Misperceptions

Misperceptions: How Beliefs, Stereotypes and Rumors Can Lead to Outrageous Conclusions

By Gary Rea We have all experienced various degrees of misunderstanding by others, and we have misunderstood others, as well. This essay will explore the myriad ways that we form our impressions of each other, as well as of the world we live in, sometimes with damaging results.

Throughout, I will illustrate points by reference to real world incidents, many of them drawn from my own personal life experiences.

Some examples will be drawn from historical incidents and some from lesser known incidents, as well. In each case, I will endeavor to explain in detail the various factors that led to the misperceptions and their consequences.

One common thread or theme that will run throughout this is that, regardless of the particulars and details, the root cause in every case is always ignorance. To clarify, ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge. It has nothing to do, per se, with stupidity, although ignorance and stupidity often go hand-in-hand and can be considered to be components of each other, at times. Highly intelligent people can be just as ignorant as stupid people and they can certainly behave stupidly in spite of their intelligence. Ignorance knows no boundaries and, indeed, we are all ignorant of some things. By our very nature, our entire species is ignorant of a great deal that humanity has yet to learn of. We are all here to live and learn from each other and from the world we live in.

Beliefs, Stereotypes and Rumors We all have certain beliefs about almost everything. A whole book could be written about just those beliefs concerning religion or politics, for example. But, for my purposes, it is those beliefs we have about each other as individuals that I am most concerned with here. In other words, those assumptions we make about people with very little or no knowledge of them, often based upon appearance alone. Of course, we often make assumptions about a person’s religious or political beliefs based upon the same flimsy evidence, but here I will endeavor to confine my focus to assumptions about an individual’s character, values, sexuality, occupation, etc.

So, what sort of beliefs am I talking about, then? Well, for example, there are many people who believe they can “tell,” or distinguish homosexuals from heterosexuals on sight, based upon a range of so-called “clues” including appearance, pitch of voice, mannerisms, the way someone moves, the clothing they are wearing, the make and model of car they are driving, etc. never mind that there are only two factors that can be used to determine whether someone is a homosexual or not. The first and most obvious is, of course, whether they have an attraction to people of their own sex, and the second factor is whether they have either acted upon that attraction or considered doing so. Nothing else - no outwardly detectable cues or characteristics - have anything to do with whether or not they are a homosexual. Thus, a more or less intimate knowledge of the person is required to know with any certainty whether they are a homosexual or not. Yet, millions of people wrongly brand each other as homosexuals all the time, based upon a collection of incorrect beliefs, stereotypes, rumors and assumptions that they have acquired during their lives from other people who also hold the same erroneous beliefs.

One of the most ridiculous of these is the idea that there are so-called “gay cars.” The assumption is that auto manufacturers are making cars to cater to one sex or the other - thus cutting their own economic throats by reducing the market for a given make or model to half the population of potential buyers. This nonsense flies in the face of automakers’ need to maximize sales in order to remain profitable. One of these so-called “gay cars” has been the Volkswagen New Beetle, which has been popular among women drivers and, hence the perception - by homophobic men - that it is a “chic car” and not for men. This unfortunate development has also led to the ostracizing of male New Beetle owners as “gay” men. The resultant dwindling sales to men that this has led to prompted Volkswagen to later design a more “masculine” looking version of the New Beetle, with flattened out curves. It was the curvilinear lines of the New Beetle that were thought to be “cute” or “cartoony” that prompted both men and women to perceive it that way. Never mind that the original idea inherent in the Beetle’s retro styling was a modernized stylization of the curvaceous lines of the original Beetle, which sold millions of units from WWII until the discontinuation of the model with the Super Beetle in the early seventies. During the decades when the car enjoyed immense popularity worldwide, it was owned and driven by men and women alike and there was no perception of the styling being at all “effeminate.”

That brings me to yet another false perception: that being effeminate (if you’re a man) or masculine (if you’re a woman) somehow equates to being homosexual. Never mind that there are more normal or hyper-masculine men who are genuinely homosexuals, as well as very feminine women who are also homosexuals than there are either effeminate homosexual men or masculine lesbians. The idea that effeminate men and masculine women are homosexuals is an old stereotype that is flatly contradicted by the reality. Thus, cars, clothing, color preferences, preferences in music and other entertainment, etc. that are seen as being “gay” have nothing at all to do with whether or not one is, in fact, a homosexual.

