Stuff You Should Know - Does owning a gun change your behavior?

Episode Date: September 26, 2013

Back in the 1990s, Congress effectively banned the scientific study of gun violence. Still, a handful of researchers plugged on and produced a small body of work about the effect of the presence of guns on the human psyche. Chuck and Josh look at the evidence. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is Operation Trade Bomb, an Apple original podcast hosted by Mark Smerling. Follow Operation Trade Bomb on Apple podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I'm your host, Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know. You want to give just a general COA out of the gate? Yes, this is a hot button issue.

Guns right now in this country in the United States. It's a very tough topic. And we are here to talk about do guns change your behavior and studies that they've done on that. You're not advocating for guns or advocating for gun control. We are just presenting evidence that some people have presented. Yeah, how's that? Well, we should say also that I think some, especially people who are pro-gun, I mean,

your sensitivity might be a little high right now. Yeah, but I'm saying this particular podcast may strike you as biased even though it's not simply because the studies have found things like, you know, there are increased homicide rates and suicide rates associated with guns and things like that. So again, we're just reporting some compiled body of work and we're presenting in an unbiased manner. Good job. Thanks, man.

So we just kind of let the cat out of the bag. If you are in the guns, if you are pro-gun, you will probably point out that you own guns for sport. You own guns for home protection and you may point to a statistic that ownership of guns in the United States is higher than it ever has been at any point and not necessarily coincidentally, the homicide rate has dropped since 1991. That's right. The inverse correlation, you could say, between gun ownership in the United States and just

by number of guns and the homicide rate, which gun advocates will say, you know, like, give people more guns and there will be less violence because if everyone is armed, then there will be fewer people like invading your home because, hey, I know you got a gun in there, that kind of thing. Right. Now, the other side, people who are in favor of gun control would point out that, yes, the homicide rate has dropped, but there's actually fewer people who own guns than ever before.

Fewer households. Yes. With guns, but more the people that have guns have more guns. Right. And it's Mark Twain famously said there are three types of lies, lies, damn lies, and statistics. Sure. So that, like, this is one statistic that can be looked at two different ways.

Yeah. Like, there's more guns in the United States than ever before and the homicide rate has dropped. There's also fewer people in the United States who own guns than ever before and the homicide rate has dropped. Right. It's just fewer people owning more guns. Right.

And, boy, you are dead on with the statistic thing in this topic because depending on how you want to research, you're going to find statistics to support your way of thinking, probably. Yeah. So what we encourage people to do, you probably have your mind made up anyway on this issue. I doubt if a statistic is going to change anyone's mind, but go out and just look at all the non-biased research is what I say. Yeah.

Don't go to the NRA and get your stats and don't go to whatever the NRA equivalent, anti-gun equivalent is and get your stats, try and get them from, like, unbiased sources. Yeah, and one of the former unbiased sources that used to put out a lot of gun violence studies, unbiased, you would imagine, is the CDC. Yeah. And the CDC put out a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff. And then there was a dearth of it beginning in 1996, which I didn't know about this until today.

Did you? No, I didn't. But it makes the NRA successfully lobbied Congress to stop funding the CDC's work on gun violence. Yes. And this is where it gets a little nitpicky with the wording. They didn't specifically say you can't research gun violence. What they did was they reduced the amount of funding by the exact dollar amount that

they spent the previous year on research and attached this quote to it. In the appropriations bill, none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the CDC may be used to advocate or promote gun control. So pro-gun folks would say, you know, we never said they couldn't do any research. What we said was you can't do research that has findings that support gun control. So if the findings support gun control, you can't do that, basically. Right. Like, any finding that showed that, you know, there's an increased risk of violence linked

to guns, you could interpret under that sentence as advocating gun control. Yeah. And in 2003, the language was updated to include in whole or in part, which expanded things. And then in 2012, it expanded the restriction to all health and human service agencies. So January of this year, President Obama has now called for funding specifically for, yeah, I think a 23-point memo of what he wanted to get through in terms of research. Yeah. Those were the executive orders that he could carry out that had to do with gun control,

basically. Yeah. 10 million bucks for additional research. Which is a lot more than they used to get. It peaked in 1995 at 2.6 million. So throwing 10 million dollars at this today, even adjusted for inflation, that's going to produce a lot more studies on gun violence for the CDC. And people, before you get worked up, this is research.

