Arms and the man

Sounds obvious, you say? Perhaps so, but not quite in the way you might think. Usually, we assume that aggressive young men seek out guns in order to act out their anger, or to satisfy their craving for power. The gun, in other words, is the passive instrument of an already testosterone-fuelled youth. As the National Rifle Association in the US is so fond of saying, “Guns don’t kill people; people do.”

But this study suggests that it may not be quite so simple (or simplistic). Researchers found that the mere presence of a gun, the handling of it, created aggressiveness in their subjects. They measured saliva testosterone levels in a group of college students, then left them alone (singly) in a room with some sheets of paper, a board game and a “large” handgun.

The subjects were instructed to take apart either the game or the gun, and write directions for assembly and disassembly. Fifteen minutes later, their saliva was tested again, and it was found that testosterone levels had spiked in those who had handled the gun, but stayed steady in those who’d worked with the game.

The students did not know the true purpose of the experiment; they thought they were participating in a taste test. After their writing assignment, they were given a drink of water with a drop of hot sauce mixed in, and asked to rate it for “hotness”; they were then asked to prepare a similar drink for the next student in line, adding as much hot sauce as they liked.

It is fascinating to note that the ones who had handled the gun added up to three times as much hot sauce as their counterparts; and even more interestingly, when they learned the true nature of the experiment, they were disappointed that their fiery drinks would not be served to other students. This suggests not just a spike in aggression, but also in sadism (thought the experimenters did not explicitly state this). Handling the gun had apparently triggered some deep primal urge to cause pain.

With only 30 subjects, the study, of course, cannot be considered definitive; but it certainly offers food for thought. If, in such a neutral, non-threatening environment, the mere handling of a gun can create such results in a group of above-average, presumably non-violent young men, one has to wonder if the effects are not even more extreme when the guns hit the ghettos, where levels of anger and social malfunction are already high.

It may help to explain why, in today’s gangsta-ridden society, some of the most psychopathically violent criminals are mind-bogglingly young: the guns turn them into instant men, not just criminally but hormonally. Not mature, responsible men, but rather aggressive ones eager to inflict pain.

It’s a frightening picture; but tellingly, in a recent expos? on street gangs in the Toronto Star, the following paragraph appeared: “Boys in their early teens get power by being so vicious that brutal men fear them. The adult gangsters interviewed admitted they are terrified of the new kids, who brag about carrying the biggest weapons. ‘Do you have any idea how powerful a 14-year-old feels when he’s holding a gun to the head of a guy who is begging him for his life?’ asked one man.”

And yet, whenever fate — in the shape of either a bullet or the justice system — eventually catches up with these young felons, there is inevitably a mother somewhere in the background sobbing that he was really a good kid. Could it be that the gun itself — the holding of it, the owning of it, the temptation of it — bears at least part of the responsibility for transforming Kid Jekyll into Delinquent Hyde?

Whether or not this is the case — and it must be emphasised that this was just one, fairly limited study — one thing is certain: lots of guns in a society make for lots of murders. Trinidad has learnt this the hard way, some time ago; and Toronto is currently in the process of learning it too.

This city, apparently, is awash in handguns, many of them smuggled in from the US, where virtually anyone can walk into a store and buy a firearm, no questions (well, very few) asked. It is no coincidence that last summer became known as Toronto’s “Summer of the Gun”, with more handgun deaths than the city had ever seen before. Police estimate that about 70 gangs currently operate in the city, with about 2,000 members overall — most of them probably armed to the teeth. That’s a lot of hostile testosterone on the loose, just looking for trouble.

Recently, the Toronto police mounted a massive operation — their largest ever — aimed at dismantling one of the city’s biggest, baddest gangs. More than 600 officers (they had to call in cops from other jurisdictions, even from Montreal) launched a coordinated pre-dawn raid on a problem area called Jamestown, arresting more than a hundred people (including 24 women and ten minors) and confiscating significant quantities of drugs, guns and money.

More than one thousand criminal charges have been laid —everything from attempted murder to trafficking in firearms. It is worth noting that every step of the raid was done according to the book, with the police brandishing 115 search warrants; and that no one was hurt.

When I try to imagine a similar offensive in Trinidad, all I can picture is blood. The police believe they have struck a major blow in the fight against gun violence on Toronto’s street; and I certainly hope they’re right.