Other faulty perceptions about homosexuals include assumptions that all artists and other creative people (particularly males) are homosexuals, that certain occupations are for homosexuals, that even the slightest interest in the arts is indicative of homosexuality, and so on, and - again - this is all based upon the assumption of effeminance having something to do with it. Conversely, it has long been assumed that women who engage in athletics or in certain male-dominated occupations are lesbians, and this is also false for the same reasons.

In addition to these are assumptions regarding marriage and child-rearing. The popular view among homophobes is that men who are unmarried and/or without children are homosexuals. Never mind that the advent of “feminism” began to drive a wedge between men and women in the early seventies, in order to divide the sexes against each other and, thus reduce the population by lowering the incidence of marriage, as well as the birthrate. This, naturally resulted in more single people and more childless couples than ever before in human history. The simultaneous coinciding of this with the “coming out” of millions of homosexuals and the incorrect perception that homosexuality is a “lifestyle choice,” even though it is clearly found throughout the animal kingdom in millions of species, is what has led to the assumption that homosexuals have chosen to be “gay.” For the same reasons, women who remain childless or, especially childless and single, have long been thought to be lesbians. In the case of either sex, there are several good reasons why either a man or a woman might remain unmarried and/or childless, especially in this post-feminist culture of ours. The reasons can be medical or biological, for example in the case of men who are either impotent or sterile and women who are unable to conceive or to carry to full term. Yet, if we aren't aware of these conditions, it is often easy to assume that an individual is a homosexual.

As you may have suspected (because many people's minds automatically conclude that when a man says anything about the preceding topic, it's because he is, of course, a homosexual himself) that I'm "gay," I should assure you that I'm not and, in fact, I know so much about all this because I've been a long-time victim of such stupid assumptions. This began when I was 19 and had come home on leave from California, where I was stationed during my time in the Air Force. It was 1972 and the "invasion" of homosexuals "coming out of the closet" had just begun. So, while I was on leave, my "best friend" and I went to a shopping mall to walk around and hang out together, looking at girls. We'd known each other since we were seven years old, but, apparently, he never really knew me at all because, when I began to tell him about the homosexual in my squadron, back at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and how this young man had come onto me one day, my "best friend" couldn't even listen to me finish my first sentence before he began looking me up and down, checking for limp wrists or whatever "tell-tale signs" he thought he should be looking for. A while later, as we were at a pool hall we had frequented while in high school, I was aligning my next shot when he angrily yelled, "Faggot!," right there in the presence of the manager and several of our mutual buddies we'd gone to high school with. As every eye in the place was immediately drawn to me, I stood in stunned silence, turned to see whoever it was he must have been addressing, and saw that no one was behind me. He and the manager laughed at this while our former classmates continued to stare at me. Needless to say, this was the end of our "friendship" and over the years afterward, every time we'd run into each other somewhere, it was the same thing all over again, with the suspicious glances, checking for those limp wrists, because, everyone "knows," of course that men with limp wrists are "gay." So, my "best friend," who had supposedly known me for thirteen years or so, had concluded that I must be "gay," myself simply because a homosexual had approached me. I suppose having been attracted to me must have magically changed my sexuality or something, because, you know, that's what automatically happens to heterosexuals when they're approached by homosexuals, right?

Over the decades since, I've encountered people who have equally idiotic ideas about what constitutes homosexuality. For example, there was the time during the early 1980s when I was standing in line at 2:00am in a Denny's restaurant in Oklahoma City, waiting to pay for my meal and go home. Standing immediately behind me was a man and his wife, who had never seen me before in their lives and who could only see me from behind. I hadn't spoken a word or done anything yet and, from behind me, the man said, "Are you gay?," with a heavy drawl. I turned and looked at he and his wife, noting the wide-eyed look of stupidity on their faces, and replied, "Well, no, I'm not. But, why did you think I am?" His response: "Because you're alone." After a moment of stunned silence, I said, "Yeah, as are millions of men all over the world at this moment. Are they all "gay," too?!" He said, "I don't know," and I said, "Exactly!

