The Weapons Effect

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‘Priming’ is a well-known, rigorously evaluated concept in cognitive science by which exposure to an unconscious stimulus influences response to a later stimulus. A textbook example by Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996) involves an experiment in which subjects were primed with words related to elderly people (slow, forgetful, wrinkle), and found that subjects in the treatment group walked more slowly out of the room than subjects in a control group. These priming effects have been shown to be long-lasting as well. One study found that people primed with certain words are more likely to use those same words to complete a ‘word-fragment completion test’ long after those words had been consciously forgotten.

Why is this relevant to guns? Because a group of social psychologists decided to test whether weapons could function as primes, and the extent to which such primes influenced behavior. They published their findings in a famous paper entitled “Does the Gun Pull the Trigger?” where they found that the mere presence of a weapon primes aggressive behavior. Guns in particular, due to their semantic association with violent behavior, which is reinforced through common experiences in movies, television, and front-page stories, are linked closely with aggression-related concepts. Several studies have confirmed this point. One found people exposed to weapon-related words such as “gun” or “firearm” are more likely to express hostility in subsequent time intervals than those exposed to neutral words.

A great article in the Atlantic brings this conception to bear, arguing that the network of conceptual and symbolic associations triggered when one wields a firearm can, and do, influence behavior. Just as wearing a white lab coat can make an individual behave more intelligently, wielding a gun can make an individual behave more aggressively. The environment we put ourselves in influences our behavior, so we should be cautious about what sort of cultural and social norms we are reinforcing when we advocate for firearms. To modify a Steven Weinberg quote, “With or without guns, you’ll have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things, but if you want good people to do evil things, give them a gun.”

In the case of human psychology, then, the evidence is clear that guns do kill people.

http://www.armedwithreason.com/debunking-the-guns-dont-kill-people-people-kill-people-myth/

Of course Second Amendment absolutists will, like Trump, invent excuses as to why these scientific studies are wrong, and that they have better sources of information. This is a vast left-wing conspiracy to take away their God-given rights to be armed and dangerous they will scream from the rooftops.

Of course it is, you paranoid delicate flower you. Of course it is.