The recent comments for my last post by my good friend Cannonshop got me to thinking about a topic which has bothered me for many years: Why is it that gun advocates seem to become so rabid when anyone even hints about widening the subatomic gap between them and their weapons? I think I have just received the answer to my question, courtesy of The National Geographic Magazine.
It seems that bullies get off when they witness another's pain. In other (scientific) words, "activity in the amygdala and ventral striatum, regions of the brain sometimes associated with reward and pleasure" were even more active in bullies' brains than in the nonbullies. "We think it means that they like seeing people in pain," said University of Chicago psychologist Benjamin Lahey, co-author of the study. "If that is true," he added, "they are getting positively reinforced every time they bully and are aggressive to other people." As anyone who knows anything about addiction can attest, such reinforcement causes a subject to seek additional positive stimulation. But over time, the effect of the reward reduces, leading to an increase in stimulation required to achieve the same effect.
Eventually, the act of seeking stimulation will lead to a counter-effect, such as running up against the victim's much bigger brother, who kicks the crap out of the bully and disrupts the pleasure seeking.
If you are still here reading this post and not flaming me in the comment section for wanting to deprive you of your domestic defense, here is the connection. The bully runs home swearing revenge, and with the help of Dad's gun collection, the bully can now experience what it's like to be "a bigger man" that the older brother.
There is nothing like having the power to kill in one's hands to make one feel like a man.
One has to wonder if such a scenario wasn't behind the recent murders committed by an eight-year-old boy in St. John's, Arizona. His father was an avid hunter of small animals, and sought the advice of his priest over whether he should teach his son to shoot. The boy's stepmother felt he should begin with a BB gun instead. But Pop got his way, and POP goes the WEAPON! He's now become one of about a dozen annual victims of single-digitally-aged assailants.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
Interesting try with the bully connection, but despite all your links, that's the one thing none of them support. A gun is a terrible tool for bullying, because it really doesn't work well for tormenting someone.
As for gun laws, you sources exhibit remarkable ignorance. Even here in Texas where the gun laws are far more liberal than they are in Massachusetts, you can't legally shoot or even load guns at a gun show, and fully automatic uzis are illegal (as they are nationwide) and it's illegal for an 8 year old to shoot a gun which falls under a Class III license.
In fact, just about every example you cite of gun violence is already illegal under existing gun laws or other more general laws. It's not the guns which are the problem here, but the willingness to ignoe the law.
And your weakest argument is when you ask where the police are to protect us. The truth is - and police admit this - that they cannot prevent crime or protect people, they can only respond after the fact. This is why virtually every police organization in the US supports private ownership of firearms for home defense.
Dave
2 - Cannonshop
Dave, it's truly hopeless, trying to reason with a Hoplophobe-the fact is, statists of all stripes wish to confer magical powers on objects that they can then blame and ban.
Notably, every single example in the article displays one of two major things- First, (perhaps foremost) the perpetrators in the story are violating existing laws, laws that in fact exist in all fifty states.
Second, they're also incidents rooted largely in ignorance of weapons-a bit like Realist's entire article is.
Realist, a gun is like a vote-it can be used to destroy the life of someone else, or it can be used to save that someone else's life. We let idiots vote, and idiots will, whether we let them or not, obtain illegal and illegally modified firearms. There are also a number of idiots who obtain LEGAL firearms-including idiots that are NOT a credit to the profession of law enforcement.
Your bully thing falls down in one other place, "Realist" (what an ironic name!) Bullies are no more likely to own firearms, than the people they victimized-but they're a hell of a lot less likely to victimize someone who is armed, than someone who is not. A gun makes a ninety-pound woman as powerful as a three hundered pound kickboxer who's been lifting and training since going to prison fourteen years ago.
OH, damn, one more thing...
The police are not required to protect YOU. They're only required to protect "Society at large". They don't have to even enforce no-contact orders issued by judges, they don't have to guard a woman who's being stalked by her ex-and they largely don't.