You don't know!" That was among the more ridiculous assumptions people have had. There have been many more, from assumptions made on the basis of the shirt I happened to be wearing (do you stop being "gay" if you change clothes?) to the car I was driving (because everyone knows the Volkswagen New Beetle is a "gay car," driven only by women, right?) then there are the people (both men and women) who believe themselves to be experts on "spotting" homosexuals on sight, as if all homosexuals look the same. On a bus ride home one day, a mannish looking woman got on, saw me and loudly declared to a man standing in the aisle that there must be nothing but faggots on this bus, or words to that effect. I got the distinct impression she was quickly diverting any suspicions about her own sexuality onto me. In most of these cases, I seldom bother to say anything, as people are going to believe whatever they have come to believe, anyway, and there is little to nothing I could say that would change their mind. Indeed, the times when I have said anything, I've been accused of being "defensive" about it, and of course everyone knows that means you're "gay," too, right?

So far, I've only covered my own experience with the erroneous assumptions people have that others are homosexuals. But, there have been many cases far worse than mine, cases in which people have even been murdered for no other reason than that they were mistakenly thought to be "gay." For example, there was the story of the 14 year old Iraqi boy who was murdered in Baghdad by men who hurled homophobic slurs at him. This case inspired a YouTube video that went viral. In another case, a woman murdered her own 4 year old son because she believed him to be a homosexual: http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/actuarial_discussion_forum/archive/ index.php/t-275360.html

Yet another example of how people’s perceptions can wildly skew their view of reality is the assumption that my abstract black and white street photography is all about “spying” on or surveilling people and that, of course, I must be some sort of undercover cop or an agent of some intelligence agency. Never mind their complete ignorance of me and who I am, not to mention their ignorance of my work as a photographer. This unfortunate assumption, driven by not only ignorance, but paranoia, has started a rumor about me that has circulated throughout Seattle, especially in the downtown area where I do my photography. This rumor has circulated for some three or four years, now, and people now recognize me even from half a block away. In fact, recently, while doing photography one morning, a woman spotted me from a distance and said aloud, “Oh, it’s the cop!,” and laughed and started walking away, back the same direction from which she’d just come.

Other such incidents have been several and varied: the young man who came running across the street at me and, after I’d explained to him who I am and what I was doing, nevertheless concluded by saying that what I’d just told him “would be the perfect cover, though;” or the woman who, on two separate occasions in the same place, accused me of being an FBI agent and, on the second occasion, said she knows seven people who will swear I’m an FBI agent; then there were the two women, half a block away when I included them in a scene in which they were nothing more than peripheral elements, just silhouetted stick figures. One of them said to the other, “But, we didn’t do anything wrong!” A trio of teenagers walked by me, just last week, and I overheard one them say, “...I saw him one day and the people weren’t even doing anything wrong!” Then there were the several women shouting, “Look out! Look out!,” to the several people across the street who I was randomly including in the scene they were walking through, their bodies either silhouettes or partial silhouettes, and thus, unidentifiable and anonymous. Another morning, I noticed a man standing in a beam of sunlight and paused to photograph the scene from behind him. As I did so, a woman standing near him shouted at him, “Look out, it’s a police photographer!” While stopping for a break at Starbucks, a teenage girl waiting to be served started a conversation with me about my photography, which ended with her stepping away while calling me a cop under her breath. These are only a few of the many such incidents that have occurred over the last few years or so.

First of all, these people are all ignorant of me as a person. They know nothing about me at all. Secondly, they have never seen my photography, so they really have no idea what it is I’m doing. Then there is the fact that they don’t know what it is I’m looking for, what I’m looking at, how they appear from my viewpoint (they're oblivious to the effects of light and shadow) or what my intent and objectives are. Most of them, in this age of camera phones, have never held an actual dedicated camera in their hands and know little or nothing about photography, let alone the genre of fine art photography known as street photography, which has existed for over a century.

This situation prompted me to have cards printed, five years ago, with an example of one of my images, plus my name and the type of photography I am doing, and also bearing the web address of the page where I have an online portfolio of my work ( viewbug.com/ member/GaryRea ). This address is printed on both sides of the card, just to be sure it is seen. Neither the card nor the online portfolio contain any contact information, though people can join the ViewBug site and either follow my work and/or post a comment for me to read. I really don’t know how many people ever bother to look at my work, but some have and when I have encountered them later, they have complemented me on what they saw.

As I was out photographing one afternoon, I saw a woman and her friend pass by me and as they did so, the woman said to her friend, “Oh, he’s a photographer who uses shadows...” Other people have even searched for me online, found my images on various sites, and have wound up on Amazon, ordering a copy of one of my two books on my photography ("Shadow & Light: The Photography of Gary Rea," and "Silhouettes"). So, little by little, one person at a time, I have been able to counter the rumors, although they persist and I have no idea how many hundreds or even thousands of people have heard them by now.

