Killers Among Us it makes them monsters and maniacs and demons, not quite human. But how was their rage so different from mine? Obviously, that I did not actually shoot anyone. Though had I shot up a house full of drug dealers, the media response would have been quite different. And a good many people who have been successively sickened during this plague year would be considerably less devastated, perhaps relieved and maybe even a little thrilled. <strong>The</strong> rage is the same, only we share the hate. Calling for the execution of a murderer. Or in really bad traffic. It's the same impulse, whether horrific or honorable, and we've all had it, at some time and to some extent. Men seem to have it more often than women; they certainly walk into places and start shooting more frequently. We've heard the theories: men are rewarded for their aggression; men are more avid consumers of the pop death cult; men are reared to believe the world will bow before them and are frustrated to learn it's actually the reverse; men are denied outlets for their pain. . . . Most of these explanations, myriad as the talk shows and magazines that pander them about, all suggest that men kill because of something society does to them. But in nature, animals who don't watch TV or work in go-nowhere jobs kill all the time: for survival, for ON THE BRINK: A POLL According to the Gen Y2K Report, a recent survey of 2,000 young men and women: Of those ages 16 to 19, 41 percent say there are people they want to get even with. 43 percent say they sometimes are pushed too far and feel they will explode. 58 percent of this explosive group agree they would use a gun "if I had to." 53 percent of this group watch TV movies, compared with 34 percent of those who do not feel they will explode. <strong>The</strong> study's authors, Liz Nickles and Laurie Ashcraft, report that controlling parents may be to blame for kids' volatility. "Most people assume that teens who exhibit . . . violent tendencies are the result of hands-off parenting," Nickles says. "In the population we studied, the opposite is the case." Says Ashcraft, "Overscheduled, pressured children are an emotional powder keg." territory, for power. Men who kill do so for the same simple objectives, however demented or hateful their reasoning may be. It may be as simple as that: men are animals, perhaps a little more so than women. So, "animals kill, guns don't kill," to paraphrase the National Rifle Association's boilerplate regurgitation? Well, that's true, in its own disingenuously dense way. Obviously, hatemongers with guns are much more efficient killers than hatemongers with knives and baseball bats. But I think there is something to guns beyond their convenience. In their very design, they are an eerily perfect extension of rage. <strong>The</strong> handgun in particular: you make a fist and point the metal finger at the thing you hate. Impulse to twitch, and a hard, hot bolus of fury hurtles out of you at hundreds of miles per hour. Point and click. Point and click. From urge to execution in a flash. <strong>The</strong>re have been many times in my life when I'm now happy I did not have a gun. I was a dour teen-ager, I'm told, and if I had had a handgun, I might have not shot up my school but perhaps a couple of particular individuals, including myself. <strong>The</strong>re were plenty of other kids in my school who could have made the cover of Time and <strong>New</strong>sweek, with enough ammo. Even as a hormonally stable adult, I didn't need something as gut-wrenching as the murder of a friend to unleash the impulse. Being jostled along the crowded, steaming streets of <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong>, there were days when, if I could have simply pointed my finger. . . . Table of Contents <strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-killer-impulse.html (2 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:13:55 PM]
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