In ethology, or the science of animal behavior, I learnt that doves are much more agressive then wolves.
Wolves have claws and teeth and could do each other serious damage in a fight. Both wolves might gt hurt or die. So, for the species wolf as a whole, it is necessary to develop rituals and hormone fluctuations that allow for for challenge, defeat, and peaceful hierarchie with the alpha wolf actign as a peace keeper who curbs the fights lower in the hierarchy.
If you look at the level of agression on the anonymous internet, where no-one can harm anyone, well… let’s say it shows how human agression looks like if it goes unchecked.
Now, for the other end of the scale, let’s discuss an American state that is as pro gun people want it: everyone is armed and has learned to use their firearms.
I dunno, but from where I’m looking, the US seems to be on the upper end of aggressiveness, so it’s certainly not a correlation point…
On the flipside, everyone has access to knives all over the world. Maiming is pretty much just as bad as killing in terms of today’s societal norms (you certainly wouldn’t say, ah screw it, I’ll only lose a finger, let’s have at it). So the same pressure to be nice would still apply.
If humans universally possessed guns for 10,000 or so years continuously, that might actually have an effect. As it is, we’re stuck with instincts that evolved long before guns existed and don’t take them into account.
The single best thing you can do as part of gun ownership is go through training on THE LAW. Our Concealed Carry class (for my profession at the time) concentrated a lot on what you were and were not allowed to do while carrying a gun. Where your responsibilities lay, what you can be charged for. Combining this with my knowledge from self-defense classes (which likewise covered legal responsibilities and consequences) did a good job to instill in me that carrying a gun isn’t a cure-all to anything and I’m a goddamned fool if I even draw the thing in anything less than a full-on life threatening situation. And even then it may not be a good idea.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of stupid and impulsive people out there, and I don’t want them carrying guns. So I am very happy with the status quo.
Unfortunately, there are any number of people who (wrongly) do believe that both statements are true. That pro-gun people want to arm everyone including fetuses, and that pro-abortion people want everyone including men to have abortions. It is an unfortunate part of Human Nature that we often ascribe the worst motives to our enemies and engage in the most illogical thinking when we wish to demonize others.
The U.S. did engage in a brief experiment with the OP’s proposal in the late nineteenth century, particularly in the West. It was pretty much ad hoc and certainly not controlled, so I am not sure that we can draw rigorous conclusions from it, but I note that it was not long after it began that various communities in the West began passing ordinances that restricted the arming of the population.
A similar situation occurred among a specific social class in Europe with regards to bladed weapons. And, indeed, a set of formal rituals surrounding “courtesy” did develop in order to reduce the amount of outright bloodshed that occurred.
However, dueling among the upper classes never carried over to an outright reduction of violence in society.
For this particular proposal, Heinlein appears to have been entirely wrong.
Admittedly they aren’t the majority of gun rights activists but they appear to be more prevalent than pro choice people advocating laws for mandatory abortions
No; as a rule they want to eliminate rights. “Pro-gun” almost always goes along with being anti-free speech, anti-privacy, anti-freedom of pretty much any kind. It’s GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! and nothing else.
I agree. Wolves are less aggressive towards each other because they evolved with claws and fangs. Making humans more dangerous towards each other via technology would not suddenly trigger (pun intended) some dormant non-aggression gene in us. And the proof is that it hasn’t happened - we’ve been artificially dangerous since we began throwing rocks and whacking each other with clubs. But history has shown we have no hesitation about killing each other with our new weapons.