They're saying we should do research on this. They're basically framing it as a public health epidemic, because people are dying and, hey, we study how violence or how automobiles kill people. Yeah. We study how alcohol and drugs kill people. We study how everything kills people, except the guns. So we should start researching this just to get some current statistics on it. And if you want to get riled up about anything, get riled up about the idea that Congress

banned scientific study. Yeah. Period. Yeah. And you can basically, from the research I found, you can lay this at the feet of Bob Barr and Newt Gingrich, basically, the two representatives from Georgia. Newt Gingrich had almost as much power as Clinton in 1996. Yeah.

And, yeah, that was pretty much who was responsible for this. Well, Jay Dickey, the representative who sponsored the amendment back then, has now recanted and said, you know what, he's no longer in office, but he wrote an editorial stating that, quote, scientific research should be conducted into preventing firearm injuries and that ways to prevent firearm deaths can be found without encroaching on the rights of legitimate gun owners. So basically, he's come out and said, you know, we should research this stuff, not saying ban guns or go to people's houses and grab the guns, but at the very least, we should

do the research so we know what we're talking about. And so the American public can make their own informed decisions one way or the other, right? That's right. Okay. So that's why there's been a dearth of reliable statistics since 1996, but CDC's not the only people carrying out this kind of research. Other people have who are independent of Congress for funding.

Yeah, not a ton though, because there's not a lot of funding period. So it's pretty sad. Like, I read this one article on that a lot of the people that did this, it's not like you can just pick any old researcher and say, research gun violence. Like, you have to have it, like it has to be your specialty. Oh, sure. And a lot of people have just don't do this anymore because of that ban. So it's sadly, it's hard to find people qualified enough to even do it now.

Yeah. I mean, no matter what it is, people go to where the money is, right? Absolutely. So the stuff that we do have though, the studies we do have reliable studies that we do have pretty much across the board going to an increased risk of death if a gun's present. But before, I guess before we talk about that, yeah, I think now is probably a good time for a message break. 2023 is already well underway, everybody, so don't wait any longer to level up your

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off your tour. That's promo code heart 20 through January 30 visit gate one travel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code heart 20 through January 30 to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. Okay, let's talk about the weapon effect. Yeah, this is a very touchy subject as well. In 1967, these two dudes Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony LaPage did a little study where

they brought people into a room had the participants antagonized basically by someone else just to get them riled up and then they left the room and were told that they could give them electric shocks. Some people had a gun in the room on the table and they said, don't worry about that. Let's just hear from a previous study. Some people had badminton rackets and they said, don't worry about that from a previous study. And they found that just the presence of guns in the room cause people to shock more and

harder at a higher voltage. So they dub that the weapons effect saying just the mere presence of a gun in the room even when told to ignore it increased agro behavior basically. And that's been backed up by other studies, there's one in 2006 that showed that interacting with a gun actually increases the testosterone levels of men. Yeah, by a hundred percent. Wow, that is a lot. That's a huge increase, right?

Yep. So this study basically they said here, play with this gun and then now we're gonna firstly took a swab and tested the testosterone levels then they said here, play with this gun and afterward we're gonna take another swab. But in the meantime, we're also gonna let you put hot sauce in the water of somebody who's gonna have to drink it. And the men who handled the gun and messed around with the gun for a while put far more hot sauce into the water than the men who didn't handle a gun.

Yeah, three times as much hot sauce. And the same two previous guys, Berkowitz and LaPage did another one that I found really interesting. They put a pickup truck in traffic with, well, different pickup trucks, some with guns in the rack and some without a gun rack at all and made them sit at a traffic light that had turned green for 12 seconds to see how people behind them responded. And surprisingly, people were more likely to honk their horns if there was a gun in the truck ahead of them, which they said that meant, see, the presence of a gun just makes

people more aggressive. Whereas I was kind of like, oh, that's sort of weird that they would be more aggressive towards someone with a gun when you didn't have one. Yeah. Well, it's almost like possibly that people interpret that as a threat, just the presence of a gun. Maybe. Someone else is flaunting to the rest of the world is just kind of some sort of veiled

threat despite its very presence. We detect guns actually faster than we detect snakes, spiders. These are things called fear relevant stimuli. When guns fall, guns syringes, they fall into this category as well. And humans are hardwired evolutionarily to be able to pick out a snake out of a landscape faster than say we can pick out like a woodchuck or a chipmunk or something like that because we know from eons of evolution that these things are very dangerous to us. Studies have found that we can pick guns out faster than we can pick snakes out.