All the Police are obligated to do (and there's a SCOTUS case backing this up) is to investigate the murder or the rape after-the-fact. The police aren't required to, don't have the ability to, and are not going to protect someone whose life is in imminent danger unless it's convenient for them to do so.
3 - Jim
The points about the bullies breaking the law stands. The bully is already breaking the law b using the firearms in an illegal way. Making any law to further prevent the attainment of firearms only prevents law abiding citizens from getting them.
The bully is breaking the law by using the firearms illegally (gotta love that redundant sentence). In order to prevent that illegal action from resulting in a casualty the objects of the bullies desires, the innocents, should arm themselves and protect themselves. Make the action of harm against innocents illegal (it is), make the attainment of guns (by law abiding citizens) legal so that when one uses firearms illegally (already breaking the law) the potential victim can use firearms legally to protect themselves.
Forgive the redundancy, just wanted to make it as simple as possible.
4 - Hucbald
First of all, being armed and prepared to defend one's life is a fundamental human right. It is also a fundamental human right for individuals in communities to be able to band together to defend their rights and freedoms from tyrannical governments. Governments don't want to acknowledge this because they wish to maintain power and they fear an armed populace. So, they attempt to brainwash the populace - and are successful with individuals such as this writer here - into believing that arms are dangerous and ought to be outlawed.
This is precisely why the Second Amendment was put into the US Constitution. It has nothing to do with hunting or recreational shooting, and everything to do with defending one's life, property and freedom from criminals and tyrannical governments.
As with any dangerous tool, accidents will happen with them, especially when in the hands of fools, and sometimes even when they are in the hands of experts. The correct reaction to these incidents is to lament the tragic loss, learn from it if possible, and move on. Instead, lawyers see dollar signs and legislators see increased comfort for the governments they owe their existences to, and so lawsuits are brought and legislation is proposed and/or enacted. The methodology lawyers and lawyer-legislators use is, of course, playing to the ignorance and on the fears of their clients and constituents.
The US would be a far better place to live in if we legalized all forms of weaponry for civilians and outlawed lawyers.
5 - Christopher Rose
Dave: "A gun is a terrible tool for bullying, because it really doesn't work well for tormenting someone."
Are you totally out of your fucking mind?
6 - Christopher Rose
Hucbald, it isn't guns that are inherently dangerous, it is people. Having more guns around makes it more likely that they will be used. As we see regularly in the media, the easy access to weapons allows unstable people to cause a lot of damage and harm.
If all people were completely sane and there was no poverty in one of the most powerful countries on the planet, then maybe it would be okay for everyone to be armed. However, neither of those conditions exist, which makes the limitation of weapons a good idea.
You seem to want to return the USA to the time of cowboys and the rule of the gun. That didn't work out to well back then and there is no evidence to suggest that it would work any better now.
7 - Clavos
the easy access to weapons allows unstable people to cause a lot of damage and harm.
True, but like easy access to dope (and booze, years ago) not something you can correct by legislation.
In any case, the per capita incidence of nutcases among the gun owning population is negligible, so you would attempt to remove the rights of the overwhelming majority in order to prevent a tiny minority from acquiring guns, with virtually no chance of success.
A typical "liberal" (actually illiberal) "solution," with no real chance for success, but a "solution" which will strengthen the power of an already overbearing government that much more.
A pox on your "good idea."
8 - Christopher Rose
Clavos, why do you say that easy access to weapons can't be controlled by legislation? Plenty of other countries manage to do it.
The fact that the per capita incidence is low doesn't have much relevance or provide any comfort if you happen to be one of those that suffers from such an incident.
I didn't say that the nutcases were the only people who have guns that shouldn't. The list should also include gang members and people who fancy themselves as some kind of vigilante or freelance crime fighter.
As I believe you are aware, the right to bear arms wasn't drafted in an attempt to allow citizens to take the law into their own hands.
