Targeting Guns by Gary Kleck

Targeting Guns by Gary Kleck

Author:Gary Kleck [Kleck, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Criminology
ISBN: 9781351486965
Google: NCAxDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-05T04:33:14+00:00


Inhibition

In an early study of victim survey data from eight cities, Hindelang concluded that “when a gun is involved in a victimization, both the victim and the offender appear to be more restrained and interested in avoiding an attack with the weapon” (1976:263). Thus, not only does the victim’s defensive use of a gun inhibit aggressor attacks (Chapter 5), but even the aggressor’s possession of a gun can inhibit his own aggression, as well as that of his victim. In many assaults the aggressor not only lacks an intent to kill, but specifically wants to avoid killing his victim. Instead, he may want only to frighten or to hurt without killing. Possession of a lethal weapon gives such an assaulter more killing power than he needs or wants, and to attack would risk inflicting more harm than the assaulter wanted. The possession of deadly weapons raises the stakes into what may seem to be an all-or-nothing situation: kill or do not attack at all. Given that the intentions of assaulters as a group cluster predominantly at the less deadly end of the continuum, one common effect of aggressor possession of guns and other deadly weapons could therefore be inhibition of attack behavior. As previously noted, a number of “weapons effect” experiments indicated that the sight of weapons could inhibit aggression under some conditions.



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