Of course, the argument that everyone misses with these statistics is that self-defense with firearms simply does not happen. Compared to murder and manslaughter with firearms, legal self-defense cases are miniscule, and owning a firearm is dangerous, as it is several hundred times more likely to kill or injure a friend or family member than to stop a perpetrator.
Eighty-Five percent of all human beings have an ingrained resistance to killing others, even in defense of their own life. In fact, this resistance is so deep, that in a difficult situation your body will turn off its own bowel and bladder control before it flips the switch that allows most people to kill. This was basically proven by studies after WWII, that showed soldiers on all sides had a firing rate -with the intention to kill or injure the enemy- of about 15%.
Of course, someone without this innate resistance is what society often calls a "borderline sociopath." And while most of these people are perfectly normal and upright, sometimes they can become violent and kill, or even slip into full sociopathy.
This innate resistance can be circumvented by the need to protect a loved one, like a child or spouse, but strictly speaking in self-defense, it almost never turns off. Thus, there is no real difference between current gun laws in the US and if the government took all legal guns away from civilians, or rather, the only difference would be in accidental injuries and deaths.
Again, this innate resistance can be circumvented through operant conditioning. Modern militaries utilize this in order to increase their rate of fire of personnel, but there is strong evidence to suggest that this causes increased rates of PTSD as a result. So, we trade the trauma of death for the trauma of killing.
The major problem, to my mind, is that we have a massive society-level delusion about killing. We exalt it and obsess over it and delude ourselves about what it is and what it is like and what the consequences are. And this delusion has its roots in history, long before games and even movies portrayed violent acts.
Eighty-Five percent of all human beings have an ingrained resistance to killing others, even in defense of their own life. In fact, this resistance is so deep, that in a difficult situation your body will turn off its own bowel and bladder control before it flips the switch that allows most people to kill. This was basically proven by studies after WWII, that showed soldiers on all sides had a firing rate -with the intention to kill or injure the enemy- of about 15%.
Of course, someone without this innate resistance is what society often calls a "borderline sociopath." And while most of these people are perfectly normal and upright, sometimes they can become violent and kill, or even slip into full sociopathy.
This innate resistance can be circumvented by the need to protect a loved one, like a child or spouse, but strictly speaking in self-defense, it almost never turns off. Thus, there is no real difference between current gun laws in the US and if the government took all legal guns away from civilians, or rather, the only difference would be in accidental injuries and deaths.
Again, this innate resistance can be circumvented through operant conditioning. Modern militaries utilize this in order to increase their rate of fire of personnel, but there is strong evidence to suggest that this causes increased rates of PTSD as a result. So, we trade the trauma of death for the trauma of killing.
The major problem, to my mind, is that we have a massive society-level delusion about killing. We exalt it and obsess over it and delude ourselves about what it is and what it is like and what the consequences are. And this delusion has its roots in history, long before games and even movies portrayed violent acts.