Behavioral Factors in Legal Firearms Usage and Self-Defense

• In Event: Transforming Law and Order: The Impact of Justifiable Homicide on American Penality

Abstract

One might predict an increase in self-defense shootings as concealed carry laws, castle doctrine and stand your ground laws have spread across the United States. However, there few behavioral studies on how specific types of firearms will influence legal proceeding, what factors inhibit or promote defensive actions, how firearms training and self-presentation for the civilian firearms user influences juries and how gender issues interact with all of these factors. The naïve self-defense oriented user assumes that they will always engage in a ‘good shoot’ and issues such as gun choice, ammunition choice, posturing to friends or on the Internet about shooting to kill, etc. will not even come into play as they will never see the inside of a courtroom. In a series of studies, we found that firearms type used can influence negatively a mock jury with female defendants being at risk, advanced training is a positive or negative depending on firearms attitudes and defendant gender and that certain psychobiological indicators of aggression relate to self-defense attitudes. Also found was that despite what might be predicted by the aggressive priming literature, individuals with advanced training did not report being prone to use their firearms in bystander situations.

Author

• Glenn E. Meyer, Trinity University