The Negative Psychological Effects of Gun Ownership

Jim Mason
3 min readJan 1, 2022

How it damages us mentally to possess a gun

Photo by steve woods on Unsplash

When we think and talk about gun ownership and its psychology, we mostly focus on what causes people to buy guns. On the one hand, we think, there are psychologically immature, unstable, and criminal people who choose to obtain guns, and on the other hand, we think, there are “responsible adults” who choose to buy guns for protection. People in the first category certainly exist. People in the second category are more questionable; some who think they are responsible gun owners can be dangerous. But we tend to assume that there are many responsible adults who can be trusted with, and even benefit from, gun ownership.

But I don’t think we have thought and talked enough about the psychological effects of gun ownership — how it changes otherwise normal people in harmful ways.

The difference between guns and most other readily available tools for killing is that guns make killing a very easy and very quick possibility. Most people other than psychopaths are repelled by the thought of killing other people or ourselves, especially in other ways, except perhaps in morbid fantasies and fiction. But guns are easy push-button tools for death.

How does it change us psychologically to have a gun?

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Jim Mason

I study language, cognition, and humans as social animals. You can support me by joining Medium at https://jmason37-80878.medium.com/membership