Ninety eight percent of mankind have a deep and visceral aversion to killing a fellow human. To train a man to kill the military must punch through these innate inhibitions using psychological techniques to produce an army of soldiers capable of deadly force. Former Army Ranger, Lt Col Dave Grossman’s 1995 book, On Killing-The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, provides a detailed look at the techniques used to desensitize someone to killing and the price paid to the psyche by those who take a life.
Despite these military techniques, many soldiers still can’t pull the trigger. Brigadier General S L A Marshall (b. July 18, 1900 – d. December 17, 1977) studied soldiers in combat and concluded that “…the average and healthy individual… has such an inner and usually unrealized resistance towards killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility…”.
The remaining two percent of the population are psychopaths.
Toxic masculinity and gun culture appear to go hand in hand with the ultra-MAGA, Christian nationalism that threatens our democracy. Since the election of Coos County Commissioner Rod Taylor, he and several of his followers regularly attend board meetings with their manhood strapped to their hips. Since there is no minimum standard of training required to carry a weapon none of us attending have any confidence that those armed individuals know how to responsibly handle a weapon.
There is plenty of reason to be concerned for our safety. Each day that Taylor straps on his gun he is preparing to end the life of a fellow American. Every time he puts on his gun, he is admitting that he doesn’t have the personal de-escalation skills to calm a situation he may even have provoked. Just consider that putting on that weapon means Taylor is ready to kill at the grocery store or the board of commission meetings.
Former Navy SEAL and current emergency room physician Dan Barkhuff, founder of Veterans for Responsible Leadership wrote in his article Carrying a Gun? That’s Not Freedom. “The second you touch that firearm, you are responsible for killing or not killing another human being with it, all day, all night, and forever until you once again safely store it.”
My own son fired tens if not hundreds of thousands of rounds during his time in the US Marine Corps and earned and retained an expert rifleman designation. During his two tours in Iraq, he ended the lives of fellow humans and because he is part of that 98% that doesn’t want to kill his own kind, he still, to this day suffers with the psychological impacts of going against his very nature.
The question to me is whether Taylor, who likes to use God as a prop, belongs to the ninety-eight percent or the two percent?
