ABSTRACT
The commission’s arguments for gun control, the hardest to demolish is that the many lethal crimes of passion could be lessened by reduced availability of handguns. Psychology’s special claim to being able to document a gun control stand rests on experimental studies of angry or retaliatory aggression. The frustrated subjects who displayed what has become known as the “weapons effect” administered significantly more shocks than other frustrated subjects to the accomplice who had been identified as the owner of guns. The inference—at least for persons who are not desensitized gun aficionados—is that the built-in lethality of weapons in real life can have a sobering effect, whereas pictures permit displays of carefree rambunctiousness. A more general issue is whether laboratory studies of aggression have external validity. Guns play a role through their fateful availability for use where their bearers’ or owners’ destructive urges or resolves culminate.
