Interesting perspective, and I bet you're dead right about the secret fantasies of gun lovers. But you leave us with the sense that these heroic daydreamers are ready to whip out their pistols and shoot up potential bad guys at the slightest excuse, and I'm not sure that follows.

Most people have wild fantasies, but very few attempt to act them out in the real world. Heck, when I walk down the street with a big umbrella, I imagine disarming some would-be mugger with an awesome ninja-cum-drum-major umbrella twirl. Were I to attempt it, I would almost certainly end up in the ER with a large umbrella in my left nostril if not a bullet wound to boot. I would like to think that I would use better judgment in the real world.

There's a reason those Tarantino gunfights don't seem to happen much. They're fantasies. While I'm sure there have been cases of non-psychotic individuals occasionally acting out their hero fantasies, I doubt that they make up a sizable share of the nation's gun violence.

But what's interesting about your perspective is the light it sheds on why guns are so damned popular. We gun-less liberals often assume that it's about fear. I can't tell you how many times I've heard urbanites wonder why folks in safe suburbia feel the need for firearm protection. But I bet that fear is not the main reason why so many Americans love guns.

When I was a kid, every summer we drove to my grandparents house, which took us through the desert along I-5.  One year, our car broke down while we in one of the more desolate places and were stranded for a few hours until a state trooper called in for a tow truck.

After that experience, my dad bought a .357 magnum and when we took the same trip the following year, he put into the glove compartment (which had a lock on it so my brother and I couldn't get to it): Just in case we were stranded again and bad guys decided to prey on us.  (in my mind at the time that meant a motorcycle gang).  My mom wasn't thrilled, but when along with the plan. 

After the initial conversation about it when he purchased it, the gun was never really mentioned.  It just was there, just out of sight.

Thinking back on it, I believe my father (who was in the military and hated it) was just doing what he thought he was suppose to do as the man of the house.  Protecting the family is as much a duty and obligation of the father as bringing home the paycheck.  Standing on the side of the road, waiting for someone to come rescue us along the side of I-5, I can bet he felt helpless, unable to provide for the family, to fulfill his role as the good father. 

Maybe he had fantasies of shooting the bad motorcycle gang terrorizing his family.  This was shortly after the movie Dirty Harry came out, so maybe he saw himself as Clint Eastwood with his .357 asking "do you feel lucky, punk?"  But then we have to start looking at to what extent men in this culture achieve or don't achieve a sense of fulfillment and high esteem of their self. 

Spoiling for violence, from this perspective, is not seeking violence for violence sake, but to finally fulfill a role that one has come to believe is part of who one is - a player finally getting to come off the bench when the coach calls his name to go out there in center field.

All through college I waitressed in a Sicilian restaurant favored as an "after hours" joint by barkeeps, club and restaurant owners, waitresses (and show people from time to time.) And one got to know many of them by getting invited to after-after-hours parties once in a while. Seemed to me like all the moronic twerps with attitude (with, yes, I would say, penis inferiority complexes) packed, and all the attractive, confident macho men of the street didn't bother. Just mho. (Also too, that was waaaay before gangsta rap and when the only video game was PacMan,  both which it could be argued, changed things some. ) Mr. Quentin Tarantino has always reminded me of every twerp I met back then, one of them even shared his last name.

Meanwhile, the phenomena you are talking about, of being a hero or saving people, certainly does not seem to apply very much to what we are learning about the Newtown attack--

this Hartford Courant piece from yesterday seems to have a lot of good details on the attack itself from "law enforcement sources"

No, that's not a hero, that's the dangerous evil guy fantasy of video games, he's not trying to save anybody, he's doing a "kill them all!" And I can't get away from thinking how alike it sounds to "dark knight" James Holmes, who is now being treated in hospital for banging his head against the wall.

I may finally be apologizing to Tipper Gore, changing my mind somewhat about violent video games and music. I used to pooh-pooh this because my two-closest-in-age brothers as kids "played army" like maniacs, visualizing battles in their heads, screaming aloud in their beds, for hours and hours. And they both grew up not wanting anything to do with violence or war except for hunting (the worst of the two on playing army won't even do that.)

But maybe, just maybe, the world of video games etc. highly affects those with certain mental defects concerning reality? .....I wonder what Tipper's opinion is now,  especially as mental health was another one of her favorite causes...

As to Lanza's story, we may never really know; the Hartford Courant article says he really did a number on his computer hard drive, sounds like it will be a miracle if the FBI can get anything off of it.

P.S. I am dying to say that culturally, Quentin Tarantino and his ilk has got a lot of 'splaining to do! Massacres = awesome has become something a bit more than tiresome in our culture...Got me thinking how shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy helped bring about more acceptance of gays, mho; so maybe some enterprising producers and directors (any playwrightsout there as well? ) can come up with a new viral meme:: massacres = not awesome? or in video games: massacres: you lose!) No coincidence that Ms. Wampole, the essayist of the link in another of my comments upthread, is a professor of literature? But in the end, it all gets absurd, because I guess I am talking about art targeted to the mentally disturbed?

Isn't fantasizing about killing people as away to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?

-- Wayne LaPierre