One night, while photographing a scene, I overheard a man behind me telling someone, “he’s an undercover cop,” and when I turned to look at him, he and the other man he was telling this to were still talking about me while staring right at me. As they became aware I was watching them, the other man said, “Well, thanks for the advice,” and then they split up and went their separate ways before I had a chance to say anything. Apparently, they were strangers to each other, yet the second man took the other’s “advice” without the slightest evidence or proof.

In the case of teenagers, I am sure the rumor must be all over every high school and college campus in the area, by now. One day, while I was out grocery shopping and didn’t even have my camera with me, I had just stepped off the street car when a teenage boy remarked to his buddies, “Hey, there’s that cop!” On another occasion, as I passed by a homeless man crouched outside his tent, he said, “Good morning, officer.” I stopped in my tracks, turned and said, “Officer?! Is that what you think I am?” He said, “Well, you never can be too sure.” I handed him one of my cards and said, “This is who I am and this is what I do.” He thanked me for the card and then I went on my way. The next time I walked by the same tent, there were a few men standing there and one of them said to the others, “Well, here comes Gary.” So, obviously the truth is spreading, but is still drowned out by the ignorance about me and my work.

It has occurred to me, as well, that in this age of so-called "social media," the local rumors about me and my photography may have very well been spread to the internet, also. There is a former record store, now used as a venue for live music acts, and I have used its well-shaded facade as a backdrop for my photos many times. One day, a young man who was either the owner or the proprietor, spotted me on the sidewalk and ran inside to get his smart phone. Dashing back outside with it, he began to shoot video of me as I stood taking an aspirin (I carry some in a plastic bag in my pocket, in case I'm having any chest pains), and then he walked away watching what he'd just shot (incidentally, I got a shot of him, in silhouette from behind, as he walked away). No doubt he must have sent it to a friend or posted it to his Facebook page or whatever. If so, no telling what words he wrote about me to accompany it. This has happened a few times, in fact. A teenage girl photographed me with her phone from the street at the top of a hill one morning as I was photographing people silhouetted against the sky beyond as they passed through the crosswalk at the top of the hill. On another occasion, as I was including part of an apartment building in a scene in which a woman was ascending a staircase, a young man appeared on his apartment balcony and began shooting video of me with his phone, oblivious to the woman on the stair, who was concealed from his view by the wall of the man's apartment building. Where these little video clips wind up and what these people are

saying about me and what they think I'm doing is, of course, as unknown to me as who I am and what I'm really doing are unknown to the people making these videos. Of course, these folks have every right to make the videos - the same Constitutionally-protected right I have to photograph them in public - and I applaud their attention to their environment and what is going on around them, even if they only think they know what they are seeing.

Mistaking a Little Knowledge for a Great Deal It has always been a persistent problem that most of humanity, especially upon reaching adulthood, is composed of people who believe themselves to be far more erudite than they actually are, regardless of their attained education level. This is, again, a function of ignorance. Ignorant people don't know they are ignorant and often assume that everyone else has the same level of general knowledge that they do. Thus, it is often a humbling shock to people when they encounter knowledge they didn't possess before. For many, their own ego gets in the way to such an extent that they cannot admit that they didn't know. Even worse is when they are in denial and vehemently reject the possibility of their own ignorance. The worst sort of ignorance is willful ignorance, i.e, the absolute denial of ignorance, despite the obvious facts.

Millions of people believe they know all about things that they clearly are unaware of. To be fair, there are many who are humble enough to admit when they don't know and who are then willing to learn. In the case of those who are prone to the acceptance of rumor, stereotypes and innuendo as fact, the denial of their ignorance is compounded by a denial of their own gullibility. For these people, it is easiest to believe things without foundation simply because "everyone else" seems to "know" it. There was once a time when most people believed the Earth to be flat instead of spherical and it was only through the revelation of truth brought about by scientific observation that this was eventually corrected. Believe it or not, though, there is now a resurgence of belief in a flat Earth and this has become reinforced by pseudo-science posted on the internet and widely shared by those who want to believe that the Earth is not only flat, but that the overwhelming evidence that it is a sphere is a vast "conspiracy." Given phenomena like this, it is no surprise to me that people want to believe so much of the other nonsense that has captured the popular imagination, such as the belief that "aliens" exist and are visiting us on a routine basis, or that we, ourselves, are descended from aliens. The fact is that, in terms of sheer numbers (due to the increased population), there are more people today who believe in the very same irrational nonsense that was popular in the Middle Ages than there were during the Middle Ages. The guise of pseudo-scientific pretense has made this even more widespread and persistent and the general decline in most people's scientific knowledge over the last forty or more years has left the majority highly susceptible to pseudo-science.