So quick evolution. Yeah. Yeah. That's very quick evolution. It's called the threat superiority effect where we can identify threatening objects faster than non-threatening objects. And apparently guns and syringes too, I think are topping the list these days. They also found that drivers who have a gun in the car were significantly more likely

to do things like make obscene gestures at other people, 23% compared to 16%. Go too close aggressively, 14% to 8%, or both, 6.3% to 2.8%. And then they even found that even when guns weren't around, just the mere suggestion of aggressive words as opposed to non-aggressive words like gun, people were more aggressive in these studies. So a lot of people have supported the weapons effect study and said, no, it's perfectly valid. And a lot of people have said, no, you know what?

The weapons effect is BS and that study is invalid. So which one is larger? Yeah, right. Exactly. Which? I don't know. I think as with all things, it depends on who you're talking to, I don't know if it's been broken down like that.

Okay, so it seems to, there seems to be some sort of evidence at least that there's the potential for increased aggression with the presence of a gun, right? There's also studies that show, and this is the one, apparently, I don't know why people aren't talking about this more, especially with the gun debate that's going on now. But if you want to talk about a correlation, talk about suicide and the presence of guns. Yeah, I think that's one that's pretty much not been refuted. No. There were a lot of gun deaths in the U.S. in 2011, 11,000 of them were homicides.

And 19,766 were suicides, all with firearms. So twice as many people took their own lives with a gun than took someone else's life. Yeah, and not only that, you, in 1992, and again, I hate not having more recent research, but it's not our fault that we can't point to a study from three years ago, you know. But a 1992 study by the CDC said that if you have a gun in the home, you're five times more likely to commit suicide overall, and in 2003, there actually was another study that said access to a gun made someone more than three times more likely to commit suicide than without.

And 80 to 90% of people who shoot themselves succeed in dying, which... Well that's why they think that the correlation is so strong. So that's for people who really want to end it, not to cry for help. Yeah, but... You're probably not going to shoot yourself in the head if it's a cry for help. Right, but what the people who are saying this is legitimate research are pointing to is that suicide is frequently an impulsive act, and when you're in the midst of a crisis and you decide to end it, if you do it, if you try hanging your pills or carbon monoxide

or whatever, you are less likely to be successful than you are with a firearm. And so the presence of a firearm in the house during that time of crisis increases your likelihood of committing suicide by a firearm. But also, Chuck, there is another study that found that people who own a handgun and commit suicide are far more likely to use the handgun than another type of method, even though that's available to them as well. Right. Well, I guess, like I said, those people that probably really want to end it all.

Yeah. Interestingly, the Israeli Defense Force found that their suicide rate dropped 40% among its soldiers just by saying you can't take your weapons home this weekend. So they banned them from taking their weapons home over the weekend. Suicide rate dropped by 40%. Regardless where you stand on this issue, it has pretty much been proven that guns and suicide, there is a direct correlation going on there. Okay.

Homicide? Shall we move on? Yes, let's move on. So there is a 1992 study that found that family disputes that turned violent were three times more likely to result in death if a gun was present in the house. And there was another study by the CDC that found that homicides are about three times more likely for family members in a house where there is a gun. Two studies have found virtually the same thing.

The presence of a gun, at least in the 90s, the swing in 90s, having a gun in the house meant that each of the family members was three times more likely, apparently, to die by a homicide. Right. And that is the domestic dispute that gets out of hand. If a gun is around, then your chances are higher that it's going to be in murder. Well one said, a family dispute that turns violent is you're three times more likely to result in death.

The other one, the CDC one, I think was just plainly saying, just having a gun in the house you're three times more likely to die by homicide. Right. Okay. I guess it's fair to point out, though, that most murders don't happen at your home. Unless... Yeah. You're a woman.

A child or elderly. So basically, if you're an average age man, you're less likely to be murdered in your house. Everybody else is more likely. Right. But if you were killed in your home, the vast majority are people who knew the perpetrator. Like, basically, the cases of someone breaking into your house who you do not know and ending in death are much lower than, here it is right here, 30 percent, fewer than 30 percent of

burglaries in the U.S. occur when someone's at home, period. And the 7 percent where violence does occur, it's more likely to be someone you know. So 5 percent of all the crimes perpetrated by strangers occur, only 5 percent occur in the house. Got you. So you're basically what they're saying is the home is a pretty safe place by and large. Right. And so just having a gun that you keep at home, the studies then suggest actually increases

your likelihood of you or someone you love who lives in that house killing one another rather than somebody coming into your house and you protecting yourself using that gun. Right. Yeah. And they even... They went to the streets in 2009 in Philadelphia and looked at 677 shootings over a couple of years and they found that people that carry guns were four and a half times more likely to be shot and 4.2 times more likely to be killed.

