Gun Violence and Emotional Capture

Mandy's in the back room handing out the Valium
Sheriff's on the air waves talking to the DJs
Forty-seven heartbeats beating like a drum
Got to live it up, live it up
Ronnie's got a new gun
--Escape Club

There may be no event more capable of eliciting emotional capture than mass shootings similar to the San Bernandino shootings earlier this week. Gun grabbers use the event to gin up support for stricter gun control laws. Pro-gun entities use the event to rally their base. The actions of both sides serve to goose gun sales in the near term.

The media plays their part as well, as reporting of events, often in a slanted manner, serves to elevate popular perceptions of gun violence to unrealistic levels. Think tank Pew Research Center recently reported that a majority of people believe that gun violence in the US is on the rise even though it has been, as these pages have similarly observed, declining for two decades.

Perceptions about the frequency of mass shootings (definitional issues notwithstanding), which have not meaningfully changed for 25 years, are similarly skewed.

All of this against a backdrop of increasing gun ownership and concealed carry.

An environment fertile for System 1 thinking and for those willing to exploit it.