I have never claimed to be a liberal, have always avoided the use of such lazy tagging and don't subscribe to your opinion that this is an example of over-bearing government.
9 - Lisa Solod Warren
Nobody needs an assault weapon. Not a good citizen or a nutcase. A rifle, a shotgun, a handgun, perhaps. But NO ONE needs an assault weapon.
10 - Clavos
You, are, of course entitled to your opinion, Chris; however misguided it might be.
Plenty of other countries might have control over guns among the populace, but some of them, most notably Great Britain, are steadily losing that control as guns become ever more common. The fact is, none of the countries that control the private ownership of weapons have said right enshrined in their Bill of Rights. We do.
In any case, what works in "plenty of other countries" will not necessarily work in this country, where our government has historically been unable to control the public's access to any number of illegal and/or proscribed items. My 14 year old nephew can acquire any drug you care to name within 30 minutes without leaving the grounds of his school, and he lives in an upper middle class, tony suburb of Minneapolis, a city and state known for their relatively low crime rates.
Your assumption about my awareness of the reason for which the Second Amendment was drafted is unwarranted. What I do know, (confirmed by SCOTUS, numerous times), is that the Amendment endows me with the "right to keep and bear arms," a right which "shall not be infringed."
This right is the law of the land.
The fact that per capita incidence of gun-related crime is low has plenty of relevance, in that eliminating the right of millions to bear arms in order to control the misdeeds of thousands is tyrannical to the majority.
And BTW, gang members and "people who fancy themselves as some kind of vigilante or freelance crime fighter" are nutcases.
Finally, there are numerous restrictions on gun ownership on the books in virtually every state which are not currently being enforced. Rather than create new, unconstitutional laws, the existing ones should be enforced.
11 - Clavos
@#9:
Dead on.
12 - Glenn Contrarian
To the conservatives -
Pleas note the 'contrarian' in my screen name. I might be quite liberal, but the only gun control I would agree to is registration of ALL firearms, required safety training (by the NRA, perhaps) prior to ownership of a particular class of weapon, and no automatic weapons.
Actually, I think you would find most Democrats agree with me on limiting gun control to the above requirements. Most of us know that Pandora's out of the box, that there is NO way to take away 200 million firearms...and even if we could, our borders are too porous to stop the smuggling of more firearms. A total ban on firearms is simply not practical.
The eight-year-old child with a gun is actually the exception to the rule. If you want to protect children, then get rid of residential swimming pools. They kill a lot more children every year than firearms do, as the authors of Freakonomics pointed out (they changed my mind on gun control...and reinforced what I believe on other matters. I STRONGLY recommend the book).
13 - Clavos
Besides residential swimming pools are undemocratic, elitist and wasteful in the extreme.
If the people want to swim, they should do so in community pools, unless they live on the coast, in which case small designated beach areas should be allowed for public swimming; the rest of the beaches should be designated off limits to all but the conservationists, in order to protect fragile ecosystems.
14 - Baritone
Apparently, BC is an official arm of the NRA. As I've stated before, I look upon gun ownership as unnecessary and from a strictly Freudian perspective infantile and indicative of inadequacy issues.
Secondly, whenever the Second Amendment is thrown out there as the ultimate defense for gun ownership, only the second and third clauses are mentioned. The first clause virtually always gets discarded - even by the Supreme Court. But just for the sake of argument, here it is:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..."
Does anyone in their wildest imagination believe that the willy-nilly proliferation of guns in this country even remotely resembles a "well regulated Militia?
It is apparently assumed by most that the first clause of the Second Amendment was included just to give the sentence a sense of balance, that the words have no effective purpose or meaning.
I have never personally owned a firearm. My only experience with them was in the military. (Well, there was my Red Rider BB gun I got when I was around 11 and with which I managed to shoot my brother in the shoulder. Before that was my duel Nichols "Stallion 38" gun and holster set which had those 2 piece "bullets" into which one could place those little round caps. Bang, bang! But I stopped playing with those before I entered Jr. High if memory serves.) I feel no need to own a weapon.