And I guess the thinking there is if you have a gun you may just feel more aggressive or more likely to act rashly or put yourself in a bad part of town because, hey, I've got this protection or to be aggressive because you know you've got the protection, that kind of thing. Yeah. And there's this really, really great article from 2010 that was in Harper's Magazine. It was in the August 2010 issue. It's called Happiness is a Warn Gun.

And it's this guy's like just basically his life carrying a gun and just what it's like. It's just a really great look at what it's like to have a gun on you at all times and like what that means. He says you're in condition white which is basically you're constantly on high alert because if you're carrying a gun you have a sense of responsibility not just for yourself but you also need to protect everybody else if somebody starts shooting or if there's a robbery or something like that. That's why you have a gun on you.

So you feel a sense of stewardship of just other people, strangers in public. Well, sort of like you're the police all of a sudden. Yeah. And so you live in this thing, this state called condition white where you're just your threat response is constantly on at some level. Which gun control advocates I'm sure are all about condition white. Right. They're like, yeah, that's exactly what we're looking for is people to be alert and armed.

Yeah. This guy I believe came to the conclusion that he was tired of living in condition white. It was just too exhausting. Yeah. And I think he stopped carrying maybe. I don't remember how it ends but it's a really great article. I would recommend anybody on either side of the issue to read that.

This is a worn gun in Harper's. I saw a dude in the grocery store the other day with a piece on his hip checking out in front of me buying a six pack of beer. Yeah. And it definitely like, I don't care who you are. When someone walks in the room with a gun on their hip these days, it changes the mood. I'm not saying it makes things bad or good. I'm just saying it changes things.

I think it probably always has. Yeah. It's a weird thing. I mean, I definitely see where people get divided on the issue because here in Atlanta there's a lot of crime. You hear about a story where some dude went to car jack some guy and the dude had a gun in his car and shot the guy and all that guy's behind bars. I can see how people would be like, good.

He stopped a criminal like a cop would have. Whereas cops generally investigate already happened crimes. Rarely does a cop like for a crime in progress. It's just right place, right time. So like random how that works out. Whereas if the citizens had the guns they could do that themselves. So I can see how people get all up in arms and say, yeah, you know, there's a case of a person that defended themselves successfully.

And then the other person might say, yeah, but what about that guy whose son accidentally shoots himself in the house when the gun's out? Like it's two separate four year olds yesterday accidentally killed two different people in two different states. Really? Yeah. The wife of a sheriff's deputy was killed by a four year old at her house. Yeah.

So every story or with no matter how you feel about it, you can pick cherry pick a story to fit your beliefs. It's pretty like the issue is very, very far from clear cut. And it's yeah, it's just very hard to not see both sides. I agree with you. There's a guy named David Hemingway that wrote an article called risks and benefits of a gun in the home for the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine in 2011. And this is a sort of a newer thing where they're starting to frame it, like I said,

as a health issue, like when people are dying, you should look at it as a health issue. So he investigates it as such and came out on the side of the American Academy of Pediatrics who officially have said, do not have a gun in the home if you're a parent. The result of the study at least from Hemingway says the evidence is overwhelming that a gun in the house is more of a risk factor for completed suicide and general violence than the benefit side. There are fewer studies that come out saying it's actually a benefit to have in the home. And Kennesaw, Georgia is a big people point to Kennesaw lot because it very famously had

a law passed that mandated that you have a gun in your home. And people have always said, well, looking at Kennesaw, crime has gone down. He says, Hemingway says that that is not true. And if you look at the evidence, it is not shown to decrease burglary reports at all. And also famously in Morton Grove, Illinois, there was a ban on handguns. And he points out, Hemingway says a careful analysis points out that in Morton Grove, the banning of handguns actually followed, was actually followed by a large significant decrease in burglary reports.

So no one had guns. And there were fewer burglaries, which flies in the face of what Kennesaw was trying to do saying guns in the household will prevent burglary. Well, yeah, there's, and I don't know the stats off the top of my head, but there's a pretty good stat. Like England has very, very strict gun control and very low homicide rates from guns. And I think a lot of people also point out like, okay, well, if you don't have guns, you're still going to have knives and people are still going to kill each other.

