The symbolic meaning of owning a gun is to reclaim political power, demonize minorities, distort the issue of crime in America, express contempt for women gaining access to power, and distract Americans from the real issues of democracy.

It's a sobering thought, though, to consider that there are people who read such evils into an important constitutional freedom, because it just never crossed my mind that gun ownership demonized anyone, much less minorities or women. I mean, don't plenty of minorities and women own guns too? Considering that disarming black people was the earliest form of gun control in this country, I think a good argument can be made that it is actually gun control which demonizes minorities, and gun ownership which empowers both minorities and women. Women have a long history of owning guns in self defense. Witness the muff pistol! And the famous "Equalizer" advertising slogan,

Be not afraid of any man,
No matter what his size.
When danger threatens, call on me
And I will equalize.

Speaking of ads, I have an Iver Johnson pistol that's over 100 years old which I was cleaning earlier. Searching online in an attempt to locate the model number, I found an absolutely precious ad, which indicates that there's been a bit of a change in both advertising and product placement since the gun was made:

Somewhat disparagingly, the website titles it "Send Your Baby To Bed With An Iver Johnson Revolver."

I don't think that's exactly what the company intended to say, and I'd be willing to bet that the ad was never meant as a serious suggestion that babies be put to bed with handguns -- any more than this ad was meant to suggest that your American Tourister suitcase ought to be left in the hands of gorillas for safekeeping:

Rather, the picture of the gun with the baby (while unthinkable today) was the company's way of pointing out that the revolver was designed so that the firing pin retracted after firing, and stayed inside so that it would not fire accidentally as the older ones did. Thus, a small child like the little girl in the picture would not have made it go off by playing with it or dropping it, unless she managed to actually pull the trigger (not an easy thing for a baby to do).

It its time, the hammer on the Iver Johnson double action revolver was considered so safe that the company also ran the following ad, advising customers that they could "hammer the hammer!"

Nowadays, they'd probably have to say something like, "Kids, don't try this at home!"

I'm not about to try the hammer experiment, but looking at the diagram of the action, I think the "hammer the hammer" ad probably gets it right.

But beware!

According to one very insightful commenter, hammers are dangerous!

Statistics show that '3 million'children a year' are killed by hammers and that 'every three hours' someone dies as a result of being hit by a hammer.

The symbolic meaning of owning a hammer is to reclaim political power, demonize minorities, distort the issue of crime in America, express contempt for women gaining access to power, and distract Americans from the real issues of democracy.

UPDATE: Thank you, Glenn Reynolds, for the link, and a warm welcome to all!