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A Military Expert Speaks |
A
military expert on the psychology of killing explains how today's media
condition leads
kids to pull the trigger.
Lt. Col. David Grossman is a military psychologist who coined the term killology for a new interdisciplinary field: the study of the methods and psychological effects of training army recruits to circumvent their natural inhibitions to killing fellow human beings. Here he marshals unsettling evidence that.the same tactics used in training soldiers are at work in our media and entertainment. "Before retiring from "I try to make those who carry deadly force keenly aware of the magnitude of killing. Too many law enforcement and military personnel act like "cowboys", never stopping to think about who they are and what they are called to do. I hope I am able to give them a reality check. "The prison population in America nearly quadrupled between 1975 and 1992. According to criminologist John J. DiIulio, "dozens of credible empirical analyses . . . leave no doubt that the increased use of prisons averted millions of serious crimes." If it were not for our tremendous imprisonment rate, the highest of any industrialized nation, the aggravated assault rate and the murder rate would undoubtedly be even higher. Children don't naturally kill; they learn it from violence in the home and most pervasively, from violence as entertainment in television, movies and interactive video games. "The second factor keeping the murder rate from being any worse is medical technology. According to the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps, a wound that would have killed nine out of ten soldiers in World War II, nine out of ten could have survived in Vietnam. Thus, by a very conservative estimate, if we had 1940 level medical technology today, the murder rate would be ten times higher than it is. The magnitude of the problem has been held down by the development of sophisticated lifesaving skills and techniques, such as helicopter medevacs, 911 operators, paramedics, cpr, trauma centers and medicines. "However, the crime rate is still at a phenomenally high level, and this is true worldwide. In Canada, according to their Center for Justice, per capita assaults increased almost fivefold between 1964 and 1993, attempted murder increased nearly sevenfold and murders doubled. Similar trends can be seen in other countries in the per capita violent crime rates reported to Interpol between 1977 and 1993. In Australia and New Zealand, the assault rate increased approximately fourfold and the murder rate nearly doubled in both nations. The assault rate tripled in Sweden and approximately doubled in Belgium, Denmark, England-Wales, France, Hungary, Netherlands and Scotland, while all these nations had an associated, but smaller increase in murder. "This virus of violence is
occurring worldwide. The explanation for it has to be some new factor that
is occurring in all of these countries. There are many factors involved,
and none should be discounted: for example, the prevalence of guns in our
society. But violence is rising in many nations with draconian gun laws.
And though we should never downplay child abuse, poverty, or racism, there
is only one new variable present in each of these countries, bearing the
exact same fruit: media violence presented as entertainment for children."
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the
military, I spent almost a quarter of a century as an army infantry officer
and a psychologist, learning and studying how to enable people to kill.
Believe me, we are very good at it. But it does not come naturally; you
have to be taught to kill. And just as the army is conditioning people
to kill, we are indiscriminately doing the same thing to our children,
but without the safeguards.