But I think that if you are a gun control advocate, you would point out that it's kind of like the completed suicide thing. Right. They're still going to try to kill themselves, but they might not be successful. And afterward, they might be glad that they weren't successful because their situation might improve. If you go to kill somebody in a fit of rage and you have a gun, you're more likely to be successful than say with a knife or baseball bat or something like that.

And therefore not being able to complete this homicide, this situation may improve for both people, especially the one who's not killed. That's true. All right. With guns, I hope you guys made it through this one. Yeah. I think we should do one on the NRA just to learn a little bit more about that organization and round this thing out.

Sure. Okay. We'll look for that one in the future, I guess, huh? Yeah. If you want to learn more about guns, type that word into the search part, howstuffworks.com, and it'll bring up a bunch of stuff, including how guns work. I already said that whole spiel about the search part, didn't I? Yeah.

It means then, friends, it's now time for message break. Stuff is should roll. Thank you. 2023 is already well underway, everybody, so don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with stamps.com. That's right, because with stamps.com, you're going to be able to print your own postage and shipping labels right there from your home or office or home office.

And you know, it's ready to go in minutes. You can get back to running your business sooner than later. Yep. Stamps.com is like the post office elevated. They have rates you literally can't find anywhere else, which comes in handy because postage rates just increased again, like up to 84% off of USPS and UPS. Plus, stamps.com automatically tells you your cheapest and fastest shipping options. So use stamps.com to print postage wherever you do business.

All you need is that computer and printer. Set your business up for success. When you get started with stamps.com today, just use our promo code stuff for a special offer that's going to include a four week trial plus free postage and that free digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code stuff.

You're ready to travel in 2023. And since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European Riffer Cruises. And right now through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gate the number one travel.com.

Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. And Chuck, take us out with some Listering Mail, huh? Yeah. This is another Peace Corps email. We get a lot of these because we find that, A, we did one on the Peace Corps. But before that, even we got a lot from Peace Corps folks because I think they're world travelers who are curious and like to listen to things on the chicken bus, you know what I'm saying?

I wanted to send you guys an email since I finally finished the long list of stuff you should know podcast that I downloaded to pass the time while riding on chicken buses throughout Ecuador. As a current Peace Corps volunteer in a gold producing region of the world and a former outfitter in Yellowstone National Park, I really enjoyed the podcast on Peace Corps, coffee, gold, bison, geysers, and thoroughbreds. What I know about these topics, you guys are pretty much spot on. And I'm also a bit of a plant nerd, so I really enjoyed the Randy Moss joke from the Moss

episode. That was a good one. Well played. One of the things I was really emailing about was to see if you guys could give a shoutout to my long time friend, Catherine. Lifelong even. She and I grew up in South Dakota together and have been friends since kindergarten. Even though we went to colleges across the country from each other, we have managed to

remain close friends for the last 20 years. Unfortunately, due to being in the Peace Corps, I was unable to make it back for her wedding and miss the opportunity to be her maid of honor. Although she doesn't have any hard feelings, I still haven't made that one up to her and she would love it if you guys gave her a shout. She turned me on to the podcast and, in fact, in saying she enjoys listening to it on her own way to work, I have been hooked on it ever since. So thank you guys, Chuck and Josh and Jerry, for providing Catherine and I with another

link and our friendship. That's awesome. Not to mention the fact that you provide me with weekly trivia facts that I plan on using on the 20-something bar scene when I move back to the States. So that is from Whitney and hello, Catherine, and that's nice that you gave Whitney a break for not being your maid of honor. Yeah, she's in the Peace Corps after all. Yeah, much better, bigger than your little wedding.

Geez. The Peace Corps? It's bigger than anybody's wedding. I'm sure Catherine would disagree with you, but that was very nice. Who is the person who wrote it? Whitney. Whitney, that's right. Thanks, Whitney, for writing in.

If you have a story that you want to share about how Chuck and I have brought you closer to somebody, we love those. Let us know all about it. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. You can join us at our home on the web that is www.stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there with 18,000 agents across the country who are ready to help you 24x7, 365, that's getting to a better state. Welcome. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. The South Dakota Stories, Volume 2. I could see beyond the black hills and the way they called for exploration. I could feel the air, the way it paints against skin and fills hungry lungs.

I could hear the way the water ran for miles and the way the bison grazed. The way our boots meet the earth as we step past expected. I could imagine my time in South Dakota and I wish to go back because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.