I have toyed with the idea of obtaining something like pepper spray, mostly to have with me should I be accosted by someone's dog as I do appraisal inspections. I have been told by a couple of people, though, that those sprays generally have little effect on really aggressive dogs like Pit Bulls or Rottweilers, so even that is not high on my list.
The chief reason most people use to claim the necessity of gun ownership is personal protection. While I know that shit happens pretty much everywhere, whether in the ghetto or in the toniest parts of town, most of us have few real encounters with any real personal danger. Then it comes down to protecting our "stuff." We keep buying and hoarding more and more "stuff" that we feel compelled to protect, so we buy guns which amounts to more "stuff." Some even buy more guns to protect the other guns they already own.
The previous owner of the house we now live in was a true gun nut. In the 2 or 3 tours we took of the house prior to making an offer, I counted no less than 50 guns of pretty much every kind you could think of - including automatic assault weapons - and these were only the ones he kept on "display." We were told he apparently had dozens more he kept in a storage facility. I asked if he was an avid hunter. No, he said. Never liked to go hunting. Then what...? Oh, yeah, of course. He prefered "hunting" animals of the 2 legged variety.
Being the nervous type - just the kind of guy we all want brandishing a wide variety of deadly weapons - he would not allow us to look through the house without his presence in each and every room. Often during our inspections he would carry around one of his "babies" lovingly caressing it with a soft cloth, presumably bathing it with some kind of gun oil.
Another issue with this gentleman was that he had a fully equipped bar in the basement rec room including a loaded beer tapper and a back bar having plexi-glass shelving loaded with dozens of bottles of liquor. This made us feel even more comfortable as he at least had the demeanor of one about half in the bag each time we were on the property.
During one visit, he proudly told us how he had taught his then 13 year old son how to load his own bullets, who then demonstrated his newly acquired ability for us to see. It was great.
I thought it curious that his realtor refused to accompany us into the house. Why, do you suppose?
BTW, after selling the house, this guy and his family moved back to Iowa where he died at age 53 owing to complications from alcoholism and emphysema (he was also a heavy smoker.) Presumably, his son is still out there carrying the "I love my guns, and I'll shoot anybody who tries to take them from me" banner.
B
15 - Dave Nalle
However, neither of those conditions exist, which makes the limitation of weapons a good idea.
Christopher joins the author in displaying his ignorance of gun laws. We currently have extensive background checks to purchase a gun in the US, which includes excluding criminals and the mentally unsound from purchasing guns.
Dave
16 - Dave Nalle
The previous owner of the house we now live in was a true gun nut.
Based on your description, the operative word here is more 'nut' than 'gun'. The guy clearly showed obsessive/addictive behavior, and the guns just happened to be the focus. It could easily have been pet cats or pornography.
Are you suggesting that we ban cats and porn for those with addictive personalities?
Being the nervous type - just the kind of guy we all want brandishing a wide variety of deadly weapons - he would not allow us to look through the house without his presence in each and every room. Often during our inspections he would carry around one of his "babies" lovingly caressing it with a soft cloth, presumably bathing it with some kind of gun oil.
Perhaps he was concerned about letting strangers have an opportunity to injure themselves with his guns?
Anyway, got to run - almost time to load up the shotguns and head to the turkey shoot.
Dave
17 - Christopher Rose
Clavos, I am unimpressed by your opinion that my opinion is misguided.
There is nothing particularly special or unique about the USA, so there is no reason that such laws wouldn't work there. The only thing that is lacking is the political will.
As a relatively young country, the USA will probably need more time before it can come round to such a position.
What your nephew can do is neither unique to the USA or relevant to the debate, nor is it easy to see much correlation between drug laws and weapons laws.
