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The Trolley Car Experiment and How it Relates to Gun Control

There's an interesting experiment in human psychology/morality that has been repeated numerous times over the years called The Trolley Car Dilemma. It goes by other names, too, but that's what I'll call it here.

Imagine you're near some trolley tracks and a train is heading your way. There are five people on the tracks who cannot see or hear the train, nor you. The trolley is on a collision course with the five people, unable to stop, and you cannot help except by pulling a lever that would divert the trolley to another set of tracks. However, on those tracks there is one person, again unable to be notified of the situation. Should you pull the lever, thus allowing the trolley to strike the one person, killing her, but saving the five?



What if there was a new twist? There is no lever, but you're standing on an overhead path (like the one in the picture above, overhead the trolley). You know that a very heavy object could stop the train, but unfortunately, the only heavy object available is an extremely obese man, sitting on the edge of the bridge. You could push him off the bridge onto the tracks, stopping the train and saving the life of the five people. Of course, this would result in the fat man's death. Would you push him?

Of course, the end result in either case (pulling the lever or pushing the fat man) is the same: In both cases, your action results in the death of one innocent person, and your inaction results in five innocents killed. Nearly everybody polled would pull the lever in the first scenario, but interestingly, a much lower percentage of people polled would NOT push the fat man in the second scenario. Oddly enough, many people cannot explain why. Psychologists widely agree that Kantian morality is at play here; that the vast majority of people agree that people have a hard time justifying using another person as a means to an end.

So what does this have to do with gun control?

There is mounting evidence that another more prominent psychological factor is at play here, that being that "harm involving physical contact with the victim is worse than harm involving no physical contact."

Have you ever heard the lazy argument that "If there were no guns, people who wanted to murder would just find another weapon and kill with it?" Well, the evidence does not play that out.

Pulling a trigger is like pulling a lever to divert a trolley train (most people would do this). Stabbing, choking, or beating a person is like pushing a fat man off a bridge (most people would not do this). It's much easier for the  human moral compass to justify harm if physical contact isn't made, and according to the study by Cushman, Young, and Hauser, subjects cite lack of contact more than they cite using people as an ends to a mean when justifying physical harm.

This is pretty good scientific evidence that the argument used by the right wing to allow gun ownership is false. Somebody who wants somebody dead is less likely to kill them if a gun is unavailable.

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