The “Our view” of March 14 (“Government can’t force guns on these people”) exposed the absence of accurate information behind conspiracy fantasies and the uses of fear in undermining rational discussion of gun rights.

In a similarly clear way, the highly respected psychoanalyst Erik Erikson (“Childhood and Society,” 1950) describes some basic human fears. In a complex, global world “there is the fear of remaining small … of not having been provided with ‘the right stuff.’ … There is the fear of being immobilized and imprisoned, and yet again a fear of not being guided, of not finding borderlines defined so that one may fight and assert one’s initiative. Here is the infantile origin of (the man’s) need for an enemy so that he may arm himself and fight a concrete adversary and thus be freed of the constant anxiety of unknown enemies who, at unpredictable times, may find him unarmed and uncovered.”

Those are fears that the NRA and right-wing politicians feed with conspiracy fantasies. Their purpose is not to inform but to frighten and assure that rational thinking remains absent.

The NRA wraps itself in the Second Amendment like a Halloween costume, the better to go trick-or-treating. Texas Republicans last year condemned efforts to teach “critical thinking skills” because they “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermine parental authority.”

Dumbing down the electorate has always been a good investment for those who disguise their hunger for exclusive power as everybody else’s right to absolute liberty.

Richard Taylor, Bethel