As I've already hinted at, it is a fact that the persistence of misinformation and ignorance is made possible by the willing acceptance of it. In other words, people truly want to believe in whatever fallacies they have absorbed and internalized. The True Believer will cling to his beliefs despite all evidence to the contrary and, indeed, will insist that the evidence to the contrary is, in fact, a "conspiracy."

Fact or Fiction?

It is an unfortunate tendency of most people to assume that their own opinions, prejudices and perceptions, whether correct or not, are "facts." What is unfortunate about this is that it is so very often exactly the opposite of what they believe it to be. In the interest of keeping this from expanding far beyond what I've intended here, I'll continue to confine this, again, to just those perceptions we have about other people.

Many people, it seems, tend to trust their intuition more than they trust objective sources. Thus, we have those who believe they can "tell" what someone is like from nothing more than mere appearance, even if they have never seen the person before. But, of course, this is an outrageous assumption, even if one's intuitions are often correct. To assume that we can know things that are unknown or unknowable is the height of arrogant conceit. People who think this way are very often the same sort who cannot accept being wrong and, hence, they will insist that their intuitions are always correct.

Even so, there are cases in which one can make a guess as to someone's personality based upon nothing more than their appearance. For example, there are people who identify with a particular stereotype and who will dress or behave according to the stereotype they wish to be identified with. This "costuming" then allows those who also believe in the particular stereotype to then "identify" that person who has assumed the persona of the stereotype. The more deliberate the attempt to resemble the stereotype, the easier it is for them to be identified with it by those who have also assumed that stereotype to be true. Unfortunately, there are many so-called "gay" people, for example, who dress and act the part that all the stereotypes suggest they should resemble, whether it be affecting a certain hairstyle, makeup, clothing, etc. in their own mind, they believe in these same stereotypes because, like everyone else, they've heard or read about them all their lives.

When the Village People came on the scene in the seventies, their schtick was poking fun at what they believed to be "typical male stereotypes" i.e, the "tough guy" role models of earlier decades. But, were these true stereotypes, or just the way some men were?

For example, the leather-clad biker, with his long sideburns and mustache, or the helmeted construction worker were hardly "stereotypes." If we accepted that view, then we'd have to conclude that every male role or occupation is merely an affectation. In fact, it was the several members of the Village People (all homosexuals, themselves) who had affected these images of "real men" as a way of protesting all the assumptions of what it means to be male. To real bikers and construction workers, though, their "look" was not an affectation or costume, it was simply an outgrowth of who they really were, particularly in the case of the construction worker, who wears a hardhat because it's a safety requirement for his job, not because it's a male accoutrement or fashion statement.

Myth and Legend Nothing drives home the importance of avoiding the untruth of unfounded rumor and innuendo than the effects - many of them horrendously damaging to humanity - of myth and legend. Throughout history and, indeed, in some cases, inseparable from our history, has been the occurrence of myths and legends about people who have lived and people who never existed. The endurance of legends and myths is a testament to the will of people to believe what they want to believe in spite of the complete lack of any supporting evidence. Once a story has been created and is passed on to others, no matter how absurd or outrageous it may be, it takes on a life of its own, growing and evolving with each person's embellishments of it, until it eventually becomes something completely different from the rumors that may have spawned it in the first place.

I can't emphasize enough, either, this will of the individual (as well as groups of them) to want to believe. Whatever the belief may be, and no matter how absurd it is, it endures in the mind because it resonates so well with the person who believes it that they cannot look at or examine it critically, or critically enough to discern that it has no bearing upon reality at all. It is this tendency to want to believe that has ensured the long-term survival of myths and legends. This is as true for the myths and legends that are more personal or internal (as in our own personal mythology about ourselves) as it is for humanity as a whole.