Your argument about a gun law being tyrannical could just as easily be applied to any other issue, so it is also irrelevant, unless you are advocating the repeal of all laws.
I don't actually think that gang members are nutcases either. They probably are the biggest internal threat to the current established ways of US society though - and growing bigger all the time.
Completely agree with you about both the vigilantes and the need to enforce current laws before enacting any others though.
18 - Clavos
As I've stated before, I look upon gun ownership as unnecessary and from a strictly Freudian perspective infantile and indicative of inadequacy issues.
And you, of course, are a fully trained and licensed psychiatrist.
Spare us your amateur practice of medicine without a license.
I counted no less than 50 guns of pretty much every kind you could think of - including automatic assault weapons...
Unless you closely examined those weapons and looked for and found a key part, one has no way of knowing by appearance whether any given "assault rifle" (a broadly misused appellation) is fully auto (illegal) or only semi auto (legal). Especially not you, who freely admits you have no experience at all with guns.
"Assault rifles" are illegal. In fact, the vast majority of weapons that those who don't know guns assume are such are not either illegal or "assault rifles." The legal definition of an assault rifle is one which is selectable, it can be changed from semi auto to full auto simply by turning a lever. A legal weapon that externally looks just like an AR-15 but is not selectable is not capable of fully auto fire, and consequently is neither illegal nor an "assault rifle."
19 - Clavos
What your nephew can do is neither unique to the USA or relevant to the debate...
It certainly is. You're talking about bannning a commodity for which there is a huge demand in this country, just as there is for drugs. It's a very good parallel.
Unless you can turn off the demand, there will always be entrepreneurs willing and able to supply any illegal commodity and meet that demand, as our (and the rest of the "free" world's) futile experience with banning drugs has amply demonstrated.
Only relatively (or totally) repressive societies have succeeded in banning commodities. The less repressive, the less successful the results.
20 - zingzing
clavos: "Besides residential swimming pools are undemocratic, elitist and wasteful in the extreme. If the people want to swim, they should do so in community pools, unless they live on the coast..."
why you tree-hugging socialist! you forget you sell yachts?
21 - Clavos
The real irony, zing, is that these days I'm mostly selling them to people born and raised as socialists in former Soviet republics.
These guys are now capitalists with a vengeance, now that they've gotten a taste of what it's like to be rich.
22 - Franco
#12 " Glenn Contrarian
Thank you Mr. Contrarian. Spoken for truth.
23 - Franco
#17 " Christopher Rose
I don't actually think that gang members are nutcases either. They probably are the biggest internal threat to the current established ways of US society though - and growing bigger all the time.
What in the heck does that mean! Would you kindly elaborate on your statement.
24 - Glenn Contrarian
Thanks, Franco -
Baritone - How DARE you? Don't you know that the Second Amendment is second ONLY to the Ten Commandments in importance to humankind? It should have been the FIRST Amendment, don't you think? Since when is the pen mightier than the sword? After all, "Power grows at the point of a gun", as Mao Tse Tung sagely noted.
25 - Baritone
Dave,
"Are you suggesting that we ban cats and porn for those with addictive personalities?
Not in the least. However, cats nor even porn were designed with the sole purpose of killing someone or something. Most of his guns were presumably obtained legally despite laws designed to prohibit "nuts" from purchasing them.
And, no it wasn't "injury" that concerned this guy. He assumed that our main goal was to steal some of his precious darlings. He later told his realtor as much.
Clav,
"And you, of course, are a fully trained and licensed psychiatrist. Spare us your amateur practice of medicine without a license."
Oh, come on Clav. It hardly takes a medical license to understand what guns represent to a lot of guys, even some women.
As to my knowledge of gun nomenclature, you are correct. However, this fellow proudly, if stupidly, pointed out to us exactly what he had in his arsenal during our second visit including an AK47 and, if memory serves either an M16 or an AR15. Give me a little bit of credit. Now he may have been lying to us, but I guess, as he is dead, we'll never know.
B