WHY GUNS SHARE THE BLAME

By Michael Kramer

Shortly after the 0klahoma bombing, a colleague of Bob Dole's asked him to postpone a vote on repealing the assault-weapons ban enacted last year. Dole refused. "I am not aware of the involvement of so-called assault weapons in the senseless bomb attack," Dole said. On the surface, that's right. The innocents killed April 19 weren't shot. But guns and bombs are connected. The mere presence of weapons can spur violent behavior, and since Timothy McVeigh, the man charged with the Oklahoma horror, was obsessed with guns, the issue is particularly pressing.

"The finger pulls the trigger,'' says Leonard Berkowitz, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin. "But the trigger may also pull the finger. It's not just that having a gun is a convenient way of settling an argument. The weapon itself is a stimulant to violence."

Berkowitz has studied the "weapons effect" for more than 40 years. "There's no dispute," he says. "Even the sight of guns, which people think of as objects that can hurt others, can induce aggressive ideas. A weapon can function as a conditioned stimulus, eliciting both the thoughts and motor responses associated with its use.''

In a classic field experiment, subjects threw wet sponges at a carnival clown. The psychologists placed a rifle near the front of the booth for some of the players to see and removed it for others. The researchers also had the clown insult some of the sponge throwers. The insults had no discernible effect on the participants' behavior, but those exposed to the rifle threw more sponges. Similar studies have replicated the weapons effect worldwide. Psychology professor Ann Frodi found that Swedish high school students administered more and longer electric shocks to other students when a weapon was present. "Objects with clear aggressive connotations can trigger violent acts," says Frodi. "Parents know that kids who play with toy guns can become more aggressive. It's the same with adults, and it's provable."

Like movies and news reports of violence, says Berkowitz, "guns should be thought of as risk factors in a public-health sense. Their presence increases the chance that something bad will happen, and not just because they have the power to cause injury.'' The word psychologists favor is prime. A gun can "prime aggressive ideas," Berkowitz explains. "People disposed to aggression because of their perception of the world feel powerful around guns, and those guns can prime their aggressive ideas. Weapons may not be a precipitating influence, but they are likely a reinforcing factor. Guns aren't neutral. They create aggression that wouldn't exist in the absence of guns.''

Firearms violence has reached epidemic proportions. An American child is killed by a gun every two hours. An estimated 100,000 students carry a gun to school each day. It is expected that by the year 2003 the annual number of deaths from firearms in the U.S. will surpass the number of people killed in motor-vehicle accidents, thus becoming the leading cause of injury-related deaths. Oklahoma's bombing can provide what educators call a "teachable moment'' -- and just because a vital lesson appears to have escaped Bob Dole doesn't mean others can't learn. Outlawing all guns may be impossible, but continuing the ban on assault weapons should be beyond debate.