all. But there are a lot of dangerous things in our homes: kitchen knives, lawnmowers, chainsaws, power tools, automobiles, medicines, alcohol. Any of these could cause death or serious injury and we keep them, hopefully, in places where they’re out of reach of children and safe from theft. We don’t play with them when we’re drunk.

When one considers a gun as an evil object, like the ring in Lord of The Rings, then there is no rational response except to want to destroy the gun, destroy all guns. The evil object will prevail over its owner, so there can be no responsible gun owners, no safe protocol for owning, storing or handling a gun. Remember Lord of the Rings? Even Frodo, who was especially resistant, started to become a bit unpleasant after carrying the ring for a while. But this fetishism breaks down when something bad happens. There’s a shooting in the street, there’s a lunatic waving a machete around the mall; What do we do? We call on the guys and gals with guns. We call the police, who are somehow not made evil by their guns because they have ‘special training’. In reality, police constantly show their potential to be completely irresponsible with guns. It’s in the news everyday and it enters into every discussion about race relations, but never into the discussion about gun control. I’ve never heard an anti-gun argument that included disarming or even limiting the weapons that the police carry. In my state, off-duty and even retired officers have special rights to own types of firearms that other citizens may not.

This is because anti-gun fetishism breeds police fetishism. No sane person wants to completely disarm the police, to eliminate the possibility of an armed response to an armed criminal. It just doesn’t make sense, but people really hate to have their deeply rooted ideas challenged. So the person who thinks that guns are evil magical objects must also think that police are superheroes who are immune to the evil power. That’s the only way to persist in their beliefs. If a criminal or a psychopath or terrorist can be armed – and they will always find a way – every rational person knows that the good guys and gals must be armed to defend themselves. So a police fetish is necessary to maintain the anti-gun fetish.

All this fetishism stands in the way of a constructive conversation about the ownership and use of firearms. Gun fetishists form a disproportionately large part of of the voice of gun owners in this country, simply because a lot of people prefer not to talk about it, while the fetishists will openly identify themselves. Anti-gun fetishists are most typically the voices for gun control in the public space, largely because more reasonable voices for gun control stay quiet for fear of being lumped in with the extremists.

If we really want to talk about common sense gun control that improves public safety we need to get past the fetishism on both sides and talk about guns as especially dangerous tools that perform a crucial social function.