Where do these myths and legends come from, in the first place? In some cases, there is indeed a grain of truth or foundation to the story, but it has been embellished so much in the retelling that it has become mostly false. What may have been true at one time or in one instance may not be the case every time or in all instances. Thus, exaggeration and extrapolation can make what may have made sense once, in a particular case, into something that is not necessarily applicable in every case. If, for example, a homosexual man does indeed have a whiny, high-pitched voice, it is not necessarily the case for all men that they must be homosexuals if they have what is perceived to be a whiny, high-pitched voice. A whiny, high-pitched voice is no more a necessary trait of homosexual men than driving a Volkswagen New Beetle or wearing a pink shirt is, and vice-versa.

Another aspect of widely-held beliefs is the assumption that, because large numbers of people - perhaps even all of humanity - have come to accept them as truth, then they must be true. This is an instance of what is called an informal fallacy, which, in this case, is known to logicians as the "argument from numbers." How can millions of people be wrong about something? Well, they can all be horribly wrong just as easily as any one of them can be. Having greater numbers does not in any way ensure that a widely held assumption or opinion is in any way true or correct. This is why we cannot rightly say that it is possible for anyone to be able to "tell" a homosexual from a heterosexual on sight, by appearance alone, or even by appearance and any combination of other "clues" when the only decisive factors are whether the person is attracted sexually to members of his or her own sex and/or whether or not he or she has acted upon this or considered doing so. This will probably continue to be the case for homosexuality unless and until geneticists have managed to isolate the faulty gene that is responsible for creating this thwarting of the individual's normal sex drive. If that happens, then we'll have a definitive means of knowing for certain who is and who is not a homosexual. But, until then, there simply is no way of knowing other than by the individual's sexual behavior, as that - and nothing else - is what one's sexual "orientation" consists of.

I hate to keep returning to this particular example (homosexuality), but it is one of the most prevalent examples of how millions of people are being continually misidentified and misinterpreted by others. The objective criteria for knowing with any certainty who is and who is not a homosexual is not as obvious as most people seem to believe it is.

By contrast, being able to "tell" what an individual's political or religious orientation is, judging only by appearances, is far more easily done. Or is it? Remember what I said earlier about the deliberate affectation of stereotypes in order to fit in with a particular group?

This is just as applicable to religion and politics as it is to, say, homosexuality. I know I said, at the outset, that I wasn't going to include religious or political beliefs in this discussion, nevertheless, it bears pointing out that these are areas in which we have also stereotyped people for a very long time, and perhaps even more so in recent decades than ever before. That's all I'll say about it, though, with the exception of a single personal incidence that I'll offer for illustration: I recently had a short conversation with an older man I know, in which the both of us had wrongly stereotyped each other's political orientation. Combined with this was my own assumptions of him, based upon my knowledge of his religious beliefs. A little background first: the man in question is a Christian who has studied various aspects of religion and written about them, as well. In addition to this, he grew up in India and, so, his perceptions of the world are colored by that early experience, as well as his several trips back to India well into his old age. Add to this his shoulder-length thin white hair and you have a picture of a man who would probably be assumed to be a "hippie" pacifist, right? So was my impression of him until the above mentioned conversation I had with him, in which the subject of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution came up and, as I began to say something about its content, he halted me with, "You've misinterpreted it..." which I then cut off with, "But, you don't know what I was about to say. Let me finish." He did so and in the course of the exchange of a few sentences, it became apparent that, not only had I assumed him to be a left-leaning so-called "liberal," but that he'd concluded the same about me and had assumed that my interpretation of the Second Amendment was that it gives a right to keep and bear arms only to members of the militia, and not the people at large, which is a commonly held belief of those who champion gun control laws.

As it turned out, neither of us believe any such thing and we agreed that the Second Amendment very clearly acknowledges the individual's right to be armed for self-defense, since it is the entire citizenry from which the eighteenth century colonial militias drew their members. Naturally, since the then newly established union of the thirteen original states as the United States of America wasn't solvent enough to provide weapons and ammunition to its army and to the several county and state militias that had formed, it was necessary and, indeed, was expected as a matter of course, that each man be armed and supplied with his own personal weapons and ammunition. There simply was no other way an armed force could exist at that time. In addition, being armed, especially on the American frontier, was so common that no one could afford to not be armed. Add to this the very clear use of the words, ...."the right of the people [not the militia] to" keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" and it is patently obvious what the Anti-Federalists (not James Madison, who was a Federalist and had written the Constitution without any mention of rights) meant when they wrote those words. So it was that we both came to know each other a little better than we had before, and this is really the only way that we, as

individuals, can overcome our stereotypical assumptions about each other, i.e, by making an eort to actually learn and, thus, truly know each other.